A six-month study conducted by the Woolcock Institute of Medical Research (WIMR) found that patients getting reminders from the Smartinhaler SmartTrack inhaler monitoring system manufactured by Nexus6 took 73% of prescribed doses on average compared to 46% for patients not using a reminder system. However, despite the significant difference in adherence between the groups, asthma control did not differ significantly. The findings were presented at ATS 2014.
The study involved 143 Australian asthma patients with poor control of their asthma who had been prescribed a twice-daily inhaler. All of the patients used the SmartTrack device to record usage information but only half got reminders about missed doses.
WIMR researcher Juliet Foster said, “Our study demonstrates that provision of reminders and feedback could be extremely effective for changing controller medication-taking behavior in significant and positive ways. There could also be an important place for personalized adherence discussions in primary care, as GPs were very positive about the tools we provided, but longer studies may be needed to show statistically significant effects over and above active usual care.”
Foster suggested that the lack of difference in control between the groups might stem from high initial doses of controller medications, “in line with prescribing patterns in Australia,” explaining that, “The modest adherence in the non-reminder groups may have been enough to cause change in asthma control from baseline, with higher adherence rates in reminder groups unable to produce further improvement. Improvement in asthma control from baseline in all groups could also potentially have been due to the active usual care interventions, although the effect of inhaler technique education is short-lived if not repeated frequently.”
Read the ATS press release.
