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Medication Adherence Measures: An Overview

WHO reported that adherence among patients with chronic diseases averages only 50% in developed countries. This is recognized as a significant public health issue, since medication nonadherence leads to poor health outcomes and increased healthcare costs. Improving medication adherence is, therefore...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Lam, Wai Yin, Fresco, Paula
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Hindawi Publishing Corporation 2015
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4619779/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26539470
http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2015/217047
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author Lam, Wai Yin
Fresco, Paula
author_facet Lam, Wai Yin
Fresco, Paula
author_sort Lam, Wai Yin
collection PubMed
description WHO reported that adherence among patients with chronic diseases averages only 50% in developed countries. This is recognized as a significant public health issue, since medication nonadherence leads to poor health outcomes and increased healthcare costs. Improving medication adherence is, therefore, crucial and revealed on many studies, suggesting interventions can improve medication adherence. One significant aspect of the strategies to improve medication adherence is to understand its magnitude. However, there is a lack of general guidance for researchers and healthcare professionals to choose the appropriate tools that can explore the extent of medication adherence and the reasons behind this problem in order to orchestrate subsequent interventions. This paper reviews both subjective and objective medication adherence measures, including direct measures, those involving secondary database analysis, electronic medication packaging (EMP) devices, pill count, and clinician assessments and self-report. Subjective measures generally provide explanations for patient's nonadherence whereas objective measures contribute to a more precise record of patient's medication-taking behavior. While choosing a suitable approach, researchers and healthcare professionals should balance the reliability and practicality, especially cost effectiveness, for their purpose. Meanwhile, because a perfect measure does not exist, a multimeasure approach seems to be the best solution currently.
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spelling pubmed-46197792015-11-04 Medication Adherence Measures: An Overview Lam, Wai Yin Fresco, Paula Biomed Res Int Review Article WHO reported that adherence among patients with chronic diseases averages only 50% in developed countries. This is recognized as a significant public health issue, since medication nonadherence leads to poor health outcomes and increased healthcare costs. Improving medication adherence is, therefore, crucial and revealed on many studies, suggesting interventions can improve medication adherence. One significant aspect of the strategies to improve medication adherence is to understand its magnitude. However, there is a lack of general guidance for researchers and healthcare professionals to choose the appropriate tools that can explore the extent of medication adherence and the reasons behind this problem in order to orchestrate subsequent interventions. This paper reviews both subjective and objective medication adherence measures, including direct measures, those involving secondary database analysis, electronic medication packaging (EMP) devices, pill count, and clinician assessments and self-report. Subjective measures generally provide explanations for patient's nonadherence whereas objective measures contribute to a more precise record of patient's medication-taking behavior. While choosing a suitable approach, researchers and healthcare professionals should balance the reliability and practicality, especially cost effectiveness, for their purpose. Meanwhile, because a perfect measure does not exist, a multimeasure approach seems to be the best solution currently. Hindawi Publishing Corporation 2015 2015-10-11 /pmc/articles/PMC4619779/ /pubmed/26539470 http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2015/217047 Text en Copyright © 2015 W. Y. Lam and P. Fresco. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Review Article
Lam, Wai Yin
Fresco, Paula
Medication Adherence Measures: An Overview
title Medication Adherence Measures: An Overview
title_full Medication Adherence Measures: An Overview
title_fullStr Medication Adherence Measures: An Overview
title_full_unstemmed Medication Adherence Measures: An Overview
title_short Medication Adherence Measures: An Overview
title_sort medication adherence measures: an overview
topic Review Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4619779/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26539470
http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2015/217047
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