digital health solutions
Significant advances in mobile technologies, network coverage and internet access have opened up exciting opportunities to improve patient-centered care and public health. KNCV Tuberculosis Foundation (KNCV) strongly believes in the positive impact digital health solutions can bring.
Take for example the KNCV-led, Unitaid-funded ASCENT (Adherence Support Coalition to End TB) project which aims to help patients succeed in TB treatment using digital adherence technology. Missing even a few daily doses or interrupting treatment can lead to resistance to the TB medicines and/or return of the disease later in life. Therefore, patients normally need to be observed when taking their daily medication either by visiting the health center or by a health care worker at their home. Obviously, these supportive measures put a burden on both the patient and the health system. By leveraging today’s smart information and (mobile) communication technologies ASCENT aims to support TB patients with their treatment in a modern and more effective way.
Or consider the example of ‘QuanTB’: an electronic forecasting, quantification, and early warning system designed to improve procurement processes, ordering, distribution and planning for TB drugs. It is a tool that is especially useful now that the introduction of new TB medicines and treatment regimens (recommended by the World Health Organization) pose challenges for national TB programs.
daily TB treatment
It can be very hard for TB patients to persist in taking their daily TB treatment for 6 to 24 months. KNCV believes that digital technologies can help patients complete their treatment. Health care workers will also receive more information that will enable them to help their patients better. Eventually this will lead to higher success rates of TB treatments. An important goal that will be realized by facilitating data-driven, patient-centered, differentiated TB care. In the coming year KNCV will assess the opportunity and efficacy of these digital adherence technologies by conducting demonstration projects in several countries.
health care providers
KNCV works on a great variety of digital solutions along the patient pathway; ranging from tools that make life easier for both patients and health care providers to tools that strengthen surveillance and connectivity between diagnostic systems. Connectivity may sound like a cold hardware solution, but in reality brings ‘warm’ experiences for the end users, most notably patients and their families.
Digital Health Along the Patient Pathway
