Increasing adherence of medication by supporting self-management

Increasing adherence of medication by supporting self-management

Chan, F.P.

Vermeeren, A.P.O.S. (mentor)
Visch, V.T. (mentor)

Industrial Design Engineering

Industrial Design

Design for Interaction

2012-04-25

Yearly 5.6% of all hospitalization in the Netherlands are caused by improper use of medication. 46% of these hospitalizations (19,000) could be avoided, which could save 85 million euro each year. One of the forms of improper use is medication non-adherence, which means taking the medication not as prescribed (prescribed dosage and moment of the day). The assignment of this project is to design an ICT tool which increases the motivation of patients who have had a myocardial infarction, in order to increase the medication adherence. The tool sHearet is designed, which is an extra feature to Google Plus. The project exists out of three phases: to find the problems regarding medication adherence, designing the tool, and the evaluation of sHearet. The first phase is to research the current situation of the patients and to find different theories about motivation. These results are used to choose a design direction. For the research 36 participants filled in a questionnaire, six myocardial infarction patients and two health care professionals were interviewed, and various articles are used. Important results of the research are: patients prefer to have personal contact, information and the feeling of being understood; patients who are aware and afraid of the consequences are more medication adherent; social support works effectively to change behaviour; and being confronted regularly with their medicines makes it easier to remember to take the medication. With input of the results the following design vision is created: By designing an extra feature to Google Plus for myocardial infarction patients, I want to create health awareness to motivate myocardial infarction patients to be medication adherent. This feature will create interaction through social networking by sharing knowledge and experience mainly between fellow patients, in order to create awareness on their health. The second phase focuses on designing the tool sHearet. It is an extra feature to Google Plus, where myocardial infarction patients can share knowledge and experiences with each other. The functionalities of sHearet are: setting up a goal and filling in results, find and read shared message (which are labelled in different categories), contact an expert or professional of the sHearet help-panel to ask a question, chatting with fellow patients, and adding fellow patients to the patient’s circle. sHearet was evaluated in the last phase by five patients, three health care professionals and three Google Plus users. They have given feedback on the idea of sHearet, their prediction whether it would increase their health awareness and medication adherence, the usability (after using the demo version of sHearet), and feasibility to implement it on Google Plus. The conclusions are that sHearet is useful for the myocardial infarction patients (and relatives). Especially during the rehabilitation period to talk with fellow patients, and to read and share experiences and information. sHearet fits into Google Plus in terms of the look and feel of Google Plus and is feasible. And to increase the usefulness, and the health awareness and medication adherence, information about different subjects has to be placed on sHearet. The prediction of the patients and health care professionals is that sHearet probably can increase the health awareness and medication adherence, but additional research is required to measure this improvement.

social network
medication adherence
myocardial infarction patients
awareness

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:3b870a27-acd7-4961-a9ee-e6784d00e36b

Campus only

Student theses

master thesis

(c) 2012 Chan, F.P.