Assumption
People often forget to take their temporary medication when the symptoms of their illness begin to wane because it’s no longer a high priority to them.
Hypothesis
I believe that developing a reminder tool that helps users remember to take their medication will decrease the number of pills they forget and the number they do not take.
For the purpose of this project, SMS messages were used as the reminder tool.
Null hypothesis
H1: Fewer pills will be forgotten/missed if people receive SMS messages reminding them to take their medication
H0: SMS reminders will have no effect on the number of pills people forget/miss taking.
Methodology
An experiment where I compare users existing methods for remembering to take their medication with a reminder intervention that I have designed.
Ten participants were recruited to participate in a trial where they were asked to take a placebo drug for 7 days. Five were placed in a control group with no behaviour intervention and five were placed under experimental conditions.
At the end of 7 day period, I measured how successful each participant had been at finishing their ‘prescription’.
The study was repeated after a period of 2 weeks. The groups were swapped over (those who were in the control group were now placed under experimental conditions) and the experiment was re-run for another 7 days.
The results of each group in each condition were compared to discover if the behaviour change intervention of the experimental condition led to higher medicine adherence.
The participants were then surveyed on their experience. The survey was designed to learn;
- If the triggers influenced the participants behaviour
- If they found the reminder intervention useful
- what ways it could be improved
- what the effects of the intervention were – both wanted and unwanted
The findings of this research will feed into a design of a system or service for influencing behaviour change in temporary medicine, for my final major project in the summer of 2016.
Measure
- Number of participants who complete their course of medication
- The level of satisfaction with the experience of the “trigger”
- Number of participants who were adherent (taking 80% or more of their pills)