June 13, 2018 — Medication management platform Medisafe released data showing that, on average, hypertensive patients increase their prescription refills by almost 10 percent after they start using the company's mobile app.
In order to determine the increase in prescription claims, the study matched Medisafe users to their refill data using a HIPAA-compliant, non-identification process. The investigators calculated a medication possession ratio ("MPR") for each of the over 4,000 patients taking an antihypertensive medication pre-app (before the patient started using Medisafe) and on-app (once the patient started using Medisafe) and grouped them into corresponding MPR deciles (0 - 0.1 being the least adherent, 0.9 - 1.0 being the most adherent). MPR is a standard metric used by the healthcare industry to track medication adherence, in which an MPR of 1.0 corresponds to a 100 percent refill rate.
Key findings include:
- Of patients not in the top MPR decile pre-app, 82 percent (1,371 of 1,667) increased by at least one decile on-app;
- Of patients with a pre-app MPR < 0.8, 78 percent (920 of 1,179) increased by at least 2 deciles;
- Of patients with a pre-app MPR < 0.5, 74 percent of patients (320 of 431) increased by at least 5 deciles; and
- The proportion of patients with MPR ≥ 0.80 increased from 70.8 percent pre-app to 86.25 percent on-app, a 21.8 percent relative increase.
Summary Table
Adherence (MPR) | Pre-app | On-app | p-value | % change |
Mean | 0.84 | 0.92 | <.0001 | 9.52% |
Standard deviation | 0.23 | 0.13 | ||
Adherent [MPR ≥ 0.80] | 2858 (71%) | 3482 (86%) | <.0001 | 21.13% |
N= 4,037
The hypertension results follow data released from the same landmark study in early March on the accuracy of Medisafe's patient reported adherence data. In the coming months, Medisafe will continue to release results, including data regarding the platform's impact on adherence and persistence across other therapeutic areas.
For more information: www.medisafe.com