Drugs Don't Work in Patients Who Don't Take Them: Dr. Drin, The New ICT Paradigm For Chronic Therapies

Poor adherence to drug therapies still represents an unsolved problem. In order to provide a useful solution to chronic patients of all ages - with particular attention to the elderly - who are subjected to complex therapeutic regimen, an innovative ICT solution, called Dr. Drin, has been designed and tested. The aim of the developed framework is to assist the patient during the therapy and to enable and support a bidirectional communication between all healthcare stakeholders (doctors, caregivers and family members) and the patient. During the screening phase, patients were interviewed to understand what are the common practices they usually adopt to remember when and how to take a drug. The solutions which they rely the most on are the list of drugs, writing on the packaging, and setting up alarms. Patients who complained about difficulties of adherence and who had a smartphone were subsequently recruited to test Dr. Drin over a three-months period. In the following, preliminary results from the first twelve patients are presented and analyzed to prove the effectiveness of Dr. Drin in supporting patients adherence to therapies.