Smart medication management system: ideal features
Smart medication management systems are designed to address the problems of polypharmacy — when one person has to take multiple medications to manage different conditions. This brings huge potential for confusion about when and how to take each medication. Worse, it also means that there is potential for interactions between drugs that may cause serious problems, or even be life-threatening. However, designing a smart medication management system is not necessarily easy.
Designing a smart medication management system
The obvious place to start on design is with patients and carers. After all, the main purpose of these systems is to empower patients to take control of their own health and medication management, supported by their carers where necessary. The real question, therefore, is what features do patients or carers want from a smart medication management system? There are three main issues to consider.
1. Patient safety
The first and most important factor is safety.
Any smart medication management system must be at least as safe as the current alternatives. Ideally, to justify the investment required, the system should actively improve patient safety and reduce the potential for medical errors. This means that it should, for example, offer a way to check individual patients’ prescriptions to ensure that they are unlikely to interact with or affect any existing medications. It should also raise an alert if a new medicine is contra-indicated for that particular patient.
On a practical level, the system should also provide alerts when medications are going to expire or run out. It should also give patients or carers a quick and easy way to check the supply of drugs and order more. This will ensure that patients always have a suitable supply of each medication.
2. Efficiency and convenience for patients and carers
The second factor to consider is convenience.
Patients and carers will not want to switch to a system that makes their lives harder. A good smart medication management system must therefore be convenient to use. For example, it should automatically scan medications, or be able to identify medications from a photograph. This is especially important for older people who may have mobility issues, and be unable to manage fine motor actions such as holding a phone still enough to scan a QR or bar code.
The system should also allow patients to ‘outsource’ the management of their medicines with confidence. They need to be able to rely on it to remind them when and how to take their medications. They must also be sure that it will flag up any potential issues, such as when they are going to run out, or when medications are reaching their expiry date. Ideally, it would initiate actions to order more or dispose of expired medications.
Finally, a smart medicine management system should offer convenient access to medications. Any physical storage solution should ensure that medications are kept in the right conditions. Alarms and notifications should be clear and obvious, so that they will not be missed by older people whose eyesight may be failing.
3. Security and confidentiality
The third issue is security — of both medicines and information.
Anyone considering the use of a smart medicine management system wants to be confident that their personal information will be kept secure and confidential. These systems need access to personal information to check for potential problems. However, they also need safeguards against data leakages and other security issues. The system must also have a backup to ensure that the information within it can be accessed even if the original device breaks or is unusable for some reason. The use of a cloud-based app, for example, allows users to access information from multiple devices, and means that carers can also keep track of patients’ medication.
If the system offers a physical storage option, it must be secure enough to ensure that children will not be able to access medications, and that access can be restricted in shared households.
Putting patients in control
These features work together to ensure that patients have access to the right medication, with all the required information. This helps improve medication adherence and patient outcomes, and puts patients back in control of their health.
