Tropical Journal of Pharmaceutical Research

Original Research Article | OPEN ACCESS

Assessment of the impact of medPlan®, a medication reminder mobile application, in glaucoma patients in Benin City, Nigeria

Penaere T Osahon , Lisa A Mote, Veronica I Ntaji

Department of Clinical Pharmacy and Pharmacy Practice, Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Benin, Benin City 300001, Nigeria;

For correspondence:- Penaere Osahon Email: penaere.osahon@uniben.edu Tel:+2348023610649

Accepted: 18 November 2020 Published: 31 December 2020

Citation: Osahon PT, Mote LA, Ntaji VI. Assessment of the impact of medPlan®, a medication reminder mobile application, in glaucoma patients in Benin City, Nigeria. Trop J Pharm Res 2020; 19(12):2677-2682 doi: 10.4314/tjpr.v19i12.28

© 2020 The authors.
This is an Open Access article that uses a funding model which does not charge readers or their institutions for access and distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0) and the Budapest Open Access Initiative (http://www.budapestopenaccessinitiative.org/read), which permit unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited..

Abstract

Purpose: To assess the impact of medPlan®, a medication reminder mobile application in glaucoma patients in Benin City, Nigeria.

Methods: In a randomized control trial with 2 months follow-up period, 200 patients receiving drug therapy for glaucoma were randomized into either into a control or study group. The study group comprised participants who made use of a medication reminder mobile application, medPlan®, while the control group consisted of those patients who did not use the application. Adherence to medication was measured for all the patients in both groups. Data was collected using a carefully designed questionnaire and statistically analyzed.

Results: This study recorded 100 % response rate from the participants. In the study group, 56 % were very adherent while 18 % were moderately adherent, and 26 % were non-adherent respondents as against 45 % very adherent, 13 % moderately adherent and 42 % non-adherent respondents from the control group. In addition, 78 % of those in the study group agreed that there was improvement in their medication adherence since they started using the medication reminder application. This showed a significant positive impact of the medication reminder application (p = 0.0110) on adherence to medication.

Conclusion: Medication adherence was improved in glaucoma patients who used medPlan®, a smartphone medication reminder application. This study lays a foundation for further research on medication reminder mobile applications.

Keywords: Glaucoma, Smartphone, Medication adherence, Impact, Medication reminder, medPlan®