SenseDose Technologies: TMEAD

Problem: The side effects of TB medication often lead to a lack of treatment adherence by patients. Patients do not always complete a prescribed course of treatment, leading to the emergence of drug-resistant forms of TB and disease recurrence by 6 fold. Ensuring proper adherence to medication can significantly reduce these risks, and this practice currently depends on healthcare workers following up manually with patients.

Solution: TMEAD (Tuberculosis Monitoring Encouragement Adherence Drive) is a device to help improve patients’ adherence to their prescribed TB treatment regimen. The device is pre-filled with medicines as prescribed for the patient, which are also pre-sorted by dose. The device uses Internet of Things & cellular network technologies to monitor adherence to medication by patients and provides physical alarms and digital notifications as reminders to patients to take their medication. It also notifies health workers of adherence to treatment by patients using IoT and cellular technologies, overall improving tracking and monitoring of patients.

Impact: Recent data shows potential in the device to improve treatment adherence by more than 90% while reducing the time spent on follow-up by TB control personnel by nearly 50%, which allowed them to focus on severe cases.