Cinfa Laboratoriesa company with 100% Spanish capital and with 55 years of experience, has begun a pioneering project in the pharmaceutical industry worldwide to incorporate NaviLens technology into its medicines and health solutions, which will increase its accessibility for people with visual disabilities. For this reason, it is including in all its cases and in the medication leaflets specific codes that, through a free application and through the use of accessibility tools and the mobile camera, allow the mobile phone to read and transfer its information by voice. basic information, so that they are also accessible to people with blindness or low vision.
Specifically, these NaviLens codes provide essential information such as the name of the medicine or product, its presentation, expiration date and batch number, in addition to the complete content of the leaflet, essential data so that all people, including those with a visual disability, can , they can make correct use of their treatments in a comfortable and autonomous way.
Julio Maset, Corporate Scientific Director of Grupo Cinfa, points out: «When we learned about NaviLens technology, we were clear that we wanted to implement it in all our medicines and health solutions. A project that, in line with our purpose, allows us to move forward to make health accessible to all people. In this way, we hope to open the way in the pharmaceutical sector so that more and more companies incorporate these solutions and, together, we continue working for accessibility and inclusion.
Cinfa has been working on the validation and practical application of this technology in its products for a year and a half and the first presentations of Cinfa prescription medicines with NaviLens codes can now be found in pharmacies. As the approval of the different regulatory phases is received, its application will gradually be extended to the rest of the company’s health solutions, until reaching 1,500 presentations of its vademecum in Spain.
More than a million people with visual disabilities, main recipients
In Spain, more than one million people have some visual disability, according to data from the National Institute of Statistics (‘Survey of disability, personal autonomy and dependency situations aimed at households’, 2020). Added to these are also people with vision difficulties for whom it can be difficult to read small fonts on cases or leaflets.
By regulation, all medications must include the name of the drug in Braille on the package, but it is estimated that only one in ten people with visual disabilities in Spain use it. The additional inclusion of the NaviLens code allows you to expand the important information of the medicine, such as its expiration date, the batch and the entire contents of the leaflet. Additionally, Cinfa will include this NaviLens code not only in medications, but in the rest of the health products and health solutions that it makes available to patients.
How do NaviLens Accessible QR codes (similar to traditional QR codes) work?
-They are designed with high technology and high contrast colors to facilitate their detection by people with low vision.
-They can be detected from a wide range of angles and light conditions, allowing the mobile camera to scan them easily, even while moving, making them also accessible to people who are blind.
-These features eliminate the need to focus the code specifically, simplifying its use and allowing access to the information it contains without precisely locating it on the case or leaflet.
Innovation made reality
For Javier Pita, CEO of NaviLens, «the evolution of technology allows us to advance solutions that represent very important improvements for people with disabilities, making products or services more accessible and allowing them greater autonomy. NaviLens technology has already contributed to making transportation services in various cities, spaces in universities or consumer products more inclusive. “To now also reach an area as important to everyone as health is a great satisfaction for the entire NaviLens team.”
For his part, Luis Casado, president of the IDDEAS Foundation for Innovation and Social Inclusion, an entity that has collaborated with Cinfa and NaviLens when launching this project, considers it “a great advance in safety as patients and the right to health of people with low vision or no vision. We feel that our needs have been heard and, furthermore, we have been taken into account in the different phases of the process, in which people with visual disabilities have been involved. This is the way to generate a more inclusive society and I trust that more and more sectors will opt for implementing this type of impact solutions, which make the different areas of our daily lives accessible.
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