MEDICAL DISPENSER is a Personalized Dosage System (SPD) for medicines intended for facilitate the correct follow-up of pharmacological treatments, with the aim of improving adherence to treatment for people with chronic and polymedicated conditions. It is a case or pillbox called a blister pack, in which the necessary treatment is organized for one week.
FAGOR HEALTHCARE is a Basque company from Arrasate, next to GIPUZKOA, specialized in pharmaceutical and medical equipment.
Within the framework of the project ICT4SILVER, the idea is to answer questions which worry the company, as:
- Measure the acceptability of the product by caregivers and elderly people.
- To know the level of compliance or adherence to the treatment, based on objective data from the shots taken, in order to provide personalised monitoring and advice.
- Measure the improvement in patient safety and adherence, reducing the health costs of these patients, and improving sustainability.
The pilot was done in the homes of people who are part of the Home Care Service of BILBAO, Basque Country, Spain. Two elderlies participated and they were accompanied by 2 home care assistants, the reference community pharmacist and a team of psychologist from Home Care Lab.
WHEN and HOW?
The pilot consisted in 3 main phases:
- The 10th May 2018, we organized the first workshop (Focus group) with the home care assistants and the pharmacist. We wanted to talk to them about myths related to the aging process to see their point of view at the beginning. The idea was to discuss the misconceptions that the general population may have about elderly. Individual interviews were also carried out with all the participants previously.
- During 3 weeks, the elderly could use the Medical Dispenser as their system for organizing and controlling medication intake, which was remotely controlled by the community pharmacist.
- The 7th of June 2018, we held a second workshop with home care assistants and the pharmacist to discuss about their experience of using the Medical Dispenser. We worked on what they like, dislike and which improvement they can suggest, and ask about market issues that may be relevant to the company that makes them.
At the end of the pilot, all participants were interviewed individually again.
In October, the analysis report of the experimentations will be disseminated to the companies and the partners in the project. Indeed, we did around 20 pilots with 11 companies in SUDOE Territory.
