Impact of Automated Education and Follow-up Mechanisms on Patient Engagement

Summary

The primary and well-known challenge with continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) is the incomplete adherence of patients to this therapy. Successfully improving CPAP use is likely through emphasizing patient education regarding the risks associated with obstructive sleep apnea (OSA), potential benefits of therapy, teaching techniques to acclimate to CPAP, and providing a system of accountability through a follow-up process. With the changing landscape of healthcare reimbursement which emphasizes achieving positive clinical outcomes, discovering more automated and self-directed methods of educating and follow-up is needed.

The investigators plan to investigate the impact of adjunct Web education and automated follow-up on CPAP use and other measurements of patient engagement. The specific aims of this pilot study are as follows:

1. Assess impact of Telemedicine mechanisms on CPAP use 3 months after initiating therapy in comparison to usual standard of care.
2. Assess impact of Telemedicine mechanisms on functional outcomes and parameters of healthcare utilization at 3 months after initiation of therapy in comparison to usual standard of care.

Conditions

• Obstructive Sleep Apnea

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

Telemedicine Education

Emmi Solutions produces Web-based, simple to understand, healthcare related educational programs. These programs are interactive sessions that last about 15 minutes, educating patients on the risk of OSA and assisting in preparing patients for procedures. Two such programs will be sent to patients at preset intervals over the duration of the study: 1. OSA program 2. CPAP program Links to each of these programs are emailed to the patient and date of birth needs to be verified before the program will start. The programs ask the patient for feedback at regular intervals and provide opportunities throughout to make notes or write down questions that can be later printed. These programs are already approved for clinical use within Kaiser Permanente which has a contract with the vendor.

BEHAVIORAL

IVR

Interactive Voice Response (IVR) is a protocol in which automated messages are delivered via e-mail, text or phone to patients to provide feedback regarding their CPAP use, intended to improve therapy adherence. The basic protocol involves the use of CPAP devices that wirelessly send usage data to a cloud platform. Automated algorithms will assess the usage data and send messages to the patient when there is suboptimal usage or excessive leak, or to provide encouragement for successful use. Specifically, we will use CPAP devices with built-in modems which will send usage data via cellular network to cloud-based platforms that will automatically analyze the usage data and send the automated messages. Patients also can track their own therapy information through the platform.

Sponsors & Collaborators

• ResMed

  collaborator INDUSTRY

• Kaiser Permanente

  lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

• Dennis Hwang, MD · Kaiser Permanente

Study Design

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Purpose

HEALTH_SERVICES_RESEARCH

Masking

DOUBLE

Model

PARALLEL

Eligibility

Min Age

18 Years

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

No

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2014-11-30

Primary Completion

2016-11-30

Completion

2016-11-30

Countries

• United States

Study Locations