Safe Pharmacotherapy – greater adherence

Telemonitoring-supported medication adherence systems can now make an important contribution to improving therapy compliance in pharmacotherapy—thanks to a sophisticated interaction between the intelligent dispenser and the Telemedical Service Center.

Whether they are single and elderly, chronically ill multimorbid patients or persons with visual handicaps: many people who are required to adhere to a medication schedule day in and day out, comprising of ten or more drugs daily at different times, often simply find themselves overwhelmed. The consequences are often unpleasant side effects owing to incorrect quantities being taken or doses taken at the wrong times, erratic compliance, and higher drug costs from doses all too frequently neglected. The costs of faulty compliance and doses left untaken are considerable: according to an official estimate by the ABDA (National Federation of Germany Pharmacist Societies) they amount to about 10 to 20 billion Euros annually, —that is, about ten percent of the total annual outgoings of the German Health System.

The number of multimorbid patients continues to rise

Thirty-six to forty percent of all drugs prescribed by physicians are not taken as prescribed or not taken at all. Even vitally necessary drugs are consistently taken as prescribed in only 50% of all prescriptions. Non-compliance is between 50 and 80% among hypertensive patients. Other supply studies have shown that about 5.5 percent of all hospital admissions are due to non-compliance with therapy. Non-compliance is thus one of the greatest problems in pharmacotherapy—especially as the number of multimorbid patients is growing worldwide as a consequence of demographic changes: about 4 million Germans are already over the age of 80.  By 2050 their number among the general population will have increased to 10 million according to the Federal Bureau of Statistics.

Exact pharmacotherapy through system solutions

Given these realities, intelligent solutions for compliance management are necessary not only in pure medical terms but also from the perspective of the health economics. Vitaphone’s Telemonitoring-supported medication adherence system could have an important role to play in this regard. For instance, the drug dispenser Pico connected via a GSM link to the Telemedical Service Center is helping to make a safe and sure pharmacotherapy a reality:  The drugs are dispensed in tube blisters and exactly administered in accordance with the dosage and times indicated by the prescribing physician. Pico reminds the patient optically and acoustically when it is time to take the prescribed medicine. At the same time it also monitors removal of a blaster. If the patient does not respond to the dispenser’s reminder signal after repeated alerts the Telemedical  Service Center calls the relatives, the nursing, or the pharmacy. Thus, the medication adherence system takes some of the burden of monitoring pharmacotherapy and maintaining ongoing records of the patients, relatives and nursing staff in hospitals or outpatient services.