Medisafe Improves Adherence and Lowers Costs For Chronic Disease Patients

Medication non-adherence remains to be a leading public health problem in the United States, estimated to cause 125,000 deaths annually.¹

Medisafe collaborated with IMS Health to conduct a study evaluating medication adherence among Medisafe users with hypertension, hyperlipidemia and diabetes against a control group of non-users, using anonymous prescription data.

Research results focused on the hypertension and hyperlipidemia patients were presented at the International Society for Pharmacoeconomics and Outcomes Research (ISPOR) 21st Annual International Meeting in Washington D.C. ISPOR draws more than 2,000 attendees from over 40 countries and is one of the world’s largest conferences for pharmacoeconomic and outcomes research. The results show that Medisafe users with hypertension and hyperlipidemia have significantly higher medication persistence than a matched control group.

For study methodology and additional details, view the poster presented at ISPOR below or at the ISPOR website. The abstract is published in the ISPOR publication Value in Health (Wade RL, Clancy B, Michaeli J). Improvement in antihypertensive and cholesterol-lowering medication persistence using a mobile technology application. Value in Health 2016; 19(3): A306 (abstract PMD53).

Detailed Research Results

Results demonstrated a statistically significant increase across the chronic conditions tested. Comparing app users to all controls at 6 months, users with hyperlipidemia had a 10.7% (65.3% vs. 54.7%, p=0.03) lift in medication persistence and users with hypertension had a 5.4% ((69.7% vs. 64.3%, p=0.05) lift in medication persistence. Users with diabetes had a 7.7% (p=0.05) lift over a 3 month period. See results in table below.

Conclusion

This pilot study found that users of Medisafe with hypertension or hyperlipidemia on antihypertensives and cholesterol-lowering therapy respectively exhibited improved medication persistence compared to matched controls. Broad use of this technology could lead to better control of chronic diseases and their costs to the health care system

For a full understanding of medication adherence across the 3 most costly chronic disease populations, please see the full “mHealth: Improving Adherence and Lowering Costs Among Chronic Patients” infographic below.