SPRINT-TB Puts a Smartphone-Based Treatment Adherence Tool to the Test
Staying on track with tuberculosis medication for the full six-month course is vital to a successful cure, yet maintaining that consistency day after day is far from easy. The conventional safeguard is Directly Observed Therapy (DOT), which requires patients to visit a clinic every day and swallow their tablets while a healthcare worker watches. That routine can be inconvenient and expensive for patients, and it also places heavy demands on the resources of national TB control programmes.
To offer a more patient-centred alternative, SPRINT-TB Theme 4 created MIST (Mobile Interactive Supervised Therapy), a smartphone platform for supervising treatment that helps people keep to their TB regimen. Instead of travelling to a DOT clinic in person, patients record and submit videos of themselves taking their pills.
The MIST Project Team includes Ms. Pangyan (NUH), Mr. Lim Teck Sin (I3 Precision Pte Ltd), Prof. Nicholas Paton (NUHS), Dr. James Molton (NUH), A/Prof. Wei Tsang Ooi (NUS), Mr. Modukuru Naga Kishore (NHIC) and Mr. Jianan Wang (I3 Precision).
MIST has already been trialled with healthy volunteers, where it proved acceptable and effective at supporting adherence to pill taking; the findings were published in BMJ Open in December 2016. The study will now extend to countries across the region to evaluate the approach among TB patients.