Dr Lonny Reisman on the Complexities of Improving Medication Adherence

Medication adherence is a complex issue, and Lonny Reisman, MD, CEO of HealthReveal, emphasized the importance of better understanding what methods or strategies will help motivate patients to do what is in their best interest.

Transcript (slightly modified)

How can big data help with improving medication adherence?

So the issue of medication adherence is complex. There could be cost issues. There could be side-effect issues. There can be issues around a relative lack of symptoms associated with certain diseases. Basically, even poor glycemic control at certain levels won’t create symptoms. So the issue is as we identify patients who are adherent or we test hypothesis regarding what would drive incentives to take medicines, we will be able to learn what would work across poor populations.

One of the issues I’ve been involved with, or at least when I was at Aetna, was value-based insurance design where we would lower or eliminate co-pays for certain essential therapeutics for certain patients. And although we saw increases in adherence when drugs were given say for free, we actually rarely saw improvements over 50% adherence. So to the extent that people who have had serious diseases won’t even take their medicines for free, it underscores the importance of understanding better how we can motivate people to do what ultimately is in their best interest.