Open source medication adherence tools?

[Bryn M. Reeves]

On Wed, 2010-02-03 at 12:10 +1030, Tim wrote:
> On Tue, 2010-02-02 at 16:56 +0000, Bryn M. Reeves wrote:
> > E.g. "I need to take the blue inhaler as I need it, the green and
> > brown ones twice a day, the yellow pills in the morning, the pink ones
> > at night and two of the brown ones with lunch.. now, what have I
> > forgotten?" :-)
> 
> Pity the poor pharmacist who has to help a customer configure their
> reminders, as well as the usual advice about taking their medication...

Seriously? Are you genuinely concerned about that?

I'm honestly unsure if you're joking or not. :)

Do you worry about ISPs being asked to help configure Fedora or the
impact on other retailers and service providers who's products might be
used with an open source or other software tool?

It just seems like an  odd concern to me particularly considering that
there are a large number of free (but proprietary) tools for doing this
on other desktop, PDA and smartphone platforms and even a few commercial
efforts in the pharmaceuticals sector that are aiming at similar goals
(google Harvard Pilgrim's MedMinder system).

In an ideal world it would be great if there was a standardised coding
system for prescriptions that provides a machine-readable (or easily
entered code) that doesn't require the patient to enter the full details
of the medication schedule by hand but as far as I know no such system
exists today.

This is also an area that pharmacists and health-care workers take
extremely seriously; non-compliance is one of the leading causes of
treatment failure for a very wide range of conditions and the
consequences of poor adherence are potentially life-threatening.

Regards,
Bryn.