| چکیده انگلیسی مقاله |
Background: Medication management is a complex process which visual impairment could make it more complicated and people with such impairment experience many challenges in managing their medications. On the other hand, technologies particularly mobile technologies have a significant impact on both medication adherence and improving quality of life for people with visual impairment. The purpose of this study was to identify the experienced challenges in medication management process by them and the potential mHealth solutions in order to help the developers to provide a mHealth based medication management system for patients with visual impairment. Materials and Methods: The study was performed by searching four electronic databases including PubMed, Embase, Web of Science and ScienceDirect. The search strategy, contained two groups of keywords in concepts of visual impairment and medication management and a review study was accomplished. After omitting the irrelevant, duplicate and unavailable papers, the challenges of individuals with visual impairment and the suggested solutions in mHealth area where extracted. Afterward, the challenges and solutions where classified to be presented in an appropriate structure. Results: As the results of mentioned search strategy, 200 papers were found and after applying the inclusion and exclusion criteria in which indicated in the method section, twelve papers included in this study. The evidences in these researches show that the challenges experienced by visually impaired people can be categorize in nine types. Unavailability of information sources, difficulty in reading the information of medication labels, inappropriateness of medical equipment and technologies for this group, occurrence of medical errors, identification problems, difficulties in opening the containers, bringing the medications out and medication intake, loss of privacy and independence and problems in remembering the medication schedule are the types of challenges which have been experienced by people with visual impairment. Some of the solutions was about strategies which could be used by visually impaired people to manage their medications easier. Another group of solutions were the ones which needed policy making in healthcare. Moreover, in addition to mentioned solutions, the researchers have suggested mobile applications as effective solutions for these challenges. Screen readers, mobile phone’s reminder, color and object identification apps were the mHealth based solutions which were introduced in papers. Conclusion: According to current study, there are different challenges in these area which need essential decision making by policy makers in several levels including pharmaceutical industry, education and healthcare but many of these challenges could be solved by mHealth approach as an assistive technology for visually impaired patients. This study could help the mHealth technology developers in order to be familiar with barriers to effective medication adherence for people with visual impairment and the potential of mHealth as a solution for this problem. |
