Atlantis Healthcare Publishes New Psychological Approach To Improving Treatment Adherence

LONDON, May 29, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- Health psychology experts from Atlantis Healthcare, a global company specialising in patient adherence solutions, have published a review supporting an innovative psychology-based model for understanding treatment non-adherence and designing behaviour change interventions to improve adherence.

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20130627/MM38791

The paper, entitled "Applying COM-B to medication adherence – A suggested framework for research and interventions" published in The European Health Psychologist, examines how psychological modeling can be used to support patients in using their treatments as prescribed¹.  

Given that the international healthcare community could save $269 billion by improving medication adherence², this review represents a paradigm shift in how the challenge of non-adherence can be addressed.

Dr. Christina Jackson, Ph.D, lead author and Senior Health Psychology Specialist at Atlantis Healthcare noted: "As specialists in patient adherence programmes, we wanted to show the rigor behind an approach that is grounded in health psychology. We chose to use the COM-B model as the focus for our review as it provides a more comprehensive explanation of human behaviour than existing models that tend to stop short of explaining what the behaviour is, or providing suggestions for changing behaviour."

The COM-B model, first published in 2011, proposes that an individual's behaviour is influenced by many factors, all of which can be grouped into three components: motivation, capability and opportunity³. The model was developed with specific interventions to address each component.  Dr. Jackson and her co-authors are the first to apply the COM-B framework specifically to examine behaviours that drive non-adherence. 

In order to identify the wide range of factors associated with non-adherence, Jackson and her co-authors conducted the first comprehensive literature review of three major qualitative and quantitative reviews of treatment adherence/non-adherence, then mapped each of the hundreds of associated factors documented by the research against the COM-B model.

"Our review reinforces the fact that the reasons for non-adherence are complex, and therefore can't be treated with a simplistic intervention," says Jackson.  

"Our new model can be used to explain why individual patients cannot or choose not to follow prescribed treatment. Once we understand the individual motivators and barriers we can create an effective approach, using our cutting-edge digital support solutions, to help each patient self-manage their illness, long-term."

According to Jackson, the new model is intended to guide both adherence researchers and health-care practitioners involved in the care of non-adherent patients. The model also serves as the foundation for Atlantis Healthcare's proprietary approach to the design of highly personalised and scalable adherence interventions for pharma, payers and healthcare institutions worldwide.

Learn more about the review authors from Atlantis Healthcare

¹Jackson C, Eliasson L, Barber N, Weinman J. Applying COM-B to medication adherence. The European Health Psychologist 2014, 16(1), 7-17

²IMS Institute for Healthcare Informatics, 2012

³Michie S, van Stralen MM, West R. (2011). The behavior change wheel: A new method for characterizing and designing behaviour change interventions. Implement Science, 6, 42. Doi:10.1186/1748-5908-6-42