Did you know that medication non-adherence accounts for 50% of treatment failures? Crazy right!

BUT... one of the ways to combat this issue is through the use of Virtually Observed Therapy (VOT), especially in areas where missing a single dose can really impact patient outcomes, like in infectious disease and psychiatric care.

Please also check out our twitter channel, where we post a summary slide of what Jay has gone over!

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Research articles:
AI in Anticoagulation Therapy: [ Ссылка ]
AI in Tuberculosis: [ Ссылка ]
Video Observed Therapy: [ Ссылка ]

Transcript:

Welcome back to Teach In Two! My name is Jay and today I will be going over three pieces of information: 1. What is Virtually Observed Therapy, 2. how is it different from Directly observed therapy, and 3. areas in healthcare where it is being applied.

The term itself sounds very self-explanatory but it is definitely important to explain, Virtually observed therapy or VOT, is the use of digital technologies to determine if a patient has taken their medication orally.

I want to distinguish this term from Directly Observed therapy (DOT), which may be familiar for healthcare workers , because I think it is important to note the added benefits that “Virtually observed therapy” can have. Historically, we have seen DOT in patients with tuberculosis or in a psychiatric health setting where the patient’s healthcare team watched the patient take their meds in real time.

Now while this ensures that the patient is adherent to their drug regimen inside the clinic, which is crucial in maximizing positive patient outcomes, it does come with some obvious limitations and challenges.

For instance a patient can easily save and or dispose of their medication for later, through tactics like “parking” or “cheeking” a pill and can be difficult to detect in the moment from an observer’s eye. Additionally, directly observing a patient taking their meds outside of a clinical setting without some sort of digital component is tough. With DOT also we can see how possible healthcare resources are being diverted from quality care management for this mundane task.

But this is where VOT and that digital component can have an impact and more! Companies like AiCure are using AI to capture when patients take their medications to completion, meaning it can identify if the patient actually swallows the pill and eliminates the need for a careful care team review. This technology is currently used in clinical trials and in certain therapeutic areas like infectious disease and anticoagulation therapy right now. Emocha health also focuses on medication adherence but makes it easy through a remote adherence monitoring smartphone app for patients to upload videos of pill intake for asynchronous clinician review. This just overall increases a healthcare team’s workflow efficiency by allowing for better use of team resources.

Both these companies have interesting clinical studies and I linked them below. As always, thank you all for listening. If you have any questions or thoughts please comment below and be sure to subscribe to our channel to hear about future videos!

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