Medication Adherence Won't Get Better Unless Pharma Marketers Accept Some Blame

Adherence, as defined in the Pharma Marketing Glossary, is "Percent of doses of a drug taken as prescribed for entire period of study (compliance + persistence)." In short, "sticking to the proper self-administration of treatment." Lots of patients (perhaps as many as 50% according to the World Health Organization) -- even patients taking life-saving medication -- are not as "adherent" as they should be, which means that the treatment does not work as advertised and drug companies lose money. This has been discussed ad nauseum.

There have been many attempts by the drug industry to improve medication adherence, but it has made very little progress. "Things can only get better" says this article published by PMLive. How so?

The article suggests that "the answer could lay in understanding [patient] behaviours, engaging HCPs and... making medicine fun" [my emphasis]. ROFLOL! I'm going to ignore the "fun" reference for now and concentrate on the fact that this answer focuses the blame on pharma's customers and ignores the elephant in the room.

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