Mobile based Active Compliance System is a system changing approach of meeting compliance and adherence to TB treatment. Active Compliance System empowers the patients to report their adherence to treatment form their mobile phones sitting at home. With implementation of this system, patients neither need to come to come the health centre to take medicine nor their DOTS provider or CHW visits their home to give medicine.
This solution reduces the burden of the DOTS providers from role of strict policing (constant observation) to role of support provisioning (limited supervision). The proposed solutions approach will have an immense impact in the society, as it will empower the patients and give them control in managing their treatment through mobile phone tools with reminders and reporting compliance and other knowledge channels.
It has been seen that majority of the patients infected with TB are poor and weak. Many of them are also wage workers and labourers. As they are physically weak, they can’t come to centre physically as it take lot of time to travel to the centre from their villages. Also, the majority of the patients are also poor and financially weak; they can’t afford to miss their wages. There is also a lot of stigma attached when a patient is seen coming to the centre on a regular basis for TB treatment. In order to counter this, mobile based Active Compliance System is an ideal strategy whereby the patient reports their adherence to treatment using a mobile phone by sending a video ‘selfie’, while taking a medicine. This also complies with WHO’s DOTS strategy of direct observation where a video observed therapy is being used. Mobile based Active Compliance System is a very effective self-management of TB treatment using Mobile based Tools.
The prime differentiator in the new solution is the inclusion of the patient layer as part of the solution design and, the most important component being multi-purpose mobile toolkit for the patients. It is because of the inclusion of this new layer (the patient layer) as part of the solution that the treatment strategy shifts from direct observation to self-management of treatment, with patient driven compliance and reporting.
Technically, Mobile based Active Compliance System is integrated with a DOTS Central System of ZMQ’s Open and Universal Technology based TB (OUT-TB) Management and Treatment Framework. More about this framework is being talked in the ‘Active Treatment Management’ system.
