Text Messaging Increases Medication Adherence

By Katie Wike, contributing writer

According to a recent study, text message reminders helped patients better adhere to their medications.

In a study of 300 heart patients who were prescribed statins or a blood pressure medication, researchers at Queen Mary University of London found text message reminders improved medication adherence.

“Failure to take medication is common and reduces its potential benefit, both through stopping medication completely and taking it less frequently than prescribed,” explain the authors. “It has been estimated that about one third of patients do not adhere to blood pressure or lipid-lowering treatment prescribed following a myocardial infarction or stroke (secondary prevention) and about half do not adhere to preventive treatment prescribed to prevent a first cardiovascular disease event.”

According to iHealth Beat, the participating patients received either daily text messages about their prescriptions for two weeks followed by two weeks of texts on alternate days and then weekly texts for the following six months, or did not receive any text messages.

BBC News reports any of the patients not taking their medications were flagged by a computer – and that those who did not receive text messages had lower adherence rates. Of those who did not receive reminders, 25 percent either stopped taking their medication completely or took less than 80 percent of it.

Only 9 percent of those in the text message group stopped taking their medications or took less than 80 percent of what had been prescribed.

Researchers concluded, “The results of this trial show that in patients prescribed blood pressure and/or lipid-lowering medication for the prevention of cardiovascular disease, text messages improved the use of prescribed medication at 6 months compared with the use in patients who were not sent text messages.”