I've written about telemedicine before & how important it is to me. My outreach is through Oklahoma State University Internal Medicine. The bus comes every 3rd Wednesday of the month. That means I drive about a mile for my appointment instead or 120 mile one way. That saves me time, $ & exhaustion. For some in my area this is the only possible way they have of seeing a specialist for their HIV.
These two articles talk more about telemedicine & texting in regards to treatment. Although the article dealing with telemedicine is in the Southeast USA, the application & results are the same. This distance approach is literally a life saver.
The texting article was very interesting. Normally, I sort of despise texting, but this an application of the tech that is actually useful. This study was done in Kenya & the results are promising. Adherence to a drug regimen is an absolute must when you're +. This article looked at various lengths of text messages, frequency or text messages & compared them to no messaging, as well direct calling of the patients to remind them to take their meds.
Surprising, weekly message reminders worked the best. While actual phone calls were somewhat counterproductive. This research reported the risk of non-adherence among their patients was down 22% with the short weekly reminders. This is an easy way to actually improve patients lives. These texts can be automated. The $ & man hour costs are minimal.
These two applications of communication technologies are saving lives. It's only a matter of time before these approaches become more mainstream. Who knows what the next technological application will be on this matter?
Cya
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