A 2019 study published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research mHealth and uHealth found 704 apps related to medication adherence available from Apple (443) and Android (261). And that was four years ago! I imagine anyone willing to count the apps available today would find even more. And yet, the issue of medication nonadherence persists to this day—but it is clearly not for a lack of trying. So, it at least begs the question: Are we as an industry approaching this wrong? If your main approach to encouraging patients to take their medication is through occasional nudges via reminders or alerts, then yes, Leah Carlisle and Natasha Patel of Fishawack Health would argue you are not doing enough. In their article, they say, “Simple behavioral economics-informed nudges…may move the needle but are often insufficient. The models of health psychology that these are often based on don’t always take into account the broader environmental and societal contexts. They are often built entirely on theory or not extensively studied across a diverse range of populations or health behaviors.” Instead, they explain how “success depends on understanding the multitude of interconnected factors that might be at play for a specific person with a specific condition and systematically addressing those,” and break down the steps needed to arrive at the types of interventions that would prove most effective. But their approach is not the only one we feature in this issue. Even they agree that adherence is a complex issue for which no silver bullet solution exists. So, you can also find strategies to address the polypharmacy problem (when patients are prescribed five or more drugs), a case study from Novartis explaining how they used a less is more approach to boost adherence, and 12 newer adherence solutions deployed by various companies in the past couple of years that are demonstrating positive results. Plus, our Focus On Adherence/Compliance section features more takes from experts on how the industry can shore up its weak spots in this area. You will also want to check out “The State of the Union in Cancer Innovation,” in which we gathered six CEOs of smaller pharma/biotech companies specializing in oncology treatments to discuss the latest breakthroughs their companies are making in antibody-drug conjugates, CAR-T immunotherapies, cytokine-based therapy, mRNA/epigenetics, precision immuno-oncology, and small molecules. The science is certainly exciting—and hopefully it results in game-changing treatments to some of our most devastating diseases.
