The effect of a Technology-Linking Care (TLC) intervention on HIV/AIDS patients' therapeutic drug regimen adherence

This study explored the efficacy of using telecommunications—Technology Linking Care (TLC)—to collect health assessment data, to provide therapeutic support, and to enhance therapeutic drug adherence with HIV/AIDS patients. The study was conducted at the AIDS Clinical Trials Unit (ACTU) of the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis that is affiliated with the BJC Health System in St. Louis, Missouri. Twenty-two subjects, or six-percent of the current ACTU patients, were randomly selected to participate in this study. Thirteen of those twenty-two subjects were randomly chosen to receive the TLC intervention.; Online questionnaires were used to collect demographic and health assessment data. Selected HIV/AIDS health information websites were identified and communicated to the subjects for their review. Personalized HIV/AIDS drug cards were created for each subject. Southwestern Bell digital cell phones were used to send text-message email “cues” to remind the intervention subjects to take their prescribed HIV/AIDS drugs.; The TLC intervention found that demographic and health assessment data could be efficiently collected using online questionnaires. Although not used extensively by the subjects, the identified websites were found to be very informative. The subjects did not use the personalized drug cards. The digital cell phone “cues” did significantly improve pre-to-post drug adherence in the intervention group (t = 3.13, p = 0.011).; Data from this study support expanding this research, using the latest emerging telecommunications technology, to a larger HIV/AIDS sample within the St. Louis metropolitan region.