title: A framework for assessing adherence and persistence to long-term medication.
abstract: Poor adherence and persistence to long-term medication is a growing concern worldwide. Despite their importance, tools that facilitate the identification of patients who show poor adherence and persistence rates are limited. Herein we present a framework we have developed to assist in assessing adherence and persistence rates. We demonstrate the framework's features using production electronic medical record data from a general medical practice in the context of analysis of antihypertensive and antidepressant prescribing. The framework is flexible and extensible and has the potential to be used as a tool to improve the management of patients on long-term medication either to benchmark quality over a specified evaluation period or for the direct identification of specific patients that would benefit from immediate follow-up.
authors.affiliation: Department of Computer Science, The University of Auckland, Auckland 1142, New Zealand. thusitha@cs.auckland.ac.nz
authors.forename: Thusitha
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Mabotuwana
authors.forename: Jim
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Warren
mesh_terms: D000555:Ambulatory Care Information Systems; D004358:Drug Therapy; D006801:Humans; D008134:Long-Term Care; D010349:Patient Compliance; D019984:Quality Indicators, Health Care