2010/09/26 by Rodrigo Cardoso de Oliveira, Mauro Cherubini, Nuria Oliver · 1 citation
Psychology · Social Sciences · Health Professions · Medicine · Nursing · #Digital Mental Health Interventions #Impact of Technology on Adolescents #Mobile Health and mHealth Applications #Medical prescription #Compliance (psychology) #Mobile phone #Pill #Competition (biology) #Set (abstract data type) #Computer science #Phone #Domain (mathematical analysis) #Patient compliance #Internet privacy #Psychology #Medicine #Family medicine #Social psychology #Nursing
paper · doi:10.1145/1864349.1864371
openalex publication_date 2010/09/26 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/29
Medication compliance is a critical component in the success of any medical treatment. However, only 50% of patients correctly adhere to their prescription regimens. Mobile and ubiquitous technologies have been proposed to tackle this challenge, mainly in the form of memory aid solutions that remind patients to take their pills. However, most of these methods do not engage patients in shifting their behavior towards better compliance. In this paper, we propose and evaluate a mobile phone-based game called MoviPill that persuades patients to be more adherent to their medication prescription by means of social competition. In a 6-week user study conducted with 18 elders, the use of MoviPill improved both their compliance to take the daily medication and also the accuracy of the drug intake time according to the prescribed time. Moreover, the improvement in the latter increased from 43% to 56% when we considered only participants that had any interest in games, which reveals the importance of applying persuasive techniques in a personalized manner. We conclude with a set of implications for the design of persuasive mobile solutions in this domain.