To support healthcare professionals in improving adherence, a series of articles has been developped to provide digestible learning resources around the role behavior science plays in adherence, including practical insights relating to therapy areas. The articles provide a useful companion to a series of masterclasses where the subjects of adherence and behavioral science are explored in more depth.
How to establish therapeutic alliance? The concept of therapeutic alliance can be understood through three main components: goals, bond, and tasks1: Therapeutic alliance consists of three important elements: agreement of the goals of the treatment, agreement on the tasks, and the personal bond development between patient and therapist. When patient and therapist share beliefs to…
What is the health belief model? The Health Belief Model (HBM) was one of the first models developed in the 1950s, by a group of social psychologists to understand why people engage in or do not engage in disease screening and disease prevention measures2. There are six constructs of HBM1. A. Constructs of health belief…
Importance of medication adherence in managing CVD Medication adherence plays a critical role in effectively managing CVD. CVD refers to a group of conditions that affect the heart and blood vessels, including coronary artery disease, heart failure, stroke, and hypertension. Medication adherence is important for several reasons: However, medication adherence can be difficult for a…
An individual’s behavior can negatively impact the health outcomes. Adherence to therapies is a major factor that negatively impacts disease outcomes. In addition individual choices like unhealthy diet, smoking as well as limited physical activity also contribute to poor health outcomes leading to significant disease and economic burden for the patients as well as the…
Patient engagement entails empowering patients and enabling their active participation in healthcare decision-making.4 Engaged patients show better treatment adherence, improved patient outcomes, and reduced healthcare costs.2 To learn more about patient engagement, please read – Enhancing patient engagement in healthcare – a paradigm shift for improved outcomes. Although patient engagement is the need of the…
What is digital health? Digital health is defined as the knowledge and practice of adopting any aspects of digital techniques that help in improving health, from inception to operation1. What is eHealth? The utilization of information and communications technologies that are both cost-effective and safe has become essential in promoting health and supporting health-related fields.…
What is digital therapeutic? Digital therapeutics is a subset of digital health, defined as therapeutic intervention delivered directly to the patient by a high-quality software program to prevent, monitor, treat, and manage any medical disease or disorder. This evidence-based intervention by DTx can increase healthcare accessibility and effectiveness 3. DTx and software as a medical…
A profoundly impactful statement by WHO captures the importance of medication non-adherence succinctly – “Increasing the effectiveness of adherence interventions may have a far greater impact on the health of the population than any improvement in specific medical treatments”2. This effective intervention for improving patient health does not depend on any costly cutting-edge technology but…
Good health is defined as a state of physical, mental, and social well-being. Lack of debilitating physical symptoms alone doesn’t necessarily mean sound health. Although the focus on mental health is growing, the global efforts to remedy them have remained insufficient1. Mental health conditions include various mental and neurological disorders, substance-abuse behavior, suicidal tendencies as…
In today’s rapidly evolving healthcare scenario, patient engagement is critical. Active patient engagement improves treatment quality, especially in case of chronic diseases. Recognising the impact, it has on health behaviours and outcomes, healthcare fraternity is looking for newer ways to engage patients.1 What is patient engagement? Patient engagement refers to the active participation and…
Heuristics are commonly known as “mental shortcuts” or “rules of thumb” that simplify our decision-making process. First formulated in the 1970s by Tversky & Kahneman1, it helps us to make choices in unfamiliar and ambiguous circumstances within a short time with minimal cognitive involvement. It is a way of predicting the plausibility of an event…
Patients suffering from symptom-less chronic diseases are susceptible to non-adherence behavior toward their medication and lifestyle recommendations, especially if they are associated with other comorbidities. Type-2 Diabetes (T2D) is a metabolic disorder and is frequently associated with other co-morbodities like obesity and hypertension. These patients are predisposed to develop cardiovascular diseases, diabetic retinopathy, diabetic neuropathy,…
It has become even more crucial to focus on the underlying causes of illnesses as well as medication compliance to reduce the overall global illness burden. Medication compliance vs. adherence1-3 The terms compliance and adherence are often used interchangeably, however, there is only a very thin line between adherence and compliance. Compliance can be defined…
As described in previous articles, the mind has two systems of thinking: System 1 and System 2. The first one is immediate and spontaneous. The second is reflective and conscious but requires cognitive efforts and is thus used less frequently. System 1, our immediate, impulsive reaction, is therefore responsible for 95% of all the decisions…
Adherence to treatment in adolescents is a major challenge for doctors and healthcare professionals. Adherence rates in the adolescent population vary widely from 10% to 89% for chronic diseases2. There are many repercussions of low adherence in teens, with obvious consequences for themselves, their families, and the health care system. For chronic conditions, low adherence…
Behavior is defined as the action or set of activities in response to an internal or external stimulus2. Behavior is a key risk factor for individual and public health in multiple ways. It impacts disease prevention, seeking medical attention, adhering to the prescribed treatment, and also delivery of healthcare for several diseases and also for…
Chronic diseases can last for decades and require a disciplined approach to medication administration plus a lifestyle change. Among the most common chronic ailments are cardiovascular disease, diabetes type 2, respiratory diseases (asthma), and cancer3. Globally, one-third of adults suffer from one or multiple chronic conditions. Three in five global deaths are due to diabetes,…
Pharmacogenetics or the genetic variations in the human population giving rise to a variable drug response is well-known in clinical research1. The quest for personalized medicine based on pharmacogenomics using an individual’s genetic content has gained traction since the completion of the first draft of the human genome project2,3. Pharmacogenomics-based personalized prescriptions can help in…
Medication adherence, or the extent to which patients take medications as prescribed, is remarkably low and it has been reported that typically, patients adhere to about 50% of prescribed medications1. Factors causing medication non-adherence are varied and can be grouped into patient-related, therapy-related, and healthcare system-related1. Some of the common reasons are forgetfulness, adverse effects,…
Non-adherence to medication is a major challenge to treatment success and a significant burden on the healthcare system1-3. The existing interventions are based on retrospective measurements of non-adherence in patients already undergoing treatment and are therefore limited in improving future medication adherence4. Predictive analytics can help in identifying potentially high-risk non-adherent patient groups at the…