Smart about medications (SAM): a digital solution to enhance medication management following hospital discharge

Abstract

Objective To outline the development of a software solution to improve medication management after hospital discharge, including its design, data sources, intrinsic features, and to evaluate the usability and the perception of use by end-users. Materials and Methods Patients were directly involved in the development using a User Center Design (UCD) approach. We conducted usability interviews prior to hospital discharge, before a user started using the application. A technology acceptance questionnaire was administered to evaluate user self-perception after 2 weeks of use. Results The following features were developed; pill identification, patient-friendly drug information leaflet, side effect checker, and interaction checker, adherence monitoring and alerts, weekly medication schedule, daily pill reminders, messaging service, and patient medication reviews. The usability interviews show a 98.3% total success rate for all features, severity (on a scale of 1–4) 1.4 (SD 0.79). Regarding the self-perception of use (1–7 agreement scale) the 3 highest-rated domains were: (1) perceived ease of use 5.65 (SD 2.02), (2) output quality 5.44 (SD 1.65), and (3) perceived usefulness 5.29 (SD 2.11). Discussion Many medication management apps solutions have been created and most of them have not been properly evaluated. SAM (Smart About Medications) includes the user perspective, integration between a province drug database and the pharmacist workflow in real time. Its features are not limited to maintaining a medication list through manual entry. Conclusion We can conclude after evaluation that the application is usable and has been self-perceived as easy to use by end-users. Future studies are required to assess the health benefits associated with its use.

Technologies for Medication Adherence Monitoring and Technology Assessment Criteria: Narrative Review (Preprint)

“…Similar to EMMS, patient self-report technologies vary in their specific functionalities, yet they all gather subjective medication adherence data by interacting with the patient via phone calls [16,18,26,38,49,53,[77][78][79][80], smart buttons [55], eDiaries [81], web-based platforms [82,83], and mobile apps [84]. Patient adherence is available in real time for most self-reported devices [18,49,53,[78][79][80][82][83][84]. Compared with objective adherence monitoring technologies, patient self-report technologies are lower in cost [26,53] and less stigmatizing [16].…”