Pocket PC as an Aid to Prescription Drug Compliance Kelly Ellis

Outline Background Goals Typical Use Problems Potential Features

Some Background… 33% of U.S. adults who take drugs on a regular basis reported that they are often or very often noncompliant with their treatments. (Harris Interactive, 2005) Some possible reasons: forgetfulness (forget to take or refill), can’t afford the medication, dislike the medication. Forgetfulness is especially a problem in cases like those of transplant patients, in which there are often more prescriptions to keep track of.

Goals To remind the patient when and how to take their medication. To allow for easy review of the drug regimen by the patient. To allow the doctor or nurse collect data pertaining to the patient’s compliance.

Typical Use The nurse practitioner or doctor will be presented with the title login screen. In order to enter the regimen onto the PDA, they will select the Staff option.

Typical Use The nurse or doctor needs to log in to continue. In the future, he/she will be authenticated. For now, this creates a relationship between the staff member and the patient’s prescription record.

Typical Use In order to establish who the regimen is for, the staff member will enter the patient’s name and ID number.

Typical Use A combo box control lets the staff member select how many prescriptions are to be entered in the regimen.

Typical Use The staff member enters the information one drug at a time. Information includes: name of the drug, dosage, starting date and time, how often to take, and additional information. The combo box control allows the staff member to select from the given list or to manually enter his/her own information.

Typical Use After all of the information has been entered, the waiting screen will come up. This screen is all the patient sees between medications, but they do have the option to review their regimen by selecting “View Regimen” from the Options menu.

Typical Use If the patient wants to review the regimen, they can use the Next button to scroll one medication at a time. Information displayed includes the name and dosage, starting time, interval between dosages, and the time they are next scheduled to take the medication.

Typical Use When the time comes for the patient to take a particular drug, they are notified with a beep from the Pocket PC and an information screen. The patient uses a simple stylus tap to either comply or skip. Potentially the skip button should allow the patient to postpone the reminder.

Typical Use Back at the hospital or doctor’s office, the staff member can log in and view the patient’s compliance data. If someone else tries to view this information without the correct username and password, they will be notified and the application will fall back into the waiting phase.

Typical Use A screen will allow the caregiver to view the medication the patient took and when. It will also notify them of any medicine the patient skipped. Currently, this display part of the application is not fully functional, although the data storage element is working correctly.

Some Problems… Debugging using the emulator for the Pocket PC was difficult, and debugging using the Pocket PC itself was nearly impossible. Problems with the emulator: although the clock on the emulator displayed the correct time, DateTime.Now on the emulator would always be one hour off. The emulator timer and clock ran a lot slower than the system or Pocket PC clocks.

Potential Additional Functionality Up-to-date information for a larger group of medicine could be accessed via a database stored on a machine or on the web. Patients could postpone taking medication by a user-defined amount of time. With the correct password, patients could edit their own regimen. Doctors and nurses could view the compliance data in an easy to read format.