Lack of adherence to prescribed medication treatment is a significant problem in most medical treatment. This causes both poor treatment and quality of life for patients. The reasons for lack of patient adherence are many and complex. The Danish start-up company Drugstars has developed an app to improve medication adherence, and this project seeks to improve this app by studying how users with different medicine prescriptions use the app and feel about their treatments.
Investigating and understanding lack of patient adherence to treatments
The collaboration between Drugstars and DTU Compute aims at improving the value of the Drugstars app to individual users and of the collected patient data for healthcare companies and partners. By applying well-known and tested statistical methods to a new field, the project will test clinical usability of patient-derived information about medicine adherence retrieved from smartphone apps. Further, the project will develop specific models for integrating analysis results to improve patient engagement and, ultimately, adherence to medicine treatments.
Evaluating usage patterns and feelings about medicine consumption
The project involves a longitudinal study of 955 people with type 1 and 2 diabetes using the Drugstars app and answering validated questions about the effects of treatments and related disease experience, attitudes and behaviours over a two-month period. Collected data are analysed by the company and involve researchers to determine correlations and intervention effects and are used for building predictive models.
Developing personalised treatment and interaction through data patterns
Analysing user behaviour could lead to application of statistical experimental design methodologies when developing future app versions. These methods can test and evaluate various app modifications systematically, ultimately leading to personalised features and interactions.
Patient engagement and adherence through positive feedback
The Drugstars app provides positive motivation and medication reminders to help users follow their medical treatment. Users earn stars by using and reviewing their medicines and donate their stars to patient organisations of their choice. The stars are then converted into actual monetary donations by Drugstars.