What’s the difference between an Alarm and a Reminder?
They’re kind of the same thing, aren’t they? You set an alarm to help you wake up at the right time. You set a reminder to, well, remind you certain important tasks to be done by you.
Here’s what the Cambridge dictionary says:
Kind of weird comparison, right? We are looking at “Reminders” vs. “Loud noise that warns of danger”.
Maybe what we are looking for is Alarm clocks, not Alarms.
Now that looks like a nice “Apples to Apples” comparison.
The thing to notice is, you yourself set an alarm on an alarm clock, while a reminder is something that someone else sends for you.
That’s cool, but what point am I trying to make?
Medicines!
Missed dosage and wrong dosage of medicines is a problem that’s bigger than you think.
Adherence is defined as the extent to which patients are able to follow the recommendations for prescribed treatments. Hence, non-adherence is when one does not follow recommendations for prescribed treatment. There are multiple reasons for non-adherence, forgetfulness being one of them.
Medication compliance has been defined by the International Society for Pharmacoeconomics and Outcomes Research as the “extent to which a patient acts in accordance with the prescribed interval and dose of a dosing regimen”
This study conducted on patients with mental health shows that the non adherence rate was 43%, while one study with patients suffering from Schizophrenia reported this figure to be 42%. A similar study on patients with Diabetes found the non-adherence rate to be 52%.
Hey, can’t we solve the ‘forgetfulness’ problem using medication reminders?
That’s exactly what TrueMD is trying to do. But this can’t be done using medication alarm clocks — what I mean to say is, the patient should not be the one going through his/her prescription and setting an alarm for each tablet to be taken at every time of the day for all the days lasting the course of the prescription!
TrueMD digitizes each prescription you send. This enables us to set your medication reminders for you — the way it’s supposed to be.
You can get the Android app here. Just upload your prescription, and we’ll set your reminders for you!
