eHealth in the future of medications management: personalisation, monitoring and adherence
Author(s)
Car, J
Tan, WS
Huang, Z
Sloot, P
Franklin, BD
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
Background: Globally, healthcare systems face major challenges with medicines management and medication
adherence. Medication adherence determines medication effectiveness and can be the single most effective
intervention for improving health outcomes. In anticipation of growth in eHealth interventions worldwide, we
explore the role of eHealth in the patients’ medicines management journey in primary care, focusing on personalisation
and intelligent monitoring for greater adherence.
Discussion: eHealth offers opportunities to transform every step of the patient’s medicines management journey.
From booking appointments, consultation with a healthcare professional, decision-making, medication dispensing,
carer support, information acquisition and monitoring, to learning about medicines and their management in daily life.
It has the potential to support personalisation and monitoring and thus lead to better adherence. For some of these
dimensions, such as supporting decision-making and providing reminders and prompts, evidence is stronger, but for
many others more rigorous research is urgently needed.
Conclusions: Given the potential benefits and barriers to eHealth in medicines management, a fine balance needs to
be established between evidence-based integration of technologies and constructive experimentation that could lead
to a game-changing breakthrough. A concerted, transdisciplinary approach adapted to different contexts, including
low- and middle-income contries is required to realise the benefits of eHealth at scale.
adherence. Medication adherence determines medication effectiveness and can be the single most effective
intervention for improving health outcomes. In anticipation of growth in eHealth interventions worldwide, we
explore the role of eHealth in the patients’ medicines management journey in primary care, focusing on personalisation
and intelligent monitoring for greater adherence.
Discussion: eHealth offers opportunities to transform every step of the patient’s medicines management journey.
From booking appointments, consultation with a healthcare professional, decision-making, medication dispensing,
carer support, information acquisition and monitoring, to learning about medicines and their management in daily life.
It has the potential to support personalisation and monitoring and thus lead to better adherence. For some of these
dimensions, such as supporting decision-making and providing reminders and prompts, evidence is stronger, but for
many others more rigorous research is urgently needed.
Conclusions: Given the potential benefits and barriers to eHealth in medicines management, a fine balance needs to
be established between evidence-based integration of technologies and constructive experimentation that could lead
to a game-changing breakthrough. A concerted, transdisciplinary approach adapted to different contexts, including
low- and middle-income contries is required to realise the benefits of eHealth at scale.
Date Issued
2017-04-05
Date Acceptance
2017-03-16
Citation
BMC Medicine, 2017, 15
ISSN
1741-7015
Publisher
BioMed Central
Journal / Book Title
BMC Medicine
Volume
15
Copyright Statement
© The Author(s). 2017 Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0
International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and
reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to
the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver
(http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and
reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to
the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver
(http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
License URL
Subjects
Science & Technology
Life Sciences & Biomedicine
Medicine, General & Internal
General & Internal Medicine
Apps
eHealth
mHealth
Drug monitoring
Information communication technology
Medication adherence
Medication therapy management
Text message
OF-THE-LITERATURE
HEALTH-CARE
MOBILE PHONE
INTERVENTIONS
TECHNOLOGY
APPS
NONADHERENCE
METAANALYSIS
INFORMATION
DIRECTIONS
Publication Status
Published
Article Number
73