Principal Investigator Amy Smith
Co-investigator Anna Young
XoutTB is now known as Adher.IO, an award winning behavioral diagnostics platform. The basic idea of behavioral diagnostics is that it relies on a combination of chemical diagnostic technology, wireless communication technology, and economic incentives to encourage patients to stay on their tuberculosis medication. Patients are given sets of test strips that they use every day to prove that they have taken their medication.
If proper ingestion is present in their system, a secret numeric code appears on an Adher.io diagnostic that keeps the code encrypted otherwise. Unlike DOTS where a healthcare worker intervenes to monitor, the patient sends his or her proof code via an SMS to a central processing databases that tracks the patient’s compliance rates. For each week that the patient succeeds in taking his or her medication, they receive a reward in the form of cell phone minutes (immediately transferred electronically to their cell phones). These short-term incentives keep patients engaged in their long-term treatment using this combination of technologies that result in positive behavior modification -- and healthier patients. This is Freakonomics take on the concept.