• Ana Luiza Fontes de Azevedo Costa, Thiago Gonçalves Dos Santos Martins, Vagner Rogério Dos Santos, and Paulo Schor.
• MD, PhD. Pediatric Ophthalmology Fellow, UT Southwestern Dallas, Texas, United States.
• Sao Paulo Med J. 2022 Jan 1; 140 (1): 5-11.

BackgroundConsiderable numbers of individuals present low vision, blindness, illiteracy and other conditions that could possibly impair their identification of medications, such as eye drops. Through helping these individuals to identify their eye drops, they can achieve greater autonomy. Misidentification can be avoided through use of multisensory sleeves that can be adapted to most eye drop bottles. Correct use of eye drops is important for preventing progression of diseases like glaucoma that could potentially lead to blindness.ObjectiveTo develop bottle sleeves to aid in identification of eye drops and then interview a group of possible users to evaluate the acceptance of the solution.Design And SettingCross-sectional survey performed at an ophthalmological clinic in São Paulo (SP), Brazil.MethodsWe describe the development of multisensory sleeves to assist in identification of eye drops. To assess the acceptance of this solution, we interviewed 18 patients who were currently using three or more types of eye drops.ResultsWe developed four prototypes for eye drop bottle sleeves and conducted an acceptance test on them. Most of the patients who answered the survey about the sleeves were elderly. Most (95%) reported believing that the sleeves would help reduce the risk of mixing up eye drops with other medications that also dispense drops. They also believed that these would increase their autonomy in using eye drops.ConclusionThe solution presented was well accepted and may help increase safety in using eye drops through preventing misidentification.

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