A Carrot & Stick Intervention for Medication Adherence using Mobile Phone

Medication adherence is one of the major challenges for healthcare professionals and patients. Lack of medication adherence leads to worse medical treatment outcomes, higher hospitalization rates, and increased health care costs. For years, numerous interventions have been tried with mixed success. In this paper, we present an intervention for medication adherence based on rewards and punishment (carrot and stick). In addition to its operation, we also study the cost effectiveness of the intervention in terms of healthcare cost saving for chronic diseases. Our results show that the ROI is highest when rate of adherence is increased significantly for majority of patients for long duration or for low development cost. More work is needed in determining various thresholds and values of rewards and punishment, and testing with real patients for intervention effectiveness.