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Technology, such as text services and ‘smart inhalers’, can halve the risk of asthma attacks, according to new research.
University of Auckland School of Pharmacy senior clinical research fellow Dr Amy Chan led a review of 40 international studies covering around 15,000 patients and published in the Cochrane Review this week.
“Digital technologies that aim to improve medication-taking can increase people taking their medication in way it has been prescribed by 15 percent, and improve asthma control and quality of life,” Chan says.
“Technologies that use text messages or electronic adherence monitors appear to be particularly effective for improving people taking their medication as prescribed.”
The authors, who are from the University of Auckland, University College of London, Queen Mary University of London.
The researchers say their findings support continued investigation of how to improve digital interventions so that they could be used more widely to help people manage their asthma.
Chan is currently researching and developing an app to help patients prevent asthma attacks.
In this article, Sue Frankland looks at the global problem of wastage of medications, including causes such as overprescribing and non-adherence. She also presents information from her master’s dissertation on how people understand, and respond to, medication expiration dates
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