Final Report Summary - IMPROVINGADHERENCE (Improving medical treatment adherence : taking into account patients' perception of uncertainty in the causal relationship between their adherence behaviour and their health condition.)
Context and objectives
Non-adherence, defined as the discrepancy between patients' behaviour and medical prescriptions, is a massive public health issue, the consequences of which are serious. It is estimated that one third to one half of people who have a chronic illness do not take their medications as they should. This entails a range of problems: non-adherence can reduce the benefit of the treatment for the patients, in some cases to the extent that they experience serious complications; it is also the cause of avoidable economic costs, since it involves a waste of resources and may lead to the implementation of treatments that are more complex and less effective. In addition, recent epidemiological and therapeutic developments tend to reinforce these problems. Indeed, certain conditions, that were until recently not considered chronic, tend to become so. This is the case for AIDS, for certain cancers, or certain metabolic diseases. Meanwhile, some chronic diseases reach an unprecedented magnitude. This is the case for tuberculosis or type 2 diabetes. Although non-adherence is an old issue, it deserves to be thoroughly addressed, especially against the background of the priority currently given to health, socio-demographic change and wellbeing by the European Commission in its proposal for the Horizon 2020 framework programme for R&D.
The main research objectives of the proposed project were twofold : (1) to better understand why patients do not take their medications as prescribed, in order to (2) design and validate novel approaches to reduce intentional non-adherence.
Potential impact and use of these results
The intervention should provide medical staff with new tools for routine use to improve adherence behaviour.
Non-adherence, defined as the discrepancy between patients' behaviour and medical prescriptions, is a massive public health issue, the consequences of which are serious. It is estimated that one third to one half of people who have a chronic illness do not take their medications as they should. This entails a range of problems: non-adherence can reduce the benefit of the treatment for the patients, in some cases to the extent that they experience serious complications; it is also the cause of avoidable economic costs, since it involves a waste of resources and may lead to the implementation of treatments that are more complex and less effective. In addition, recent epidemiological and therapeutic developments tend to reinforce these problems. Indeed, certain conditions, that were until recently not considered chronic, tend to become so. This is the case for AIDS, for certain cancers, or certain metabolic diseases. Meanwhile, some chronic diseases reach an unprecedented magnitude. This is the case for tuberculosis or type 2 diabetes. Although non-adherence is an old issue, it deserves to be thoroughly addressed, especially against the background of the priority currently given to health, socio-demographic change and wellbeing by the European Commission in its proposal for the Horizon 2020 framework programme for R&D.
The main research objectives of the proposed project were twofold : (1) to better understand why patients do not take their medications as prescribed, in order to (2) design and validate novel approaches to reduce intentional non-adherence.
Potential impact and use of these results
The intervention should provide medical staff with new tools for routine use to improve adherence behaviour.