Our partners, field work, technology, and everything else.
Cory will be speaking about the unique technology behind the BHOMA Project at this year’s MySQL Conference in Santa Clara on Thursday 4/14. More information about the talk is available here. Also see an interview with Cory about the project.
Dr. Helene Hardy presented one of the select oral abstracts at the 4th International Conference on HIV Treatment Adherence in Miami:
Title: Assess and Remind (ARemind): a Personalized Cell Phone Reminder System is Superior to a Beeper to Enhance Adherence to Antiretroviral Therapy
Background: Adherence to antiretroviral therapy (ART) represents one of the strongest predictor of progression to AIDS, yet innovative technologies are needed to sustain adherence over time. The purpose of this study was to compare the efficacy of a personalized cell phone reminder system called Aremind in enhancing adherence to ART versus a beeper.
Methods: Twenty-three HIV-infected subjects on ART with self-reported adherence <85% were randomized to a cellular phone (CP) or beeper (BP). CP subjects received personalized text messages and had to respond with a text message when taking ART. BP subjects received a reminder beep at the time of dosing. Interviews were schedule every 3 weeks over 6 weeks. Adherence to ART was measured by self-report (SR, 7-day recall), pill count (PC, past 30 days at baseline, then past 3 weeks), and MEMS (cumulatively at 3 and 6 weeks). ANCOVA model adjusted for baseline adherence was used to compare SR and PC adherence changes. T-test was used to evaluate difference between groups for MEMS.
Results: Twelve males and 11 females were enrolled; 19 completed all visits. Mean baseline viral load and CD4 count were 21,309 copies/mL and 295 cells/mm3. Most subjects were on a boosted PI (52.2%) or an NNRTI (17.4%). Past adherence barriers included active substance abuse (73.9%), fear of side effects (69.6%), and lack of daily routine (65.2%). Both SR and PC adherence increased significantly from baseline to week 6 in the CP arm (83.4% to 92.8%, p=0.03; 65.2% to 82.8%, p=0.005). Furthermore, cumulative MEMS adherence (88% vs 60%, p=0.008), average SR adherence (92% vs 75%, p=0.07), and average PC adherence (80% vs 65%, = 0.06) were higher in the CP arm.
Conclusions: Aremind was more successful than a beeper in enhancing adherence to ART in this population. A larger prospective study is necessary to confirm these findings.
Citation: Hardy H, Farmer EK, Kumar V, Jackson J, Myung D, Doros G, Rybin D, Drainoni M, Backman E, Stanic A, Skolnik P. Assess and Remind (ARemind): a Personalized Cell Phone Reminder System is Superior to a Beeper to Enhance Adherence to Antiretroviral Therapy. Fourth International Conference on HIV Treatment Adherence. April 5-7, 2009, Miami, Florida. Abst 0289. Approved for Oral Presentation
Neal will be speaking at Columbia on Tuesday, March 17th. The summary of the talk is below.
Tuesday, March 17th, at 5:30pm in LC-504
Dinner will be served.
Speaker bio: Neal Lesh received a PhD in computer science from the University of Washington in 1998. As a Senior Scientist at the Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratory (MERL) in Cambridge, MA, he worked in a variety areas related to human-computer interaction. In 2004, Neal got a Master in Public Health from the Harvard School of Public Health. Since then, he has been working and living mostly abroad. In Tanzania, he has worked on data systems for a large Harvard-supported AIDS treatment program with tens of thousands of patients in care or treatment. He worked with Partners in Health during the early stages of their operations in rural Rwanda, helping to build reporting systems and laboratory systems. In South Africa and Tanzania, he is investigating the use of handhelds to deliver standardized care to improve the treatment of common causes of child mortality and triaging of HIV+ patients. He is starting work in Bangladesh to deliver essential information over mobile phones. He has been active in the OpenMRS and OpenROSA open source communities, as well as collaboration among groups working on mobile health applications in Tanzania. His primary focus now is on the CommCare project to equip community health workers with phone-based applications to help them plan their day, manage household visits, and report their data.
Directions to LC-504: Enter the medical school building and make a right at the end of the hallway, then take the elevators at the end of that hallway to the 5th floor. LC-504 is directly across the hall from the elevators.
Dimagi (specifically Dan and Cory) and Unicef’s Innovation group have been working on a lightweight application for Android that can act as an SMS server. The goal is to be able to parse a view incoming SMS “forms”, such “bednets lusaka 13 29.” The presentation can be found here. This solution is highly portability, as it just runs on the Android phone, so is ideal for situations where deploying a stable server + phone is a difficult task.
For more information and screenshots, see the main project page.
Our developer page has some interesting tidbits with regard to some of the design and coding obstacles we had to go through