Importance of Medication Adherence for Improved Health - Paper Sample

Introduction

Inappropriate adherence to medication especially when prescribed by the physician in severe conditions is imperative. There are several noncommunicable, immune system compromising and infectious diseases which require persistence to follow up the care plan. If the patient doesn't follow the prescribed medication, many strains or viruses stimulate or start to develop resistance. Non- adherence can decrease the quality of life (QoL). It can also put economic pressure on the pocket of the patient as well on the entire healthcare ecosystem. Massive surgeries or accidents need to follow up the care plan to bypass severity and improve the healing process of the affected area. Chronic diseases require more determined push from the patient to follow the medication plan since the patient have to follow the assigned care plan for a lifetime. Adherence to medication is regarded as a compelling effort.

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Medication Adherence User Requirements

Approximately 50 percent of the ageing patients do not follow physician recommendation. Around 200.000 premature annual deaths are linked to medication non-adherence in Europe, and it cost around EUR 1.25 billion. In united states, it cost between $100 to $289 billion a year to the American health care system. Non-adherence to medication leads to 125,000 deaths annually in the United States. The non-adherent patients with medication have more significant health cost, e.g. $3,700 for diabetes and $ 3,900 for hypertension per year. Adherence to medication alone with diabetes patient could save $ 4.7 billion. Adherence to care plan is part of the Europe Union research projects H2020 and legislation.

User Requirements

The user requires medication adherence to get the wanted effects. The efficacy of treatment depends on the amount or concentration of the drug available in the bloodstream that can fabricate the desired effect. So, the physician prescribes to take medication after a listed interval to control the therapeutic level of the drug. If Patient doesn't take the pill, the required therapeutic effect cannot be achieved.

It is essential to establish a technology platform based on a reminder for medication adherence for older adults and the patient having dementia, memory loss or cognitive problems to avoid the toxicity or reduced effect if the patient doesn't take or overtake the medication.

Tuberculosis (TB) requires 6.9 months of treatment, and medication adherence is essential in case of non-adherence patient have to start the medication again from the beginning which is very stressful and require re-scheduling of time and mental effort. Medication adherence is mandatory in case of severe or chronic diseases like HIV, Diabetes, Hypertension, Parkinson and stroke etc.

Patient lower literacy for medication administration & self-management, less knowledge about the pathology of the disease and polypharmacy can lead to dose missing or maybe frustrate patient not to take it at all if the method of administration is complicated. Literacy can be improved by a technological platform or a virtual coach for self-management and user-friendly guidance repeatedly and effectively.

Antibiotics require medication adherence if forgotten can mitigate strain or viruses so it will be challenging to target them by a reduced dose. It is also a very significant obstacle especially in underdeveloped countries since drug-resistant strain is kept arising and vulnerable with the passage of time and to attack them requires time maybe 6 months or year to produce a medication or vaccine that can target them and avoid deaths.

Discussion

To analyze the socio-economic cost of Diabetes patients in Denmark. Patients involved in the National database of 2011 (N= 318 729). Diabetes cost had been counted as the difference between the cost of diabetes patients and the expected cost, from the annual consumption of the diabetes-free population. The estimated cost for diabetes was 4.27 billion EUR in 2011 corresponding to 14,349 EUR per patient per year as a result. Two-fold higher use of healthcare resources was found for the patient with diabetes as compared to the diabetes-free population. Cost is determined for different components.

A steep increase was seen for complicated diabetes patient as compared to non-complicated. An estimate of 6,992 EUR per person was estimated if we exclude potential confounders. It clearly describes that medication non-adherence has profound effects on the budget of the patient as well as health care system.

The Integrated Approach

Clinical and non-clinical care providers lead to the development of a framework or protocol for execution of a plan with shared benefits, and that could be value or cost-based. Value concern the increased quality of life of the patient (QoL), resources generation for cost reduction and new business models that can pay and generate the value of a particular telemedicine service.

Human Involvement

The framework of a specific service of telemedicine includes "remote site" that receive care (consumer or patient) and a "hub site" that delivers the care. A hub site is integrated clinical or non-clinical care providers. Non-clinical care providers could be technological, pharmaceutical or municipalities.

Human Centric Systems

The human centric systems as the superset of smart homes where the health parameters are also the part of participating devices. As an example, an air conditioner of a smart home may be controlled remotely as it is connected with the communication network through an internet of things (IoT) protocol, and, the same platform may be used by tonometer (blood pressure meter) to send the blood pressure measurements to the intended locations. More and more devices may be added for a composite and complete tele-healthcare (TH)/ telemedicine (TM) systems. Such systems, which integrate health process and equipment in the IoT paradigm, are the Health Centric Systems (HCS).

Conclusion

The TH system uses the common communication network that has a base station subsystem (BSS) and Core Sub System (CSS). The BSS is responsible for the deployment of network sites within the network service are and the NSS is responsible for integrating all the BSS of various geographical areas, At the same time, NSS is also responsible for communication with internet and cloud. In this way, a TH service can communicate with the public network through either WIFI or direct access with the communication network. The data in the cloud is used by various applications that support TH services.