Using Digital Tools To Unpick The Adherence Problem

As many as a half of patients do not take prescription medicines as prescribed. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development estimates that around 200,000 premature deaths annually in Europe relate to poor medication adherence, which may cost as much as €125bn each year in avoidable hospitalization, emergency care and adult outpatient visits. While there is currently no comprehensive understanding of all the factors that influence patients’ decisions regarding treatment adherence, an EU-funded project hopes to demonstrate that by making information on medicines more accessible and understandable, patients will be more likely to take their medicines correctly, resulting in better health outcomes and quality of life.

The public-private partnership Gravitate-Health group, backed by the EU Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI2), has the ambitious aim of delivering a behavioral model that will enable a full understanding of patient...