Video chat technology to remotely quantify dietary, supplement and medication adherence in clinical trials.

What Was Tested

The paper reports a study of Copper (Supplement), published as a randomized controlled trial.

The researchers conducted two studies to test the validity, reliability, feasibility and acceptability of using video chat technology to quantify dietary and pill-taking (i.e. supplement and medication) adherence.

For study 2, a twenty-two-item online survey was sent to a listserv with more than 20 000 unique email addresses of past and present study participants to assess the feasibility and acceptability of the technology.

Why It Was Studied

In study 1, the researchers investigated whether video chat technology can accurately quantify adherence to dietary and pill-taking interventions.

Mock study participants ate food items and swallowed pills, while performing randomised scripted 'cheating' behaviours to mimic non-adherence.

Who Took Part

PubMed tags the participants as both men and women.

How the Study Was Run

The design is described as randomized, single-blind, crossover and pilot.

Because people in this Copper (Supplement) study were split into groups at random, differences between the groups are less likely to reflect who happened to join each one.

In this single-blind Copper (Supplement) study one party knew the assignments and the other did not.

Each person switched between Copper (Supplement) and the comparison at some point, usually with a gap in between.

It is described as a pilot, a small early test of whether a larger Copper (Supplement) study would be practical.

What Was Measured

Topics PubMed links to this paper include Attitude of Health Personnel, Cell Phone, Diet, Dietary Supplements, Feasibility Studies, Health Surveys and Medication Adherence.

The authors tagged it with the keywords Compliance, Dietary adherence, MHealth, Skype, Supplement adherence and Telehealth.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized, single-blind and crossover study of Copper (Supplement).

The publication is from 2016 (The British journal of nutrition), a journal based in England.

More context: the Copper (Supplement) compound page, all human trials.