Medication non-adherence is one of the most common problems that can not only impact a patient’s health and treatment progress but also result in colossal expenses for both medical organizations and their clients as well. As for people with chronic illnesses, taking medications in time can even extend their lifespan and minimize the risks of premature death.
These are only a few factors that resulted in the development of the various health tracking software – solutions targeted at monitoring the health indicators, measuring the progress of health maintenance, disease prevention, and the management of chronic conditions.
With more and more people ready to invest in their health and well-being today, the global market for medication adherence systems and technologies started evolving rapidly.
According to the BCC Research report, during the forecasted period of 2020-2025, the market share of the medication tracking software solutions is expected to reach $6 billion, which makes it one of the most attractive yet prospective healthcare scopes you can invest in today.
In this article, we’ll introduce the basics of medication tracking software, analyze its essential features and find out its major benefits for the patients and healthcare providers as well.
What Is a Medication Tracking System and Why Is It Important?
Medication tracking solutions are used for the constant monitoring and management of the patients’ medication intake. It performs as a so-called pill tracker that notifies a patient to take medication on time as well as informs the healthcare workers about the patient’s pill intake.
Additionally, the medication tracker can remind about renewing or refilling the prescription, and even help to control the newly-prescribed medication intake by simply scanning the QR or barcode of the drug package.
The other helpful features of the pill intake software are the drug inventory, the ability to provide essential drug information, as well as simple and easy interaction between patients and caregivers.
Depending on the app functionality, there are 3 main types of medication tracking software:
- Simple medication reminders – ensure the patients are notified about taking their medications on time with the use of standard notifications on their devices.
- Advanced medication trackers – responsible for tracking the drug intake, recording the late or missed doses, medication photos, and brief user notes.
- Medication tracking systems – combine the features of the first two software solutions, are usually connected to the patient’s electronic health profile and enable sharing the drug intake data with the doctor
This type of software can greatly facilitate pill intake control, especially for the outpatients, elder people, patients with chronic diseases and mental disorders, as well as many other groups of patients that need to regularly take many drugs or tend to forget to take their medicines on time.
On the other hand, the medical institutions can provide their services remotely, improve patient engagement and loyalty, and reduce the time spent interacting with each individual without sacrificing quality.
Moreover, the pill tracking software can digitalize the medication inventory, which is always problematic for most of the institutions in healthcare.
Essential Features of Medication Tracking Software
To ensure you’re developing the most time and cost-effective hospital medication tracking system, it’s vital to understand which features should it include.
Below, you’ll find the most useful features of a medication tracking app that can surely improve the performance of a healthcare unit and take the patient service onto the next level of development.
#1 Medication Scheduling
First of all, the core feature of the medication tracking app is the ability to schedule the drug intake and track the progress. Overall, it should include the name of medicine, its physical descriptions, doses, administration method, and time of intake.
Additionally, it’s good to also cover the notes from a caregiver who explains the treatment process in simple words, so as to minimize the possibility of medication non-adherence.
#2 Drug Intake Reminder
Next, one of the best functions of any medication tracker is the ability to send notifications or reminders due to the drug intake schedule. This feature helps patients to take the medicine on time and ensure they haven’t missed their dose.
Daily reminders can not only record the time of when and how much drugs were taken but also can assist in reminding when the prescribed medications are almost out of stock. This means the patients are less likely to forget to take the pills or replenish the stock once when needed.
