A Commercial Perspective On Compliance Enhancement

12-08-2006 | Categories:

Basics

Creating Compliance Pharmaceutical Executive Europe Oct 1, 2006

This interview with Christian Husegaard, the head of sales and marketing for Bang & Olufsen Medicom, contains little, if any, new information but does nicely summarize the basic noncompliance issues and provides some insight into commercial development of compliance enhancements, especially electronic devices to remind patients of their medication regimens.

This excerpt is Mr. Husegaard’s response to the query, “How are approaches to patient non-compliance changing?”

First of all the pharmaceutical companies are starting to realize that this is a major issue; however, only few companies have a pan-European or global approach to it. In addition, physicians are becoming more aware of how patient behaviour can be influenced. A key issue for patients on long-term medication is motivation and feedback. They need to get help in remembering to take and track their medication. Often the most practical way of doing this is via electronic reminder devices, as it is impossible for the physician to follow up individually with each patient.

Physicians and pharmaceutical companies are now working together to find a solution to the compliance problem, whether it comes via patient education programmes, concordant approaches between physician and patient or the use of compliance aids, such as electronic devices.

Commentary

Given that this article is, after all, on some level, a puff piece promoting Bang & Olufsen Medicom, perhaps my expectations were unreasonable. Nonetheless, it is disappointing to find Bang & Olufsen, a company with extensive resources and a reputation for design and quality, focused primarily on updated, electronic versions of older methodologies, especially reminders and patient education. While contemporary technology does offer added value, such as providing feedback to prescribing clinicians, the underlying processes have not historically resulted in notable improvements in adherence. One fears that this may be a case of developing a new, more attractive version, with extra bells and whistles, of minimally useful tools.

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