It might look trivial, but medication adherence (taking medicine on time) is a big challenge in our world today. You must have never realized this, but medication non-adherence can be very costly to you as a patient. And thousands of lives are lost because of this every year.
USA loses 100 to 300 billion USD (6 to 20 lacs crore Indian Rupees) annually because of avoidable interventions (to contain a worsening condition), prolonged-illnesses, lost man-hours of work, ER-visits because of escalating conditions, etc. Rreference: NIH Study doi: 10.2147/RMHP.S19801.
Another study (below) shows how much people miss their medications depending on their chronic-ailment. It is alarming to see that adherence-levels fall below 50% for most people over a period of 6 months!
Cognizant 20-20 insights. Oct 2014
Another study from Queen Mary University of London showed that 25% of people with heart-ailment missed medications by more than 20%. The same research also mentioned that adherence improved drastically if they were reminded on time by SMS texts. People who were given text-reminders saw their non-adherence drop from 25% to 9% – that’s a 64% improvement!.
Reference: Texting patients to remind them to take pills could save thousands of lives a year From above, it is evident that medication non-adherence is a serious problem worldwide. Setting up medication reminders can save thousands of lives.