Feature request for patient side version of an android app that I think dovetails nicely with the MAR(Medication Administration Record) GSOC Project.
Medical/noncompliance and Medical nonadherence are a significant contributor to poor health outcomes and otherwise unnecessary healthcare spending. This can occur for a variety of reasons. Inaffordability of medications, difficulty of access, stopping medication when you start feeling better (e.g antibiotics and antidepressants), unpleasant side effects, etc.
https://jaoa.org/article.aspx?articleid=2538817
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3976600/
WHO on tuberculosis nonadherence
https://www.who.int/bulletin/volumes/85/5/06-038927/en/
In a nut shell, for a variety of reasons people are pretty bad about taking their pills and adhering to their treatment plan. The sooner a clinician can identify a problem with their medication adherence it could prevent adverse outcomes like hospital re-admittance for psychological issues, complications from high blood pressure, etc.
I believe for things like birthcontrol of antiretroviral meds like for HIV it is crucial a person takes them as close to the same time everyday or there could be significant consequences.
It seems to be that clincian observed taking of medication is the gold standard for ensuring adherence.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/hec.3570
There is some traction with “smart pill boxes” however I believe those would be easy for a determined patient to trick simply by opening and closing the lid.
https://psychnews.psychiatryonline.org/doi/10.1176/pn.44.22.psychnews_44_22_026
Also the pill box wouldn’t work for injectable meds, eye drops, or medications administered some other way.
While the clinician can’t be in your home with you, people have posited that recording yourself taking you medication and sending it securely to the provider with an app can be a suitable alternative.
eMocha is an example of this. https://emocha.com/our-solution/for-health-systems-providers/
The app should be able to set medication reminders that can be snoozed. Record video with the app, not storing on the device, transmit it securely to OpenEMR with timestamp and other metadata.
Alerting the clinician that the patient missed one or several doses and prompting them to reach out might be a good idea. This might be able to be taken care of on the server side.
The server side can probably allow the user to configure how long to keep the recording. It would be nice to make a tool that allows you to set “audits” by a human person at a specific frequency per patient, to make sure they’re not just recording something random.