Understanding the use of contextual cues: design implications for medication adherence technologies that support remembering

Abstract

ObjectiveForgetfulness is one of the main reasons of unintentional medication non-adherence. Adherence technologies that help people remember to take their medications on time often do not take into account the context of people’s everyday lives. Existing evidence that highlights the effectiveness of remembering strategies that rely on contextual cues is largely based on research with older adults, and thus it is not clear whether it can be generalized to other populations or used to inform the design of wider adherence technologies that support medication self-management. Understanding how younger populations currently remember medications can inform the design of future adherence technologies that take advantage of existing contextual cues to support remembering.MethodsWe conducted three surveys with a total of over a thousand participants to investigate remembering strategies used by different populations: women who take oral contraception, parents and carers who give antibiotics to their children, and...