A recent study published in American Academy of Pediatrics found that providing Asthma patients with medication before they left the hospital reduced ER re-admission rates, as opposed to the standard method of relying on patients to fill their own prescriptions.
Medication adherence is a topic that we talk a lot about because of the significant impact it has on research, development, and health outcomes, as well as the financial burden it carries for drug sponsors, research organizations, and the government.
Dr. Alejandro (Alex) Jaimes, CTO and CSO at AiCure, the developer of mobile technology that attempts to improve medication adherence, wrote an in-depth article on this very topic. He explains how clinical trial subjects who don’t follow the study protocol and take their medication as directed can jeopardize the results and ultimately prevent future patients from receiving life-saving drugs. Poor adherence also requires sponsors and research organizations to increase trial enrollment to compensate for the deficiency, which increases the cost and time to conduct trials.
Dr. Jaimes estimates that $300 billion each year is “wasted” due to patients not following prescribed regimens. “For certain conditions, a single dose of medication can cost hundreds of dollars, and a year’s worth of medication can add up to hundreds of thousands of dollars,” he says.
To learn more about medication adherence and the impact it has in clinical trials, click here.
