Supporting the Medication Adherence of Older Mexican Adults Through External Cues Provided With Ambient Displays

Summary

Background: Problems with prospective memory, which refer to the ability to remember future intentions, cause deficits in basic and instrumental activities of daily living, such as taking medications. Older adults show minimal deficits when they rely on mostly preserved and relatively automatic associative retrieval processes. On the basis of this, the investigators of this study propose to provide external cues to support the automatic retrieval of an intended action, that is, to take medicines. To reach this end, the Medication Ambient Display (MAD) was developed. It is a system that unobtrusively presents relevant information unless it requires the users' attention, It uses different abstract modalities to provide external cues that enable older adults to easily take their medications on time and be aware of their medication adherence.

Objective: This study aimed to assess the adoption and effect of external cues provided through MAD on medication adherence in older adults. The study aimed to address the following research questions:

1. What is the effect of the external cues provided by the MAD on older adults' medication adherence?
2. How do the MAD design features promote its adoption?

Methods: A total of 16 older adults, who took at least three medications and had mild cognitive impairment, participated in the study. It was a 17-week feasibility study in which we used a mixed-methods approach to collect qualitative and quantitative evidence. The study included participants' recruitment, baseline, intervention, and postintervention phases. Half of the participants were randomly allocated to the treatment group (n=8), and the other half was assigned to the control group (n=8). Research assistants measured medication adherence weekly through the pill counting technique. Qualitative evidence about the system's adoption was collected through semi-structured interviews. Participants of the treatment group were interviewed regarding the system's functionalities that they perceived as most useful, less useful, and the difficulties faced while using it.

Conditions

• Medication Adherence
• Medication Compliance

Interventions

DEVICE

Medication Ambient Display (MAD)

MAD was implemented for Android tablets to provide the following external cues: * Abstract and stylized representations of medication adherence. The MAD shows a virtual birdcage, which has the aim of raising elders' consciousness about how they have to take responsibility for caring for their health, in a way similar to willingly caring for a pet. Each day, a newborn pet grows to represent medication compliance. By touching any point on the parakeet's virtual cage, the MAD presents information on the participants' daily medication compliance. * Auditory and visual reminders. The parakeet provides auditory reminders (a parakeet whistle) and pictograms to inform the medication to take. After participants take their medication, they move the MAD closer to the pill container to indicate that the medication was taken. This functionality was implemented through Near Field Communication (NFC) technology. Afterward, the parakeet acknowledges that the medication was registered as taken.

Sponsors & Collaborators

• Universidad Autonoma de Baja California

  lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

• Marcela D. Rodriguez, PhD · Universidad Autonoma de Baja California

Study Design

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Purpose

OTHER

Masking

NONE

Model

PARALLEL

Eligibility

Min Age

60 Years

Max Age

100 Years

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

Yes

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2017-08-25

Primary Completion

2017-12-08

Completion

2017-12-22

Countries

• Mexico

Study Locations