Patient adherence has been a top priority in healthcare for quite some time. One in five new prescriptions are never filled, according to the CDC, and about half of those that are filled are taken with incorrect dosage, timing, or duration. The results can be higher hospital admission rates, suboptimal health outcomes, and increased morbidity, with the cost of medication non-adherence estimated at $100–$300 billion in the U.S. annually. Post-it Note reminders, pillbox routines, and 90-day medication supplies are limited in effectiveness in improving medication initiation, adherence, and persistence.
Fortunately, as digital technologies evolve, healthcare organizations can become savvier and more successful in their efforts to improve medication behaviors. By combining advanced technology with robust data – whether through in-house technology efforts or outsourcing – health organizations can gain opportunities to intervene with strategies to improve medication initiation and adherence. These can include the following.
1. Interactive Apps
Mobile applications help patients track their medication intake, addressing forgetfulness and/or potential memory issues as barriers to therapy initiation and adherence. Incorporating medication education and reminders on smartphones has become a mainstay in healthcare, offering organizations the ability to convert consumers into patients when it comes to medication initiation, while giving patients a convenient and affordable way to monitor their ongoing adherence.
Some apps can serve up a social media-like thread with medical, legal, and regulatory approved content to inform patients about their conditions and remind them about how to safely take medications. One challenge that mobile apps have faced is low enrollment and engagement rates, especially among those patients who are at higher risk for poor medication adherence.
2. Smart Products
Smart medication adherence products (MAPs) – such as smart pills, pill bottles, medication organizers, and blister packaging that contain radio frequency identification (RFID) technology – can track real-time medication intake. Embracing smart MAPs enables healthcare organizations to monitor patients remotely and respond to, maintain, or improve medication adherence. Smart products have met challenges in achieving broad patient adoption, due to challenges of integrating them into the medication distribution supply chain; however, inhalers have shown more success in achieving adoption than other dosage forms.
3. Digital Omnichannel Communications
Digital communications, including text messages, email, and interactive voice response automated calls can be important complements to live phone calls or in-person counseling strategies. When used alongside traditional strategies, they can help healthcare organizations to achieve greater patient program effectiveness and medication adherence. However, it is important to have an effective, efficient, and highly personalized communication targeting system to support these omnichannel strategies.
4. Artificial Intelligence
Artificial intelligence (AI) is perhaps the most promising strategy to improve patients’ medication initiation and adherence. Predictive analytics and machine learning provide data-driven targeting at the individual level to enhance the effectiveness of patient marketing and support programs. This ability to personalize thousands of touchpoints for a single person was nearly impossible in the past. But today, AI is used by healthcare and pharmaceutical organizations to predict non-adherence, personalize outreach, and maximize engagement to improve the patient experience and outcomes.
The Role of AI Technology in Medication Adherence Strategies
With the rise of healthcare consumerism (where 58 percent of U.S. respondents say they prioritize personal health/wellness more now versus a year ago, McKinsey) and the ever-evolving digital health landscape, healthcare organizations have found that a one-size-fits-all approach to interacting with patients is no longer effective. Outreach and communication need to be more patient-centric to achieve positive results.
The key to effectiveness can be found with personalization, an area where AI shines. Large, varied datasets from different sources – including medical claims, historical program engagement, consumer behaviors, and social determinants of health (SDOH) – provide healthcare organizations with insights needed to tailor therapy initiation or adherence messages to best suit the needs and preferences of the individual.
Traditional patient engagements use business rules and persona journeys to customize workflows. This leads to outreach to a segment of the population. However, AI can tailor the experience even further down to the specific individual so that the right message reaches the right patient, at the right time. Several factors play a role in personalizing outreach, such as the communication channel, content, timing, and frequency.
Selecting the best combination of solutions and leveraging existing and new technology and data are other important considerations to improve medication initiation and adherence. Most healthcare organizations have a lot of data and systems to support the patient but may not be as proficient at harnessing the information and making systems seamlessly talk to one another. Data usability (transforming data into a usable format) and data analytics (making sense of the data into actionable information) is something many organizations are also increasingly trying to do to advance medication initiation, adherence, and outcomes. That’s where tapping in to external vendors or filling roles internally with data and AI expertise can help healthcare organizations accelerate progress in their digital transformation journeys to better serve patients into the new year.
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About Clifford Jones
Clifford Jones is Founder and CTO of AllazoHealth. He has been focused on leveraging AI in patient engagement and outcome optimization for more than a decade. Before founding AllazoHealth, he developed CVS Health’s award-winning Pharmacy Advisor medication adherence program (in collaboration with AllazoHealth’s current CEO William Grambley), which earned the “2011 Rx Benefit Innovation Award” from the Pharmacy Benefit Management Institute and a “Best Practices in Health Care Consumer Protection and Empowerment Award” from URAC. Earlier in his career, Clifford led the development of analytics software for Boston Consulting Group’s healthcare practice.
