ABSTRACT
Patient access to medicine information is a citizen’s right acknowledged by law in most countries. Access to the relevant information is essential to prevent the misuse of medicines, as this would jeopardize the treatment of diseases (Waarde 1999, 2004, 2006; Dickinson et al. 2001; Burapadaja et al. 2004; Sless 2004; Cossío 2013). In Brazil, medicine information is available to patients in both print and digital formats. When available in digital format, it is referred to as an e-PIL (electronic-Patient Information Lea et). Information in digital format is required by law, and is available on the webpages of the Brazilian Ministry of Health and of pharmaceutical companies. E-PILs are intended to ease access to medicine information and to empower patients when making health treatment decisions. E-PILs are a particularly eective way of showing drug interaction and how to use or prepare the medicine (e.g. injections, oral suspensions, inhalers). E-PILs also provide patients with information which is usually not included in medical prescriptions, such as related warnings (Martins 2009), despite their relevance to the task of correct medicine use (Fujita 2009; Wright 2003). In addition, e-PILs can make use of animation to show instructions for medicines usage, which could be visualized, either via computers (desktops, laptops) or mobile devices (smartphones, mobile phones, and tablets). Animation means the simulated visual representation of apparent motion (Mayer and Moreno 2002), as well as the ways of representing dynamic processes that vary in time (Bétrancourt and Tversky 2000). In the presentation of medical information, animation has been widely used to show something that cannot be easily seen in reality by the naked eye (e.g. blood circulation, action of a medicine in the body), and to represent phenomena that are not visual, such as inhaling air. Animated instructions can be employed to facilitate visualization and understanding of medicine usage in e-PILs.
