Assessment of medication intake forgetfulness, recent digital medication technology and associated individuals’ acceptance and health privacy concerns

Abstract

Background: Non-adherence to medication is a fundamental problem worldwide that leads to further complications. In corresponding to this problem, The FDA approved a drug with an embedded sensor, that sends signals through the Bluetooth to the application and website and this will play a vital role in improving the adherence, as it shows whether the drug has been ingested or not. Objectives: The purpose of this study is to investigate the importance of adherence, evaluating of respondents' impression toward the new technologist medication "Digital Pill" that will be applied in the future for a range of medications, as well as discussing patients’ opinions regarding privacy issues related to digital pills use. Methods: This was a cross-sectional study involving 320 university students during the period of one month from June to July 2018. The data was obtained through hard copy and online (electronic) survey. The data was analysed using SPSS version 20. Results: The current study results show that (61.9%) of respondents sometimes forget to take their medication followed by (24.4%, 13.8%) who never/rarely and usually/always forget to take their medications, respectively. Surprisingly, the majority of respondents (35%) take their medication anyway when they forgot to take it and (33.4%) they skip the dose of the medication and only few of respondents (28.1%) stated that they ask family members to know what to do when they forget to take the medication. More than half of the respondents (53.4%) do not tell their doctor if they forgot to take the medication. Majority of respondents (44.7%) ask family members to remind them to take their medication. Approximately two-thirds of the respondents (61.3%) said that they stopped taking their medication without telling the doctor. Further statistical tests revealed that most respondents (78.8%) want to use the "Digital pill". On average, (55.9%) of respondents were shown a full agreement to allow the doctor to access their mobile application and website. Conclusion: Based on the conducted study, we conclude that most of the respondents gave positive and good feedback and agreed to use such a new technology "Digital Pill" as they found it very helpful and will lead to improved health outcomes. As well as they also agreed to allow the doctor to access their mobile application and website to check if they take medication or not.