{"id":1560,"date":"2015-08-20T07:20:11","date_gmt":"2015-08-20T07:20:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/brandcare.net\/blog\/?p=1560"},"modified":"2025-06-16T17:31:34","modified_gmt":"2025-06-16T12:01:34","slug":"attitudes-and-adherence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.brandcare.net\/blog\/attitudes-and-adherence\/","title":{"rendered":"Understanding Attitudes and Adherence to Meds"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Adherence\"<\/div>\n
Savio Fernandes, a confirmed diabetes patient, sits at his breakfast table wondering how many of the assortment of pills in his hand he should pop today- one, all or none. None he decides. There\u2019s always a tomorrow for one and day-after for all. After all routines are dreary!<\/div>\n
Adherence to medications is a problem of patient behavior and beliefs. It is estimated that about 50% prescription medicines are not taken as directed and about 15-20% may not be taken at all. What a waste, considering that the total global spending on medicines will reach almost $1.2 trillion in 2017(1). There are crusaders who believe that spending fraction of this money on improving adherence could have more significant outcomes. This may well be in line with the austerity measures during the economic slowdowns.<\/div>\n
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The issues affecting adherence are complex and multifactorial. The simplest way to deal with it is -education. But that\u2019s about where the simplicity ends. Where will the education start and with what variables? As we focus relentlessly on a one size fits all patient education, the less countable it seems. Professor Rob Horne, an expert in psychology in health care at Brighton University, says: “One of the main reasons why people don’t take medicines is that they don’t want to.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Why they don\u2019t want is a matter of attitude. Attitudes have a momentous impact on adherence. There is a reason why patients behave the way they do. And it\u2019s definitely not a single reason.
\nAttitude is a function of beliefs. Keshav believes there is nothing wrong with him. Asif believes prayers and not meds will treat his cardiac condition. Radha Devi feels guilty about her illness, she thinks it\u2019s God\u2019s way of punishing. Cynthia doesn\u2019t know that skipping doses could lead to serious health complications. Aamir bhai doesn\u2019t believe in meds.<\/p>\n
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Relationship marketing vehicles of several pharmaceutical marketers run adherence building programs. These are built around the \u2018forgetting\u2019 pivot and therefore mostly have reminder mechanics in place. Can a simple reminder to take meds work for Keshav, Radha, Cynthia or Aamir?
\nSegmenting patients into behavioral and attitude clusters and then customizing the programs might yield better outcomes. Dealing with someone with \u201cI don\u2019t believe it will work\u201d is very different from \u201cI just don\u2019t remember\u201d. An attitude centric adherence paradigm will help understand the patient\u2019s beliefs and motivation levels at the beginning of the journey.<\/div>\n
In a unique attitudes study on diabetes and non-adherence, Brandcare has interviewed physicians, diabetologists and people with diabetes in India. This has helped arrive at clusters of patient types basis their attitudes to adherence. The report, titled Non Adherence in Diabetes- an Attitude Study, will be of interest to pharmaceutical marketers who wish to orchestrate non-adherence tackling patient programs. It makes large sense to them since acquiring new patients costs pharmaceutical companies an average of 62% more than retaining the ones they already serve(2). It will also benefit medical bodies and associations who are working in the field of improving outcomes in chronic diseases.<\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

-Rashmi Thosar
\nCEO, Brandcare<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Savio Fernandes, a confirmed diabetes patient, sits at his breakfast table wondering how many of the assortment of pills in his hand he should pop today- one, all or none. None he decides. There’s always a tomorrow for one and day-after for all. After all routines are dreary! Adherence to medications is a problem of … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1569,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1560","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-doctalk"],"wps_subtitle":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brandcare.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1560","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brandcare.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brandcare.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brandcare.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brandcare.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1560"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.brandcare.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1560\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4559,"href":"https:\/\/www.brandcare.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1560\/revisions\/4559"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brandcare.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1569"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brandcare.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1560"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brandcare.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1560"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brandcare.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1560"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}