Adherence News Brief July 2011.

Mié, 20 Jul 2011 13:07

An international study involving more than 1,500 type 1 and type 2 diabetics has found one third of diabetes patients miss taking their insulin treatment an average three times a month, according to an article on Pharma Times Online.

 

Researchers commented that “By developing and implementing strategies to minimise patient barriers to insulin adherence or by prescribing insulin regimens that are more flexible and fit more easily into patients’ lifestyles, compliance to treatment could be improved, which may lead to improved clinical outcomes.”

 

In a recently published report, "mHealth Technologies: Applications to Benefit Older Adults", the Center for Technology and Aging discusses how cell phones, smart phones, laptop and tablet computers, and other mobile-enabled devices are now used to help millions of older Americans, as well as their physicians and caregivers, in five areas: managing chronic disease, using medications properly, avoiding safety risks, accessing online health information, and staying well.

 

And illustrating that the principles behind effective interventions to drive behaviour change have a broad range of potential applications, Katherine Hobson, writer of the Wall Street Journal's Health Blog, reports a study of would be ex-cigarette smokers published in the Lancet found those who received a series of simple encouraging text messages had double the quit rate of participants who received texts unrelated to quitting smoking.