Jonas Hjortshøj, chief commercial officer at Liva Healthcare discusses the steps pharma needs to take to improve patient adherence.
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Improving patient adherence has long been a focus of the pharma industry. Approximately half of patients do not take their medication as prescribed. If medication is not taken correctly, patients risk complications or ineffective treatment. One estimate puts the annual cost of patients failing to take their medication at around £300 million for the NHS alone. Further, according to Network for Excellence in Health Innovation (NEHI), between a third and two-thirds of medication-related hospital admissions in the US are due to poor adherence. There are an estimated 125,000 deaths in the US annually due to medication non-adherence.
Lack of adherence and incorrect use of medication not only undermines the effectiveness of treatments; it also results in substantial missed revenue for pharmaceutical companies as well as poor real-world outcomes.