Financial Incentives for Medication Adherence: Literature Survey and IT-enabled Solution

Medication adherence, or adhering to prescribed medications, is one of the most important goals in healthcare. The adherence level for chronic conditions has been observed to be about 50%. Many different interventions have been used to improve medication adherence. In this paper, we focus on financial incentives as the intervention for improving medication adherence. Financial incentives could include (a) cash payments to patients (b) vouchers to purchase specific goods and services, (c) lottery tickets for internal sweepstakes, and (d) reduction in insurance premium or cost-sharing of medications and/or medical devices. Our research question is which of the four financial incentives is effective and when and for how long? To address this question, we conducted a literature survey of financial incentives for medication adherence (FIMA) and found some insights to answer the research question. We have also identified several interesting challenges. Based on these, we have developed an IT-enabled solution to study financial interventions. The proposed intervention and IT-enabled solution can be used to study the effectiveness of FIMA for patients of different demographics, health and economic backgrounds.