The 14-month clinical trial is funded by a
Microsoft HealthVault Be Well Fund grant. The trial, entitled, “The Impact of Automated Dosing Reminders on Medication Adherence Using HealthVault,” will be led by Michael Boland, M.D., Ph.D. of the Wilmer Eye Institute, and will recruit 500 patients and use telephone calls and text messages for the purpose.
Amos Adler, president of MEMOTEXT, finds it to be an honor to collaborate on this special grant and believes this new interface will significantly improve medication adherence in patients with glaucoma. The company is confident this trial will demonstrate that their technology-driven adherence solutions help patients managing various conditions.
MEMOTEXT refers to studies that indicate that each year medication non-adherence costs North America more than $100 billion and 125,000 lives. Research shows that around forty percent of glaucoma patients face difficulties in taking their eye drops on a regular basis as a result of which they are unable to heal quickly and properly despite an appropriate physician diagnosis and treatment plan.
A patient’s adherence regimen can be customized by using the internet and mobile phones that have become so prevalent in patients’ lives. The officials expect that the results of this study will demonstrate MEMOTEXT program’s usefulness for glaucoma, in addition to a number of other chronic diseases where adherence is important.
According to glaucoma specialist Donald Budenz, M.D., M.P.H., of the Bascom Palmer Eye Institute in Miami, adherence to glaucoma therapy is a major barrier they face in achieving therapeutic success.
All the effective medications to treat this disease become useless if the patients don’t use them. Budenz believes that providing real-time reminders to improve adherence to therapy will be a major step forward in the treatment of chronic diseases such as glaucoma.
“The Be Well Fund winners share our vision of using the Internet to empower people to fully engage in managing their health and improving health outcomes,” said David Cerino, general manager of the Health Solutions Group at Microsoft. “We’re excited to help these organizations turn their ideas into reality and to expand the capabilities and services available through HealthVault.”
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Anuradha Shukla is a contributing editor for HealthTechZone. To read more of Anuradha’s article, please visit her columnist page.Edited by
Michelle Robart
