Healthcare apps including medication adherence apps are gaining popularity and have become a promising tool to improve the health of people.Īlthough, there are a myriads of medication reminder apps available in the app stores, majority of them are considered low quality by health experts. In today’s technology-driven world, apps have been increasingly playing pivotal roles in our daily lives. What are the gaps in existing medication adherence apps? Patients often forget to take their pills or refill their prescriptions. The need to take multiple medicines at different times leads to confusion and patient become non-adherent. Unwanted side effectsĪt times medicines have undesirable side effects and that could be a reason why people fall out of adherence. Some people find the cost of medicines and co-payments, i.e., the fixed payment paid by a patient to the insurance company before receiving service from doctor, to be very high. Some health disorders like hypertension often do not have symptoms hence people don’t treat such hidden illness. This is the cause of primary medication non-adherence. Studies have shown that almost 25 percent of patients fail to obtain the new prescriptions. Here are some of the reasons for non-adherence: Failing to fill prescriptions Non-adherence has been a growing concern and recognized as a priority for health care reform. There could be several reasons of non-adherence few causes are captured under the next heading. When a person’s behaviour of taking medication, following a diet or executing changes in lifestyle does not conform to the recommendations from a healthcare provider, it is known as non-adherence. Shall we get started? Okay, then! What is non-adherence? How AI could be the potential game-changer?.What are the gaps in existing medication adherence apps?.In this post, therefore, we would try to answer the following questions: Then why the medication adherence space has not witnessed any notable change yet? Every year U.S alone registers a $100-$300 billion in costs due to medication non-adherence. Five days before the dosage in the MedMinder is running out or is close to expiry, Karen gets notified telling her that it’s time to visit the Pharmacist again and consult the doctor for future changes.Have you ever missed your medication pills? Or do you know anyone who has? We all have, at times! The app marketplace abounds with mobile apps for medication adherence. She then can reach out to her mother directly, or contact her through her friendly neighbors to ensure that Martha is all right and takes the dosage on time. However if for some reason Martha forgets, or is away from the device - a notification gets sent to Karen alerting her which medicine Martha has missed. If she takes the pills within the appropriate hour, Martha's app gets updated without a notification. The MedMinder rings a small alarm everytime Martha’s medicine is due, and when she approaches the device it opens up the appropriate drawer for her to retrieve her pills. She then enters the schedule into the MedMinder app on her phone, so that it can alert Martha to take the medicine in time. She enters the pills into the device, splitting by dosage and in the right order for Martha to take. Martha speaks to the pharmacist and gets the recommended dosage, timing and pill information. It is hard for him to call her and remind her every time during work hours, so he purchased MedMinder, a pill storage, dispensing and reminding device that helps her with medication. John helps Martha with her doctors appointments, refilling medicines at the pharmacy, and ensuring that she knows what pills to take when. Martha has high cholesterol and blood pressure problems, and needs to take 4 different medicines at various times in the day. Her mother Martha, 77, lives by herself in Athens. Karen works full-time at a law firm as an accountant.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |