GENERAL
OTHER
CHRONIC ALERT
One of the biggest problems with chronic illness is the long term management of the illness. Getting a patient out of the crisis takes time and is very costly. However keeping a patient in the normal situation (not being sick) implies that the person have to strictly adhere to the treatment and medication the doctor have prescribed. The response on the medication have to be monitored on a regular basis. This part of the treatment is much cheaper and less traumatic than the crisis treatment (getting from sick to normal).
Because of the inconvenience and time needed patients do not go back on a regular basis to be monitored by their treating doctor or specialist, often the cost involved in such a follow up visit is one of the inhibiting factors. In any case the follow up consultation is normally after three months and in the meanwhile the persons health may drastically change, but don’t contact their doctor to ask for his opinion about their treatment. They adapt the medication as they see fit.
If they feel better they tend to decrease the dose or even stop taking it at all. Because they are not aware of the long term result of falling back from normal to being sick and having another crisis at hand.
However there is another option available now. The patient can monitor his condition all by himself via a web site developed especially with this problem in mind.
The patient can register for a fee of R20 per month.
Patients with:
Asthma
Diabetes
Hypertension
Once a person is registered and the fee paid via the forms supplied on the web page, the monitoring starts. He will receive a first prompt on his cell phone within three days of registering. Thereafter he will be prompt once a week (if needed, once a day) to complete a questionnaire that was send to him via cell phone.
This information will be stored in a database with the date and the patient’s name. A graph of the results of treatment can be viewed by the patient and his doctor only. The intention of this is to build a realistic and reliable history of the patients reaction to his medication. It is also meant as a warning system.
The system would warn the patient the moment his condition is worsening. The frequency of the monitoring will also increase and will inform his doctor of the problem if this is the patient’s wish.
For more information send mail to: chronic.alert@gmail.com