Telehealth is reducing the burden and stigma traditionally associated with treatment for tuberculosis, the deadly bacterial lung disease. How so? For years, the standard way — and in many states and countries, the legally required way — of ensuring someone with TB takes their medicine has been having a public health worker watch them do so in person, former POLITICO health care editor Joanne Kenen, now journalist-in-residence at Johns Hopkins’ School of Public Health and School of Nursing, reports. However, Dr. Maunank Shah, medical director of the Baltimore City TB program and a physician/researcher at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, saw a use case for telehealth. Now, using a platform Shah and his colleagues developed, public health workers are tracking patients on video. They can observe patients seven days a week, wherever and whenever they take their drugs. A health worker can watch in real time, or increasingly, patients can record themselves taking the medicine, with a time and date stamp, and the health worker can verify. Why it matters: Tracking patients in person could be invasive and stigmatizing — the oversight often occurs in their workplaces. Nor was it comprehensive or foolproof, largely because it was done only on work days, and during regular working hours, meaning patients weren’t monitored on weekends and holidays. When the pandemic made telemedicine essential, “everybody pivoted immediately,” Shah told Future Pulse. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has said his system is as effective — and usually cheaper — than the old way of tracking medication adherence. What are the incentives for patients to use a video-tracking app? Maybe it will be as simple as support, said Shah. “Someone who is reaching out to you every day, cheering you on and giving you feedback, helping people get well and stay well.” What’s next? The researchers are working to identify who else with complex drug regimens, such as people who are undergoing substance abuse treatment, have undergone a transplant or have chronic conditions, might benefit from the approach.
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