Aplicativo móvel de informações sobre medicamentos para idosos

Abstract

Introduction: population aging follows challenges to ensure comprehensive health care and quality of life for the elderly. Pharmacotherapy constitutes the majority of therapeutic guidelines for this population and becomes a public health problem when not adequately followed, given its association with morbidity and mortality. Given the increased use of smartphones by the elderly, technological resources are an innovative device to encourage the elderly population to take care of their own health, encourage healthy lifestyle habits, promote autonomy and quality of life for this age group. Objectives: to investigate the scientific evidence on the inappropriate prescription of medication for the elderly and the associated risk factors; analyze the benefits of mobile applications in promoting the health of the elderly; and develop a mobile app for mobile that helps regulate, practically and interactively, the use of medication by the elderly. Method: this is a methodological research carried out in three stages. The first stage consisted of an integrative literature review on inappropriate drug prescriptions for the elderly. It involved research in the Online Medical Literature Analysis and Retrieval System databases (Medline / Pubmed), Health Sciences in Latin America and the Caribbean (LILACS), Scientific Electronic Library Online (Scielo), SCOPUS, and Web of Science. The second stage consisted of an integrative literature review to analyze the benefits of mobile applications in promoting the health of the elderly, with searches in Pubmed, LILACS, Scielo, and Web of Science databases. The third stage was the software performance in pharmacotherapy management for the elderly and developing a mobile application for cell phones called Medicativo. Results and Discussion: the studies analyzed in the first stage of this research demonstrated the inappropriate prescription of medications for the elderly as a potential problem, given the high prevalence of the use of potentially inappropriate medications for the elderly (PIMs), serious drug interactions, and the association of polypharmacy with the increased risk of exposure to MPIs. In the second stage, the literature showed that mobile applications are tools capable of facilitating the elderly's access to health information, encouraging healthy lifestyle habits, favoring self-care and autonomy, contributing to a better quality of life. In the third stage, an application was proposed, centered on the elderly population, with a simple, visually pleasing, interactive, humanized, and easy-to-use interface, as a strategy to improve care with the use of medication by this population. The application's core functionalities allow the registration of medications used by the elderly, consultation of current pharmacotherapy, information on medications in use, consultation of prescribers' data and registration of all medications already registered in the application. Final considerations: medications are therapeutic resources capable of improving the health status and quality of life of the elderly, as long as they are appropriately prescribed and correctly used. It is expected that the proposed application can contribute to promoting the health of the elderly as a tool to help organize and monitor information about their medications, thus favoring the rational use of therapeutic adherence.