Multidisciplinary efforts in combating nonadherence to medication and health care interventions: Opportunities and challenges for operations researchers

Abstract

Chronic diseases are a growing concern in public health. Lack of adherence to medications and health care interventions is a major factor behind the worsening of chronic disease outcomes and large medical costs. As a result, there is a critical need to identify structural, systematic, and patient-centric barriers to adherence. Similarly important is the development of models and deployable strategies to ensure effective delivery of care so that clinical and economic outcomes are optimized. This commentary review explores the research on nonadherence of patients with chronic diseases and other non-acute conditions to medications and interventions from different disciplinary perspectives, including medicine/pharmacy, pharmacoeconomics, behavioral economics, operations research (OR), and data analytics (DA). Although a spate of works has been conducted in the medicine and pharmacy fields, the contribution of OR/DA to medication/intervention nonadherence is limited. Given the technological advancement and the increasing understanding of nonadherence, we believe that OR/DA can play an essential role in encapsulating the domain knowledge and catalyzing the development of patient-centric solutions. We discuss the challenges and opportunities presented to OR/DA researchers and conclude the commentary with a discussion on new interdisciplinary research directions that can contribute to solving the nonadherence puzzle.

Keywords:

• operations research
• data analytics
• chronic diseases
• medication adherence
• interdisciplinary research

Acknowledgement

The authors sincerely thank the Associate Editor and two anonymous reviewers and appreciate their valuable comments that help significantly improve the manuscript.