01 Feb Can Text Messaging Improve Medication Compliance?
Dr. Chow
MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
Dr. Clara Chow PhD
Director of the Cardiovascular division
The George Institute,
Westmead Hospital
Sydney, Australia
Medical Research: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?
Dr. Chow: Text messaging has immense potential in healthcare. Not only for supporting medication adherence, but we have shown in the “TEXT ME” study its ability to simultaneously influence multiple lifestyle domains like increasing physical activity, embarking on healthier diets and reducing smoking rates. With increasing penetration of mobile phone use in developed as well as developing countries, there is a potential for wider reach, however there remains a need to evaluate the value of text messaging programs in various patient populations to establish the generalizability of these research findings.
Medical Research: What should clinicians and patients take away from your report?
Dr. Chow: Patients with chronic health conditions are usually on multiple medications and generally need to take them for long periods or indefinitely. We know that medical adherence is a problem for many, with studies indicating some 50% will be non-adherent over a year. Non-adherence removes the benefits of these treatments. If text message-based support improves medical adherence it has the potential to prevent major clinical events such as heart attacks, strokes and premature death.
Medical Research: What recommendations do you have for future research as a result of this study?
Dr. Chow: Larger and longer duration trials are needed to examine the potency and long-term effectiveness of text-message based interventions. We also need to better understand what features of text-message programs make them most effective. For example we need to better understand if greater personalization of programs will make them more effective.
Medical Research: Is there anything else you would like to add?
Dr. Chow: This study furthers my belief that m-Health strategies are one of the simplest, most affordable ways to save lives. Global governments and policymakers should look closely at these compelling findings for a scalable, effective and inexpensive method of getting patients with chronic diseases to take their life-saving medicine.
Citation:
Mobile Telephone Text Messaging for Medication Adherence in Chronic Disease
JAMA Intern Med. doi:10.1001/jamainternmed.2015.7667 Published online February 1, 2016.
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Dr. Clara Chow PhD (2016). Can Text Messaging Improve Medication Compliance?
Last Updated on February 1, 2016 by Marie Benz MD FAAD