Alignmap In Cites Goes Video
A plethora of compliance-pertinent videos are now available online. I’ve begun posting some of these flicks on this blog’s tumblelog counterpart, AlignMap In Cites.
Videos selected for the AlignMap In Cites Patient Compliance Theater meet one or more of the following inclusion criteria:
- Presentations of patient compliance research that briefly and clearly present highlights of findings
- Tips targeted to patients or clinicians that may improve adherence
- Demonstrations of and infomercials about devices that ostensibly enhance adherence – or at least amuse me.
- Testimonials from patients and pontifications from clinicians that provide useful information, reveal pertinent attitudes that could have a positive or negative impact on patient compliance, or surpass a difficult to articulate but easy to recognize threshold of – oh, let’s call it eccentricity.
- Anything else that strikes my fancy.
The following videos in the list that follows have been posted to AlignMap In Cites in the past 24 hours. The links below go directly and only to the post indicated. These posts can also be accessed en masse by going to the AlignMap In Cites home page and scrolling back through the chronologically listed posts.
Now Showing
The AlignMap In Cites Patient Compliance Theater
Infomercial about the e-Pill Cube Pill Timer and Pillbox My first impression, based on the rather complex explanation of its operation, is that the device might be better positioned as a test of cognition rather than a convenient medication dose reminder.
Tips to enhance adherence to medication regimen Nothing unusual but potentially helpful ideas about remembering to take ones medications. Targeted to patients.
Medication compliance survey: Moderately self-serving presentation and recommendations from The National Community Pharmacists Association.
Infomercial about the e-Pill MD2 dispenser
Psych Medication Non-compliance: A patient’s own story of medication noncompliance.
Adherence to ARVs — Part 1 and Adherence to ARVs — Part 2: Poignant patient educational video from Baragwanath Hospital, Soweto, South Africa promoting adherence to anti-HIV ARV drugs.
How to Improve Patient Compliance in Dyslipidemia Diagnosis: Medscape produced video report on study affirming value of electronic patient reminders.
Importance of Patient Compliance in Healing: Presented by a clinician and targeted to patients. Excerpt: So, do what the doctor tells you. Try to be compliant. Try to get better. And if you need our help, we’re Baker Chiropractic. We put patients first.
Zuri – Medication Reminder and Compliance Recorder
An article in today’s (August 19, 2008) Wall Street Journal, Tools Help Patients Interface With Doctors By Victoria E. Knight, opens with this excerpt, a success story about the Zuri, an electronic medication reminder and compliance recorder still in beta:
When Tajel Shah sought laser surgery to correct her shortsightedness, the surgeon said she would need to use eye-wetting drops every hour and take a medication for three weeks to ready her eyes for the procedure — a tough regimen for the working mother of two to follow.
“I thought there’s no way I am going to be able to do this unless I have some sort of physical reminder,” said the 38-year-old from San Francisco.
Then a friend told her about the Zuri, an iPod-sized device that sends patients reminders to take their medications and records their compliance, which users and, if they choose, their doctors can track through a companion Web page.
The Zuri’s maker, Zume Life Inc., a San Jose, Calif., start-up, was looking for beta testers. Ms. Shah signed up.
Technicians put Ms. Shah’s medication schedule on a Web page and downloaded the information into the device. When the device beeped, Ms. Shah could see which medication she needed to take on its screen, and, by pressing a button, confirm whether or not she had taken it. Aided by the device, she said she was able to adhere to the surgeon’s plan, and she had the surgery in January.
… Rajiv Mehta, Zume Life’s chief executive, said the company expects to launch a version of the product next spring. The device will cost about $200, and users will pay a $40 or $50 monthly subscription fee for the Web-based services.
The article goes on to extol the virtues and promise of
“self-care” tools that companies including Intel Corp. and Microsoft Corp. are developing to help people monitor their own health and receive feedback from caregivers.
In oversimplified terms, both Intel’s Health Guide and Microsoft’s HealthVault store, organize, analyze, and distribute a variety of healthcare data gathered from a wide array of sources.
The Evolution Of The User Interface In Healthcare Technology
On reading the WSJ article, my first response was – well, OK, my first response was “Where do you sign up to have the WSJ open an article with five paragraphs of a success story featuring your business’s product?”
My very next thought, however, was that the user interface of these gizmos is likely to evolve as have other technological marvels, such as the automobile and the computer. The extent to which new tools are put into use by the population, however obvious their value, is limited by the difficulty, expense, and unfamiliarity of that tool.
In other words, what are the chances my Aunt Hazel from Broken Arrow, Oklahoma will find the Zumi a must-have healthcare device as long as it is a $200 pseudo-iPod with a $40 per month fee that technicians have to set up?
Of course, Aunt Hazel wasn’t interested in driving a car until automatic transmissions became widely available and her best friend began driving her own Ford.
I suspect the the responses by patients to the instruments like the Zuri fall into one of three broad classes:
- Patients like Ms Shah who have the right problem, the right circumstance, and the right perspective to embrace and use the tool as is, right off the shelf.
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Patients who mistrust and are adamantly resistant to (choose one or more) electronics, doctors, healthcare recommendations, sharing personal information, …
- Patients, like Aunt Hazel, who won’t use a medical tool like the Zuri until it is easier, cheaper, more well known, …
Group #1 is on board already. Group #2 is unlikely to buy into the process regardless of logic, persuasion, or receiving lottery tickets as incentives. But Aunt Hazel’s group? That’s where the action is. Make those electronic whizbangs less intimidating, less difficult, and less expensive.
Then, ask Aunt Hazel to try it out.
Footnotes
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