Using reminders to improve adherence to treatment

Achieve good adherence to treatment It is a challenge that health-related disciplines have been seeking to improve for decades.

And it is that both when taking medications and when going to intervention appointments or follow-up, the dropout rate is very high, and the negative impact of this is known to health. The WHO has warned in numerous publications of its importance, especially in the case of chronic diseases. What can you do about it?

• Related article: "Adherence to treatment: why do some patients drop out?"

The causes of non-adherence to therapy

Various studies have analyzed the causes of this high lack of adherence to treatment, finding five major factors:

• Socioeconomic factors
• Treatment-related factors
• Patient-related factors
• Factors related to the disease
• Factors related to the healthcare team

They all interact with each other and play a fundamental role in explaining why many patients end up abandoning a treatment they have started, even when they have already begun to notice the beneficial effects of it.

How to solve the problem? The power of reminders

Among the strategies proposed to improve adherence, as early as 1988 a study published by Masur and Anderson analyzed the ability to use reminders, such as calling the patient on the phone or sending him a reminder card within the behavioral techniques to improve adherence.

With the arrival of mobile phones, different studies have investigated the effectiveness of using reminders through sms or daily alarms and, With smartphones, the possibility of using this kind of resources through APPs opens to do this work.

Various monographs such as the SEFH of 2017 and reviews of publications point to the importance of reminders as a way to increase therapeutic adherence. A little detail like finding a warning at the right time can make treatment continue without interruption, especially when it is several days in a row without direct contact with a health professional who supervises our case.

Therefore, everything indicates that this class of simple stimuli are capable of improving the degree of commitment that patients have with respect to therapy.

The case for mental health services

It is especially important to achieve better adherence to treatment in patients in the area of mental health, since studies carried out on people from this group have provided evidence that depression, anxiety and stress are predictors of lower adherence to treatment.

Studies conducted on the perception of patients who are given reminder tools point out that the vast majority of them accept this type of help and are satisfied with it once it is put in place. March.

The studies and reviews that are carried out also show the need to help adolescents and young people, more related to new technologies, to which support through mobile applications can be especially interesting, not only as a means of reminding alarms but also as a way of receive psychoeducational material or support from other people in their situation, factors that are also known to be relevant when it comes to improving adherence to the treatment.

PsicoReg: an application with multiple resources

Along these lines, one of the APPs that is working very well is PsicoReg (psicoreg.com), a powerful tool that allows sharing psychoeducational material with the patient as well as remember appointments through the APP, make records, design task follow-ups, store clinical history and, in addition, it facilitates compliance with data protection regulations.

Through a simple and easy-to-use interface by both the psychologist and the patient, this application allows both to be connected between sessions, so that the influence of psychotherapy is felt even when the person who needs professional help is not in the query. Resources such as PsicoReg help patients adopt habits consistently over weeks and months, something that is It is essential not only for them to continue going to meet with the therapists, but for the intervention to work and the person to see its quality improve of life.

If you are interested in knowing more about the resources that PsicoReg makes available to mental health professionals, access the contact details of the members of the PsicoReg team by clicking here.