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Top: The Rebound app enables users to create a personalised step-down programme, track symptoms, visualise their progress, create daily reminders – for example, to take medicine and track symptoms – and share progress with their doctor. Bottom: The founders of the Rebound app, co-founder and executive project manager Silvia Meyer (left) and co-founder and partner Lærke Demant-Ladefoged (right). Meyer, who has recovered from 14 years of drug and medicine addiction, established the Danish NGO Misbrugsportalen in 2012 and has been working with addiction since.
Safer withdrawal from high-risk medication Rebound, a new app developed in Denmark, is the first to offer help to gradually and safely decrease medicine use. Lowering the risk of addiction, severe side-effects and withdrawal-induced physical and psychological reactions, Rebound can be used as a valuable and preventative tool for tapering off high-risk medicine. By Signe Hansen | Photos: Rebound
Despite the continuously growing use of antidepressants, benzodiazepines and strong painkillers – in the US alone, 43 to 50 per cent of the population above the age of 12 are on prescription medicine – very little help is available to those trying to reduce or come off their medication. Developed by Danish addiction specialists, Rebound is the first app to offer a personalised step-down programme. Co-founder and executive manager of Rebound, Silvia Meyer, explains: “The current practise among health professionals is to expect that after treatment with strong painkillers, antidepressants or benzodiazepines, people step down on their own at home without being offered an individually tailored programme with follow-ups, communication and monitoring. It’s against common knowledge and beyond reason that this can be the 92 | Issue 108 | January 2018
make adjustments if levels get too severe. The progress is visual and can be sent directly to the doctor in the form of reports to ensure follow-up. This way, the app can help both patients and doctors manage and track the progress.
case, but it is, and it’s the direct cause of many of the consequences that come from failed withdrawal.” When quitting medicine, patients often experience a recurrence of symptoms previously overcome. The standardised protocols offered by health professionals often leave patients with little control over, or insight into, the process. “With Rebound’s withdrawal management, patients can create a detailed individual protocol for decreasing the medicine they have relied on for months or years. This is a very difficult period that unfortunately does not get the supportive attention needed,” says Meyer. The app includes a diary with features to track and scale the levels of withdrawal symptoms. This allows patients and doctors to compare them to dosages and
The first version of the Rebound app will be launched internationally in Danish and English on 29 January 2018. Expanded versions including special access for health professionals, health bodies and treatment facilities will follow in more languages. Web: www.rebound-solution.com