I am married and 65 years young. I graduated as a Mechanical Engineer from Drexel University and worked for over 35 years as an IT (Information Technology) Consultant in my own company, Odyssey Data Systems, Inc. My IT background gave me the skills to analyze and solve many complex business problems.
As I grew older, I found that both my wife and I began taking more and more medications and vitamins. Some were brand names and others were generic versions. Some were marked “Take as needed”, meaning that they stayed in the medicine cabinet until they expired (really forever). Others started as brand names and once they were refilled, became generic versions (the names of which were almost indistinguishable). All pharmacy labels showed what was in the bottle, how much to take and how often; but hardly ever indicated what the medications or vitamins were to be used for.
In addition, whenever we saw a new doctor, he or she always wanted to know what medications we were currently taking. So, we gathered the bottles and tubes, put them in a bag and diligently carried them to the initial consultation. Of course, we then had to return them to the proper location in our medicine cabinet, so as not to be further confused.
If, god-forbid, we needed to see a new doctor in an emergency, that vital information was not immediately available, therefore being extremely dangerous. Well, fully realizing that we were not the only people to have these problems, I began the project of solving them with a type of medication identification help. I then formed my new company - Labels-4-Meds, LLC, in September of 2007.
The premise was simple - develop a web site to permit people to customize and purchase small, but extremely distinguishable medication labels and vitamin labels. Each medication sticker would contain a particular shape in a particular color (like a red heart) to have immediate and special meaning to the individual (like my wife’s heart medication). In addition, the person could customize the word or words to print on the label, in bold black letters (like Blood Pressure), to clearly indicate the medication’s or vitamin’s usage.
Since the information about the medication or vitamin had to be entered to identify the particular label, then a secondary benefit resulted; that being an index sheet which listed all the medications and vitamins, their color, shape, usage word(s) and optionally: their brand or generic name and dosage.
This was all done inexpensively with lots of documentation, examples and step-by-step instructions. There is obviously much more to this, than is necessary in this brief introduction. If you, your parents, your neighbor or your patient could benefit by helping them to be less confused about their medications, then please look us up on-line at Labels4Meds.com .
