Medication adherence is the core research area of the unit. It is a key determinant of the ambulatory care system of the 21st century. It is defined as the process by which patients take their medications as prescribed. It is characterized by three components: treatment initiation, implementation and discontinuation (Vrijens et al. 2012). As described by the World Health Organization (WHO) in 2003, around 50% of chronic patients are nonadherent to their treatment worldwide. This creates an endemic, medical and economic threat on the healthcare systems, which needs to be addressed. Research is needed to better document the issue and its contributing factors as well as assess cost-effective, interprofessional adherence-enhancing programs to implement in clinical practice and envision new models of care. /// Therefore, the research plan of the unit aims at achieving a comprehensive understanding of patient adherence and self-management across several chronic disease models, where adherence is a complex and still underinvestigated behaviour, with the modelling of long-term patient behaviour, and the development of screening and preventive approaches to nonadherence.
In continuity with Marie Schneider’s former research at unisanté (Center for Primary Care and Public Health, Lausanne, Switzerland)) and the School of Pharmacy in Geneva, the medication adherence and interprofessionality lab is evaluating medication adherence programs in chronic diseases, such as HIV, oral oncology, diabetes and renal failure.
Our research aims at shedding light on routinely monitored medication adherence using robust adherence measurement and data analysis. Our group has been part of the very core group, which had launched the research in medication adherence in Switzerland and which, since then, has been pioneer internationally in electronic monitoring of medication adherence in routine care.
In November 2018, the unit also launched a new research project in Geneva aiming at investigating the epidemiology of contradictory information on prescribed medications as perceived by chronic patients, and its impact on patient medication self-management. Secondarily, it also aims at analyzing how interprofessional collaborations could support the development of concerted information strategies among professionals in favor of a more efficient and secure drug use. This research is at the interface between pharmaceutical and medical sciences.