A tablet software application called MyIDEA (My Interventional Drug-Eluting Stent Education App) improved proper medication adherence among patients with drug-eluting stents, according to a study published in the journal Frontiers in Public Health.
Patients with heart stents who don't properly adhere to medication regimens experience a nine-fold increase in mortality risk within the first year of stent placement. Miscommunication is often the underlying cause of medication misuse.
MyIDEA incorporates patient-specific health data and prompts the patient to respond to how their health condition has affected their lives, thereby facilitating reflective observation.
To assess MyIDEA's ability to improve patient understanding of medications, researchers enrolled 24 participants over 50 years of age with heart stents. Among the participants, 13 used the application for educational purposes and 11 were given traditional educational materials. At a three month check-in, researchers found patients using the app had a 10 percent higher medication possession ratio — a measure of how many days a patient had medication in their possesion — which is a good indicator of medication adherence.
"Results from this study are promising and will enable new and effective education programs to increase patient knowledge about their health and treatment," said Andrew Boyd, MD, assistant professor of biomedical and health information sciences at the University of Illinois Chicago and one of the study's authors. "This kind of patient-centered health information, used with an education application, is proving to be useful and progressive toward increasing drug adherence for patients."
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