Content Design

Medication guides are required by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for prescription medications. They are intended to provide the patient with information related to the safe and effective use of the medication. They also must meet regulatory conditions mandated by the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR), including content and some formatting requirements. 

Research has shown that there is a disparity between the intent of medication guides and their actual effectiveness, and the majority of readers do not reach an acceptable level of knowledge.

Several potential areas of improvement were identified in research studies, including the need for simplified language with less jargon and the design formatting to make guides easier to comprehend.

As a project, I redesigned one medication guide, Ativan. The document was redesigned using best practices in the principles of document design. The revised guide complies with the CFR while making it much easier to comprehend.

The original guide and revised guide are provided below, along with a recommendation report to the FDA to persuade them to update the CFR.