A co-design approach to reducing pharmaceutical waste

Tools

MacLean, Laura and Taissier Marji, Hazar and Urquhart, Lewis and Robinson, Andrew and Wodehouse, Andrew and Rodgers, Paul A. (2026) A co-design approach to reducing pharmaceutical waste. Proceedings of the Design Society, 6. pp. 1781-1790. ISSN 2732-527X (https://doi.org/10.1017/pds.2026.10536)

[thumbnail of a-co-design-approach-to-reducing-pharmaceutical-waste]
Preview
 Text. Filename: a-co-design-approach-to-reducing-pharmaceutical-waste.pdf
Final Published Version
License: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 logo
Download (387kB)| Preview

Abstract

Pharmaceutical waste (PW) poses environmental, economic and public health challenges, yet effective solutions remain underexplored. This study used a co-design approach across two NHS Scotland workshops to examine medicine-use experiences and generate interventions. Three concepts emerged: transparent patient packaging, a tactile communication aid and a gamified virtual medicine-cabinet app, highlighting the value of bottom-up design methods for addressing PW.

ORCID iDs

MacLean, Laura ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4756-9881, Taissier Marji, Hazar, Urquhart, Lewis ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9773-8225, Robinson, Andrew ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0007-9778-1788, Wodehouse, Andrew ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9605-3497 and Rodgers, Paul A. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3149-191X;
CORE (COnnecting REpositories)