Purpose:
Forgetfulness is a major reason for non-adherence in glaucoma therapy. Electronic monitoring of individual adherence improves our understanding of treatment failure. A new reminder system was build to study whether audiovisual signals can improve topical ocular therapy.
Methods:
Conventional bottles of artificial tears Hylo-Comod®, Ursapharm GmbH, Germany, were equipped with monitoring devices capable to remind of treatment via optical and acoustic signals. After written informed consent 18 volunteers applied one drop to one eye 5x daily at 8,11,14,17, 20 hours for 2 weeks. Only during the second week the treatment schedule was enforced with signals from the bottles at designated hours. Adherence was defined as % of valid applications within +-2 hour intervals. The effect of signal vs. no-signal on total dose, dosage interval, coverage, drug waste, attempts per application and handling was analyzed based on electronic monitoring protocols and questionnaires (paired t-test and Wilcoxon signed rank test).
Results:
The reminding signals improved mean dose adherence significantly by 17% (p=0.004, paired t-test). The number of missed doses was significantly reduced by 56 % (p=0.002, paired t-test).
Conclusions:
Compliance improvement was studied for the first time by means of a new audiovisual reminder system fixed at the bottle. As presented in this study the reminder system improved treatment adherence significantly. The effect of the reminding system on compliance with glaucoma therapy shall be presented.
Keywords: clinical (human) or epidemiologic studies: treatment/prevention assessment/controlled clinical trials • clinical (human) or epidemiologic studies: systems/equipment/techniques • clinical (human) or epidemiologic studies: health care delivery/economics/manpower