A Trial for a Personalized Medication Management Platform to Improve Medication Adherence

Patients Take Medicine

Personalized Medication Management, Medication Adherence, SMS Medication Reminder

Taiwan has attracted much attention for its National Health Insurance (NHI) and healthcare system around the world with many countries in Europe and the United States using it as a benchmark. However, increasing medication costs over the past two years account for more than 25% of total expenditure, surpassing every OECD member and mounting increasing pressure on the NHI. Nevertheless, patient medication adherence is relatively low. Thus, the investigators assessed the effectiveness of a personalized medication management system for improving the medication adherence for patients, in order to save long term medication costs.

Design, Setting and Patients: The investigators developed a mobile personalized medication management platform (PMMP) to reduce delayed and missed medications. The investigators conducted a randomized control trial in medical centers of northern Taiwan from January 2010 to July 2012 using 1198 participants that missed or delayed their medications during past three days. They received a minimum 7-day to 14-day maximum medication prescription. Interventions: Patients were randomized into a control group which non-received any SMS reminder for medication using and an intervention group which received a SMS reminder everyday in mobile devices. Primary Outcome(s) and Measure(s): The primary outcomes were compared patient medication adherence among experimental and control groups.