Evaluation and Proceed Method for Design of Pharmaceutical Product Containers Aimed at Satisfying Both of Safety and Usability

摘要

It has become a serious social concern that cases of accidental ingestion of pharmaceutical products are increasing. For example, elderly persons sometimes accidentally ingest the products together with the containers, and children may open pill containers and accidentally swallow the contents. We conducted this study to understand several contradictory conditions from expertise point of affective engineering and user-centered design and to obtain design indicator for overall solution, in order to solve these social problems related to pill container. In this paper, as for first step, we consider a method for evaluating child resistant features of pill containers that are difficult for children, but relatively easy for ordinary people, to open, especially in order to prevent children from accidentally swallowing pharmaceutical products. It consists of three experiments that are (a) container-opening test by children, (b) impression-evaluation test related to factor of safety, and (c) PTP-opening test by adults.