Half a Century of Fragmented Research on Deviations from Advised Therapies: Is This a Good Time to Call for Multidisciplinary Medication Adherence Research Centres of Excellence?

Abstract

Medication adherence is a key precondition of the effectiveness of evidence-based therapies. However, in real-life settings, non-adherence to medication is still very common. This leads to profound health and economic consequences at both individual and public health levels. The problem of non-adherence has been extensively studied in the last 50 years. Unfortunately, with more than 130,000 scientific papers published on that subject so far, we are still far from finding an ultimate solution. This is, at least partly, due to fragmented and poor-quality research that has been conducted in this field sometimes. To overcome this deadlock, there is a need to stimulate the adoption of best practices in medication adherence-related research in a systematic way. Therefore, herein we propose the establishment of dedicated medication adherence research Centres of Excellence (CoEs). These Centres could not only conduct research but could also create a profound societal impact, directly serving the needs of patients, healthcare providers, systems and economies. Additionally, they could play a role as local advocates for good practices and education. In this paper, we propose some practical steps that might be taken in order to establish such CoEs. We describe two success stories, i.e., Dutch and Polish Medication Adherence Research CoEs. The COST Action “European Network to Advance Best practices & technoLogy on medication adherencE” (ENABLE) aims to develop a detailed definition of the Medication Adherence Research CoE in the form of a list of minimal requirements regarding their objectives, structure and activities. We hope that it will help to create a critical mass and catalyse the setup of regional and national Medication Adherence Research CoEs in the near future. This, in turn, may not only increase the quality of the research but also raise the awareness of non-adherence and promote the adoption of the best medication adherence-enhancing interventions.