The effectiveness of interventions to improve patients’ adherence to medications
Systematic review
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Systematic literature search to identify systematic reviews on the effect of interventions designed to improve patients’ adherence with drug therapy.
Key message
The Norwegian Knowledge Centre for the Health Services was commissioned by the Health Directorate to conduct a systematic literature search with subsequent sorting of possible relevant publications. The aim was to identify systematic reviews on the effect of interventions designed to improve patients’ adherence with drug therapy.
Methods
We developed a search strategy for a systematic literature search. The search was carried out in seven international literature databases in April 2014. Two researchers independently screened the identified publications / references and assessed their relevance relative to the inclusion criteria.
Results
We identified a total of 3174 references, of which there were 106 relevant publications.
We sorted the publications into nine categories, based on drug adherence intervention. The main categories of interventions used to improve adherence to drug therapy were:
- E-health or telehealth interventions (12 reviews)
- Interventions provided by healthcare personnel (8 reviews)
- Education (6 reviews)
- Interventions provided by pharmacists (5 reviews)
- Motivational Interviewing (3 reviews)
- Reminder functions (3 reviews)
- Other interventions (10 reviews)
- All types of adherence interventions for different populations (7 reviews)
- All types of adherence interventions for different diseases (52 reviews).