A Framework for Studying Patterns of Effective Medication Adherence

Medication adherence has been studied extensively in the healthcare literature. Most of the studies focus on improving medication adherence using interventions, including those based on wireless and mobile technologies, and measure average medication adherence level. This is useful in differentiating between patients with high and low levels of adherence. In practice, the same average medication adherence could be achieved by patients with widely different adherence patterns. In this paper, the authors propose that in addition to average medication adherence level, the patterns of adherence should also be studied. The patterns of adherence can be obtained using wireless medication systems and set of actions/decisions can be communicated to these systems or mobile applications for medication management. The authors present a framework, some metrics including Effective Medication Adherence, and results related to the patterns of adherence. Their results show that pattern of adherence has significant impact on the effective medication adherence. Also, higher levels of effective adherence can be achieved for more flexible medication regimen, such as those with higher values of maximum inter-dose time. It is also possible for a patient with lower average adherence but a desirable pattern of adherence to have higher effective medication adherence than a patient with higher average adherence with less desirable pattern.