A friend of mine, Sean McDougall, tweeted recently about the economic and societal effects of pain. He makes the point that the cost of back pain in the UK, £12.3 billion last year, was more than the economic contraction that tipped us into recession. Across Europe, over 500 million working days are lost each year as a result of chronic pain. As Sean says, that’s the equivalent of everyone in Portugal staying at home.
Occasionally there are some statistics that make me wonder how it is that some relatively simple interventions are not made. I was reminded of another ex-colleague who once said to me, “the single most effective health measure, Martin, the thing that would have most impact, is just to get people to take the medicine”. He was probably referring to the WHO’s estimate that only about 50% of patients with chronic diseases living in developed countries follow treatment recommendations.
Maybe these aren’t “simple interventions” but they are basic, and you’d think they were well within our technological capabilities to improve. Just taking the medicine: effectively, completely and on time; this isn’t sexy, its basic stuff. Clearly good device design helps, but you can make significant improvements with good information design: clear writing and graphics, an intuitive flow to the content…
I’m also reminded of the motto for Rutland, England’s smallest county, which is Multum in Parvo… “much in little”. We don’t often make the macroeconomic or societal case when we’re thinking about improving instructions for use, but it’s there to be made.
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