The UK National Health Service (NHS) is testing an app that uses artificial intelligence to communicate with patients in the hopes of helping thousands of people with asthma and diabetes stay on medication.
The app, known as Aide, uses the same technology as Amazon’s Alexa and speaks to patients in plain English, guiding them through their treatment through text and images as if they were a friend.
He reminds them to take their medication and makes sure they know what to do and when, especially if their symptoms change.
Using Conversational AI, a form of AI used in Alexa, Siri and Google Assistant, Aid can start a typical day by telling an asthmatic patient “it’s time to take two puffs from my beclomethasone inhaler.”
Or he might tell a diabetic that “HbA1c is an important part of managing diabetes – here’s a rundown of what that is.”
In this way, an app can play a key role in solving one of the biggest challenges in healthcare: getting patients to take the right amount of medication at the right time, and sometimes keeping it up for long periods of time. developers say.
“In chronic disease patients, there is a huge unmet need for help understanding their medications and taking them reliably,” said Nick Barber, Emeritus Professor of Pharmacy at University College London and Head of Clinical Outcomes at Aide Health. the London-based startup behind the new app.
“This is just the beginning of a long journey that will help doctors understand the relationship of patients with drugs in order to help those who need them most. However, the first results are already encouraging. Aide provides friendly support on a daily basis that should help them manage their condition more effectively,” added Prof Barber, who is also Director of the NHS Foundation in West London and Scientific Adviser to the Institute for Health Improvement Research at the University of Cambridge.
Trial of the app is about to begin with a group of general practitioners in Suffolk with 130,000 patients, where it will be used to support people with asthma.
This follows a successful but small six-month NHS pilot project in North Yorkshire that involved 20 patients with type 2 diabetes or asthma.
This has produced promising results, but experts have warned that the pilot project is too small to draw any definitive conclusions on which the Suffolk study should be based.
After that, it is hoped that NHS trusts across the country will start offering the app to their patients who sign up through their GP. Usually it is not offered to download it in the App Store, but through a doctor.
A pilot project in North Yorkshire found that participants adhered to the treatment regimen 75% of the time – called adherence – although it’s not clear how much of this is related to the application as there was no “control group” to give them the feeling they could connect . . What would it be without the application.
However, a meta-study of 243 scientific studies found that the median adherence rates for patients with diabetes and asthma were 54.5% and 41.1%, respectively, suggesting that the app could actually help.
“Medical non-adherence (MNA) is a complex health problem that contributes to increased economic burden and poor health outcomes,” according to a study published in the journal. Translational behavioral medicine.
Dr Swaminathan Thiagarajan, who participated in the pilot experiment at Pickering Medical Practice in the market town of Pickering on the edge of the North Yorkshire moors, said the tests were encouraging.
“I see Ade’s important role in empowering the patient to take control of their long-term condition in a personalized and patient-centered manner,” he said.
“Our patients have found the natural language element of Aide to be easy to use and it is encouraging to see people over 70 using the app on a daily basis and their compliance is improving,” he added.
Meanwhile, Kristin, 61, who took part in the pilot project, said: “I have had asthma for about 20 years. The assistant reminds me to take my preventive inhaler regularly, especially when symptoms are mild and I may miss a dose. It has helped us a lot in the last few months.”
Louise Hunt, 34, was 32 when she was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. She says: “Aid made me feel like I could control my diabetes. From entering glucose test results to registering medications, I am also able to track symptoms—both physical and mental—which has positively impacted how I live with this condition.”
The app was originally designed to help people with asthma and diabetes, but over the next two years, Aid hopes to expand it to other common chronic conditions, starting with high blood pressure, which will affect 12 million people in the UK for the first time. three years. Britain is suffering. months of this year.
Other conditions are then added, such as chronic pain, arthritis, migraines, inflammatory bowel disease, and irritable bowel syndrome. The application will be able to help people cope with a number of these conditions at the same time.
Patients not sticking to their treatment are a major problem in the NHS. Without treatment, people with asthma and diabetes are at increased risk of asthma attacks, heart attacks, strokes, or other permanent damage.
Ian Wharton, CEO of Aide Health, said: “Our goal is to provide both patients and physicians with the tools and insights they need to communicate more productively and make better treatment decisions together.”
How the application works:
The assistant conducts short daily conversations with patients with asthma or type 2 diabetes to help them manage their daily health, in plain English, trying to minimize the use of technical jargon or complex medical terminology.
The app helps people remember to take their medications and learn more about them, take measurements to track the progression and severity of symptoms of health problems such as blood sugar and blood pressure or peak blood flow, and see insights and hidden patterns and is designed to learning about your condition and how to live with it.
Aide is a cloud-based, browser-based tool that allows physicians to remotely create and track patient care plans. This is combined with a native mobile app for the patient to act as a co-pilot throughout the treatment, acting as a “24/7 companion”.
Aide’s goal is to make the patient-physician interaction as valuable as possible by using data related to the patient’s actual medication use, rather than depending on what the patient remembers about their symptoms, which can be difficult to remember accurately.
The app aims to break things down into manageable chunks and answer patients’ questions rather than bombarding them with everything about drugs.
Why don’t people always take medicine?
Non-compliance can occur after a certain period of time after a doctor’s prescription and there are several reasons for this:
- Forgetfulness and difficulties in dealing with polypharmacy in everyday life
- Worry about side effects
- Not understanding what the drug does or why it was given
- When the patient’s symptoms improve, they feel they can stop taking prophylactic medications or feel they are no longer needed (this is common with asthma on prophylactic inhalers).
- In addition, some people never start taking medication, some never even write a prescription.
This can definitely lead to complications and a poorly managed condition. For example, most asthma attacks are the result of inadequate use of prophylactic inhalers. It is widely believed that 50 percent of medical errors are due to medical negligence.
Source: I News
I’m Raymond Molina, a professional writer and journalist with over 5 years of experience in the media industry. I currently work for 24 News Reporters, where I write for the health section of their news website. In my role, I am responsible for researching and writing stories on current health trends and issues. My articles are often seen as thought-provoking pieces that provide valuable insight into the state of society’s wellbeing.