Reevaluating medication adherence in the era of digital health

Introduction: Medication adherence is a worldwide issue impacting more than half the population. The cost associated with nonadherence is tremendous and has spurred the growth of novel technologies to address this growing problem.

Areas covered: This perspective covers the different digital health medication adherence tools that have come to market in the past decade and their clinical impact. These digital interventions and their applicability to medication adherence across different stakeholders are then evaluated.

Expert opinion: Digital health will play a significant role in creating new pathways to care in the 2020s. However, the current design of medication adherence tools has not demonstrated a clinical impact that will be relevant for the digital health space without a change in redesign factoring in relevant stakeholders' incentives to address adherence issues. A focus on only adherence has not yielded the economic or clinical benefit as expected, which is likely due to a lack of focus on broader drug-related problems (DRPs) that are causative factors beyond adherence alone. As such, adherence tools will see disparate uptake, likely due to condition-specific interventions rather than adherence issues as a whole, and future endeavors will need to address the larger DRP considerations to actualize clinical outcomes.