An electronic monitoring system and personalized counseling helps patients improve medication adherence rates, according to research published in the journal Clinical Transplantation, American Medical Newsreports.
The study showed that drug compliance among kidney transplant recipients improved by about 40% when they used prescription bottles with integrated microcircuits that tracked each time they took medication and wirelessly transmitted the data to health care professionals.
The patients also received:
Electronic feedback on how well they were adhering to their medications; and
Phone-based nurse counseling on how best to remember to take their drugs.
Previous research has concluded that 33% of kidney transplant recipients did not take medications daily and that 75% had difficulty taking them on time.
Cynthia Russell — the study’s lead author and associate professor of nursing at the University of Missouri Sinclair School of Nursing — said that more work needs to be done on ways to help patients improve medication adherence (O’Reilly, American Medical News, 12/6).
