Financial Incentives to Improve Medication Adherence

Financial Incentives to Improve Medication Adherence: a Pilot Study

Medication adherence is a challenge in all of medicine and is associated with multiple negative outcomes. Strategies to better measure and enhance adherence to medication are urgent and necessary to minimize unwanted health outcomes, hospitalizations, poorer quality of life and excessive costs for individuals, insurers and caregivers. Recently, behavioral economics-based approaches have emerged as a promising tool to address this unmet need, but its effectiveness in oral antipsychotic treatment remains to be assessed. For this project, investigators will use an app that offers financial incentives to increase compliance for patients with chronic diseases. Investigators intend to enroll 25 patients in a pilot project to assess feasibility of offering financial incentives to improve medication adherence in severe mental illness.

Inclusion Criteria:

1. Psychiatric patients with suspected or confirmed poor oral medication adherence.
2. Age 18-80 years old
3. English speaking, since the app being used is only available in English
4. Owning a Smartphone, since the app requires a Smartphone to work
5. Willing and able to participate.

Exclusion Criteria:

1. Acute anger to self or others as per investigator assessment
2. Unwilling or unable to participate