Elsevier

Health Policy and Technology

Volume 4, Issue 3, September 2015, Pages 215-224
Health Policy and Technology

Taxonomy of health IT and medication adherence

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.hlpt.2015.04.003Get rights and content
Under a Creative Commons license
open access

Highlights

  • Development of a taxonomy for health IT focusing on medication adherence.

  • Guidance for development and enhancement of health policy and technology.

  • Mobile technologies are increasingly integrated into healthcare.

  • Insights into untapped potential of health IT.

  • Identification of the core impacts of health IT on medication adherence.

Abstract

Background

Patients’ failure to take medication as prescribed – poor medication adherence – is a well-known issue. Health information technology (IT) presents itself as a promising approach to tackle poor medication adherence.

Objectives

To deepen the understanding of what features health IT offers and how these address poor medication adherence, we examine existing health IT targeting medication adherence.

Methods

Building on extant literature, we follow a systematic approach for taxonomy development in information systems to build a taxonomy of health IT focusing on medication adherence.

Results

Health IT offers various promising ways to address poor medication adherence. Overall, we map 16 different types of health IT offerings on 7 different dimensions. The principal results are that health IT focusing on medication adherence should be developed in a patient-centered way because medication adherence is predominantly a matter of the patient and that mobile technologies are a seminal driver for health IT offerings focusing on medication adherence. Finally, the taxonomy identifies the core impacts of health IT on medication adherence.

Conclusion

The taxonomy establishes an overview of current health IT offerings targeting medication adherence, offers insights into untapped potential for health IT, and yields valuable insights for health policy and technology. Future efforts must, however, address how to continuously motivate patients and how to better integrate and combine health IT offerings to unfold the full potential of health IT for addressing poor medication adherence.

Keywords

Health IT
Medication  adherence
Taxonomy
Non-adherence  factors
eHealth
Medication  compliance

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