Efficacy of the drug administration support system for improving drug compliance in home-care

In terms of home-care, drug compliance has become a serious problem. For elderly patients, it is quite difficult to take various drugs properly without support from medical professionals. There seems a demand for instructing drug administration in home-care to improve medication compliance. The aim of this study is to develop drug administration support system. The device provides right dose of medicine and opens the box automatically at right time. It prevents overdose by managing correct drug dosage in appropriate times. The drug taking behavior of patient is recorded and sent to mobile phone with text message to patient families, nursing staff and home helpers. It ensures an objective evaluation for drug administration since that information is recorded automatically without patient's reporting. The validation of the system was conducted in ten homes and questionnaire with 17 people such as patients, family, home-helpers and care managers for three months. As a result, the system has a positive impact for patients who have multiple diseases, live alone, or with elderly family. The survey result has revealed that 40% of patients evaluated “the frequency of forgetting to take medicine has reduced”. We made a framework to enhance collaboration with patient and pharmacy.