AmeliaTek Medication Compliance

Dr. Rick Lange, Professor of Medicine at Johns Hopkins Medical Center presents a podcast(mp3) which mentions the blister pack compliance study I covered here on December 9th. In that podcast, Dr. Lange calls it the FAME Study, for “Federal study of Adherence to Medications in the Elderly”. Like I did here, Dr. Lange noted the high cost of the preparations done by pharmacists, calling it “a very time-intensive program” and noting that it is “not realistic to think that the pharmacists would have the time to spend 2 hours with every patient“. He also agrees with me about the hard costs: Dr. Lange says that “even putting these things into blister packs was very difficult, because it’s really not an automated way to do it right now“.

But Dr. Lange is optimistic about the outcome, and feels that as a concept study, it demonstrates that with enough patient education and attention, a 95% compliance level is achievable.

I did also learn from Dr. Lange at Johns Hopkins that there was a serious amount of patient edcuation involved in the study, with each patient getting an initial 2 hour consult but also an additional 30 minutes of review every two months. These patients were drilled about the medications, the patients’ conditions, the rationale for those medications, and the possible side effects.

Dr. Lange said that in his field, 50% of cardiovascular admissions are due to non-compliance with the medications.  And I agree, that kind of patient education is vital to increase awareness and understanding about the importance of compliance.  But as I’ve said many times in many venues, education only serves as a basic foundation.  It simply isn’t adequate to be aware without having the tools to handle the day-to-day challenges of remembering to take medications routinely.  Without being provided with some simple, yet practical medication reminder tools in the education process, patients won’t even come close to solving the compliance problem on their own. That understanding has been the key driver for our development of the OnTimeRx and OncellRx Medication Reminder systems. 

Doctors, nurses, and pharmacists are thoroughly educated and fully understand this problem, yet they fall victim to non-compliance - just like everybody else - sometimes even more so.  Everyone needs to be reminded.

Like Dr. Lange, I am also optimistic about the outcome.  We know that with the proper tools, patients can easily achieve 95% compliance level or higher.  A Penn State Family Medicine study is underway and preliminary results show many subjects are reaching 99% compliance. It’s always important to have the right tool for the job.