In this article, Antoine Pironet and Bernard Vrijens from AARDEX Group worked with Alison Phillips, a psychologist from Iowa State University.
The objective was to analyze AARDEX’s database of once-daily MEMS data from prior studies (1989-2016), totaling 15,818 participants and 3,053,779 medication intakes.
Two adherence metrics were computed from the data: proportion of correct days and proportion of prescribed doses taken.
Two habit metrics were also computed, representing the day-to-day and week-to-week consistency in the timing of medication intakes.
Then, adherence and habit metrics were compared.
The results matched initial expectations: the better the habit (the more consistency), the better the medication adherence.
However, an important side observation is that 100 % consistency is not the norm, as only 3.6 % of participants have all intakes at the same hour.
These habit metrics could be computed during adherence monitoring to identify participants who might benefit from habit-building interventions.
Keywords:
medication adherence; compliance; clinical trials; habit; history; correlation; association; intake; electronic database; retrospective; medication; drug; adherence.