A Participatory Sensing Study to Understand the Problems Older Adults Faced in Developing Medication-Taking Habits

Abstract

Past research has demonstrated that older adults tend to use daily activities as cues to remember to take medications. However, they may still experience medication non-adherence because they did not select adequate contextual cues or face situations that interfere with their medication routines. This work addresses two research questions: (1) How does the association that older adults establish between their daily routines and their medication taking enable them to perform it consistently? (2) What problems do they face in associating daily routines with medication taking? For 30 days, using a mixed-methods approach, we collected quantitative and qualitative data from four participants aged 70-73 years old about their medication taking. We confirm that older adults who matched their medication regimens to their habitual routines obtained better results on time-based consistency measures. The main constraints for using daily routines as contextual cues were the insertion of medication taking into broad daily routines, the association of multiple daily routines with medication taking, the lack of strict daily routines, and the disruption of daily routines. We argue that the strategies proposed by the literature for forming medication-taking habits should support their formulation by measuring patients' dosage patterns and generating logs of their daily activities.

Keywords: medication adherence; medication consistency; medication-taking behaviors; older adults.

Figure 1

The tablet-based system implemented with EpiCollect5 [37] presents: (a) the list of a participant’s medications to be checked if they were taken, and (b) the options to audio-record the activities conducted before and after the medication episode.

Figure 2

Locations and pill containers used by (a) S1, (b) S2, (c) S3, and (d) S4.

Figure 3

Medication behavior of S1 shows the time of day in which the group of medication (G2) was taken daily and whether G2 was associated with the activity set as the contextual cue.

Figure 4

The number of days S1 performed the medication episode (G2-AM) after and before the reported activities.

Figure 5

Medication behavior of S2 shows the time of day in which the group of medication (G1) was taken daily and whether it was associated with the activity set as the contextual cue.

Figure 6

The number of days S2 performed the medication episode (G1-AM) after and before the reported activities.

Figure 7

Medication behavior of S3 shows the time of day in which the medication episodes (G1-AM, G2&G3-AM, and G3-PM) were conducted and whether they were associated with the activities set as contextual cues.

Figure 8

The days that S3 performed their medication episodes (G1-AM, G2&G3-AM, and G3-PM) after and before the reported activities.

Figure 9

Medication behavior of S4 shows the time of day in which the medication episodes (G1-AM, G2-AM, and G3-AM) were conducted and whether they were associated with the activities set as the contextual cues.

Figure 10

The number of days that S4 performed the medication episodes (G1-AM, G2-AM, and G3-AM) after and before the reported activities.