DigiSpenser — A GSM-based drug management and compliance monitoring system

Approximately one-third of all independently living elderly people are not compliant with their drug therapy. This lack of medication management results either in undermedication or overmedication, causing unnecessary and often serious health risks. This problem will worsen in the future with the change of demographics and cost constraints in the health sector. Therefore there is a need for (cost-) effective reliable approaches to compliance monitoring. To date numerous care schemes, retrospective assessment procedures and compliance supports tools have been introduced, but none of them has fully solved the problem of medication non-compliance yet. This paper will address some of the factors that need to be considered when designing such systems and will showcase DigiSpenser, a recently developed compliance monitoring and drug management system.