3 Easy Ways to Promote Medication Compliance | Mobile Therapy

It’s said that approximately 50% of the population prescribed medication does not comply with the full term of their treatments. This causes an issue in measuring the medication’s efficacy in that patient and limits the realization of its benefits.

SelfEcho’s Mobile Therapy offers several tools that clinicians can use to assist in motivating and measuring medication compliance in patients. The system includes a reporting dashboard when clinicians can track emotional reports and behaviors of clients using data that is collected by a mobile app that runs on the client’s dashboard. One of the features the reporting includes is a section where previous and current medication may be entered. These medications and a patient’s compliance can be juxtaposed against other tracked metrics like moods and behaviors.  Here are a few examples that showcase how one can use Mobile Therapy’s reporting system to promote medication compliance.

1. Address Improvements
Comparing the changes in behavior and mood from before and after the start of a medication regimen is easily accomplished using the reporting dashboard. Sharing this data with a patient gives the patient a clear visual understanding of their improvement and creates an association between medication and progress.

Seeing this progress motivates the client to continue with their medication regime.

2. Pair old and new routines

 If the patient is meant to take their medication at a certain time of day, encourage them to pair taking the dose with an already well-established habit.  In the morning, pairing medication with their current routine of brushing teeth, is one example. Piggybacking medication on top of a common habit is easier than doing it out of the blue and will eventually create a mental reminder and assist in the formation of a new habit that includes medication.

3.     Increase Awareness
There are cases where clients fail to comply with their medication schedule because of a lack of awareness and understanding. Sometimes the client is poorly educated about their condition and the importance of their medication schedule. Increasing health literacy -ensuring that the client is very familiar with the purpose and effect of the medication- has been shown to boost adherence to a medication schedule. 

Here is an image of the Mobile Therapy medication dashboard. Clinician’s can input and reference past medications, dosages, and frequencies. With this information one can address concerns and questions clients have about their previous medication experiences and how it has been adjusted over time in accord with their progress and how it may be adjusted in the future.  

As a best practice always ensure that a patient is aware of the details of their prescribed medication(s), what the effects and possible side effects are, and be sure to follow-up with them routinely to assess impacts. Suggest adjustments in medication and dosage as they are required. Medication compliance and adherence is difficult to measure and maintain, but with Mobile Therapy it becomes quite a bit easier.