Taking your medications as prescribed: Smartphones can help

If you’re like most people, you may have trouble remembering to take your medications as prescribed. If that’s true, your doctor may have called you “noncompliant” or, perhaps, “nonadherent.” Whatever you call it, the phenomenon is quite common: up to 75% of people do not take their medications the way their doctors have recommended. And that could contribute to undertreatment, preventable complications, and even premature death. Estimates put the total costs of medication nonadherence as high as $300 billion each year in the United States. Why is medication nonadherence so common? I’ve known patients who never filled their prescription or, after filling it, intentionally reduced the dose. Some may do it to make the bottle of pills last longer, so they’ll save money. Others may reduce the dose or frequency to reduce side effects (or the risk of side effects, even if none have occurred). But, it’s my sense that most nonadherence is unintentional — people simply forget. This is particularly true when the condition (such as high blood pressure) causes no symptoms; conversely, it’s easy to remember to take a medication (such as a pain pill) if forgetting means you’re in agony. What can be done about medication nonadherence? The problem of medication nonadherence is not new — doctors have recognized it for decades. Efforts to address it have included educational programs that give patients strategies to avoid missing medications providing medications...
Source: New Harvard Health Information - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Drugs and Supplements Health care Source Type: news