| Sign In to gain access to subscriptions and/or personal tools. |
Automated Monitoring of OutcomesApplication to Treatment of Drug Abuse
This paper suggests a new approach for lowering follow-up costs, improving the delivery of health care, and monitoring treatment outcomes. An automated telephone follow-up system that calls, identifies, and interviews clients is an alternative method for monitoring patients that may be both reliable and cost-effective. To test the viability of such a system, the authors monitored a patient population that has historically been shown to be difficult to follow: recovering drug users and alcoholics. Forty-two subjects were asked to call the computer and complete interviews on a weekly basis for five months. Clients answered 25 recorded questions by pressing the keys on their telephone pads. The computer automatically analyzed the clients' answers and estimated a probability of relapse for each client. In addition, the computer automatically called subjects who failed to complete interviews at the scheduled times. The study showed that self-reported data collected by a computer are as reliable as data obtained through a written questionnaire and that clients are more willing to respond to computer interviews than to mailed written questionnaires. This study also provides pre liminary data on the predictive ability of a questionnaire for predicting relapse. Key words: computer interview; automated monitoring; drug abuse; evaluation of treatment outcomes; telecommunication; Bayesian prediction. (Med Decis Making 1994;14:180-187)
Medical Decision Making, Vol. 14, No. 2,
180-187 (1994) This article has been cited by other articles:
|
|||||||||||||||
 |
|
|
 |
|
Sign In to gain access to subscriptions and/or personal tools.
