Pictomed, Universal Health Care Pictogram System

Pictomed has created an universal pictogram language to aid in taking prescription medication. We want to overcome social exclusion barriers, thus contribuiting to an informed and independent society with a better quality of life.

Along the years, medication has evolved in efficiency and quality of life improvement. However, the precription instructions are often long, complex and of hard readibility. WHO (World Health Organization) estimations state that 50% of the worlds population do not follow prescriptions correctly, and recent studies point towards 49% of low health literacy on Portuguese people alone. This lack of knowledge affects healthcare and all efforts put into healthcare and disease prevention. If the final user does not understand the available information, he can't follow prescriptions effectively, often with dire consequences, like medication abandon, incorrect use and overdosing. Same studies reveal that the most vulnerable populations are the most affected.

To prevent this problem, we created PICTOMED, with a mission to facilitate the access to information by creating a universal visual language (Pictograms) that translate the main precsription instructions. This system was designed with the elderly, illiterate and visual or auditve defficiency in mind, in order to make information acessible, clear, inclusive and thus effective. The solution is based on two distinct mediums: The first one is using individual stickers that allow a personalized set of instructions according to pacient and condition.

Being an universal language, the system is understood by any person, regardless of origin, culture or language. This means the solution is scalable, being able to be replicated on any country that presents the same problem.

We want to make information more acessible, allowing an effective, autonomous and conscious drug use. This will be our contribuiton to a better world!

Expositor de balcão da Pictomed

Pictomed has recently reached the final phase on the Social Entrepreneurship Challenge by BET24 where we were faced with the challenge of creating this Crowdfunding campaign. We need your contribution to move on to the next step, support and share our campaign on PPL.

Together we do more and best! Thank you.

For more information: www.pictomed.pt | pictomed@gmail.com | (+351) 963 769 769

About the author

The Pictomed is composed by: Romina Fernandes (Founder) and Sara Agostinho (Co-Founder).

Our paths met during our bachelors degree, and followed on in the masters degree on Castelo Branco's Higher School of Applied Arts. During our masters we both were developing Healthcare inclusive design projects with the same purpose: To investigate, develop and simplify information for a specific target, and understand how design could be a major contributor on the social component.Passionate for challenges and our area of specialization, we always wanted to combine our knowledge with something that would bring real benefits to society. After our masters degree, each of us followed our own separate paths, until july 2014, when we had the chance to get together and follow up on Pictomed. More than colleagues we are friends, even being the main purpose on this alliance the shared will to contribute with our work to bringing better life quality to people. Despite the lack of resources, we have managed to bring together people that believe in the project and have helped it immensely, making us proud to consider part of the team.

Equipa da Pictomed

Budget and due dates

Pictomed includes from conception the objective to create a mobile app for visually impaired individuals, in order to be more inclusive. However, the lack of technical and financial resources has not allowed its development so far. The goal defined on PPl's campaign will allow the development of a prototype app that will be tested with the final users in order to better specify critical difficulty and improvement points in order to develop a fully effective tool. The campaign duration will be 30 days, and the estimated timing for the prototype development will be 3 months.

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