Journal of Modern Medical

Dear Editor
With the advancement of technology, the use of pill reminders has become highly beneficial, particularly for patients with chronic diseases who require daily medication uptake. Considering the widespread use of smartphones, the pill reminder apps can be a suitable tool for daily and even periodic reminding of patients about the uptake of their pills. The elderly people have been reported to forget to take their medications more than other age groups, making them the primary target for such apps. The factors such as loneliness and negligence of caregivers have a significant negative effect on medication management in the elderly [1]. Considering the importance of accuracy and patience in setting medication schedules for the elderly by healthcare providers or caregivers [2], the use of a pill reminder can help the elderly to become independent in their daily medication uptake and restore a sense of capability and self-reliance in them. In this regard, the installation of such apps in cell phones can be a suitable option since they are always accessible [2]. By adding features such as setting date and specific details of each medication, these app can become more popular [3]. We developed a pill reminder application named “Darooyad” for the elderly in Iran, by adding these features and providing a user-friendly environment for them, such that it can also be used as a mobile electronic health recorder. The following steps were taken for its development:
1. Field interviewing of pharmacies in Tehran to gather information regarding medication management needs and challenges of older people.
2. Prioritizing these needs for identifying the key features for the application.
3. Selecting a suitable platform.
4. Designing the initial form of application (user interface and layout) by taking into account the prioritized needs of the elderly.
5. Writing algorithm and selecting the programming language and development environment.
6. Testing the application and fixing bugs.
7. Developing the medication database containing information about pills.
The “Darooyad” application has the following sections:
1. Login: There was no possibility of adding another patient as a user to maintain the patient’s health information security.
2. Current medications: The information in this section, which may have been recorded in previous stages, cannot be changed or deleted.
3. Adding new medication: In this section, the representative of “Darooyad” (in the pharmacy) add the information of new medications on the patient’s cell phone by clicking the “+” button which needs to enter the specific code (determined by the Darooyad app’s support team) to gain access to the user panel. It is important to keep this code confidential.
4. Search for the prescribed medication: In this section, two information are needed to search the medications: Generic name of the medication, and medication form (selecting from among the defined options). Only one form can be selected for searching;
5. Selection of medication from the found items: After searching, a list of medications is displayed, categorized by the name of manufacturers. The representative should select the desired medication based on which is available in the pharmacy.
6. Determining the medication instructions for the selected drug: After selecting the desired medication, the following information are displayed: Dosage, dosing interval (in hour), time of first uptake (in hour and minute), date of starting drug uptake (year/month/day), drug form (e.g. if it is a tablet and half of it should be taken, the “half-circle” option should be selected), number of drugs provided to the patient, alert sound preferences (using the patient’s favorite sounds, even their own voices), and a clear image of the drug. After completing them, the user can save them by clicking the “save” button and return to the main page. 
This application is a unique product in the field of medical and biomedical engineering in Iran with high customizability. It can also be used in other countries. We hope that, with the development of this application, the quality of life of older men in Iran improves more than ever before.

Ethical Considerations
Compliance with ethical guidelines
There were no ethical considerations to be considered in this letter.

Funding
This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

Authors' contributions
Conceptualization: All authors; Methodology, analysis, research and review, writing the original draft and visualization: Negar Tadris Hasani; Supervision, sources, editing and finalization: Fereidoun Nowshiravan Rahatabad.

Conflicts of interest
The authors declared no conflict of interest.

Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank Naghmeh Tadris Hasani and Nasibeh Rouzbeh for their corporations. 

References

1. Jes’us-Azabal M, Rojo J, Moguel E, Flores-Martin D, Berrocal J, Garc’ıa-Alonso J, et al. Voice assistant to remind pharmacologic treatment in elders. In: García-Alonso J, Fonseca C, editors. Gerontechnology. IWoG 2019. Communications in computer and information science, vol 1185. Berlin: Springer; 2020. [DOI:10.1007/978-3-030-41494-8_12]
2. Salama Abdul Minaam D, Abd-ELfattah M. Smart drugs: Improving healthcare using smart pill box for medicine reminder and monitoring system. Future Comput Inform J. 2018; 3(2):443-56. [DOI:10.1016/j.fcij.2018.11.008]
3. Ameta D, Mudaliar K, Patel P. Medication reminder and healthcare - an android application. Int J Manag Public Sect Inf Commun Technol. 2015; 6(2):39-48. [DOI:10.5121/ijmpict.2015.6204]