• The Journal of the Korea institute of electronic communication sciences
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• v.7 no.5
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• pp.1213-1219
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• 2012

As Korea is expected to enter an aging society in near future, the number of patients who need a long-term prescribtion is expected to increase as well. In particular, Korea shows the highest in both the incident rate and the death rate among OECD member nations. The current situation requires more strict monitoring and management for patients' taking medicine, there are a few practical problems such as personnel expenses. Recently the concept of directly observed treatment (DOT) that is based on the IT technologies has been introduced. This paper, therefore, proposes a digital DOT system with a smart pillbox and drives key requirements for the smart pillbox that plays an important and essential role in the proposed digital DOT system.

• Tuberculosis and Respiratory Diseases
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• v.86 no.2
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• pp.82-93
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• 2023

Tuberculosis (TB) is a significant public health concern. Globally, TB is among the top 10 and the leading cause of death due to a single infectious agent. Providing standard anti-TB therapy for at least 6 months is recommended as one of the crucial strategies to control the TB epidemic. However, the long duration of TB treatment raised the issue of non-adherence. Non-adherence to TB therapy could negatively affect clinical and public health outcomes. Thus, directly observed therapy (DOT) has been introduced as a standard strategy to improve anti-TB medication adherence. Nonetheless, the DOT approach has been criticized due to inconvenience, stigma, reduced economic productivity, and reduced quality of life, which ultimately could complicate adherence issues. Apart from that, its effectiveness in improving anti-TB adherence is debatable. Therefore, digital technology could be an essential tool to enhance the implementation of DOT. Incorporating the health belief model (HBM) into digital technology can further increase its effectiveness in changing behavior and improving medication adherence. This article aimed to review the latest evidence regarding TB medication non-adherence, its associated factors, DOT's efficacy and its alternatives, and the use of digital technology and HBM in improving medication adherence. This paper used the narrative review methodology to analyze related articles to address the study objectives. Conventional DOT has several disadvantages in TB management. Integrating HBM in digital technology development is potentially effective in improving medication adherence. Digital technology provides an opportunity to improve medication adherence to overcome various issues related to DOT implementation.

• The Journal of the Korea institute of electronic communication sciences
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• v.10 no.5
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• pp.571-578
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• 2015

Even though DOT (Directly Observed Treatment) is the most definite method for the patients who need a long-term medication, its implementation is almost impossible considering the manpower and economic cost for it. The smart medication management and monitoring system that has appeared as an alternative requires a device for its implementation. In this paper, we propose so-called a smart pillbox for the smart medication management and monitoring system and the multi-user authentication scheme for sharing the smart pillbox among the patients. Through the smart pillbox and the multi-user authentication scheme, it is expected that the recovery rate would be raised by enabling the patients to take medicine in both timely and correct manner.