One root cause for healthcare’s escalating costs and continuing disparities is “medication non-adherence” — a phrase that both masks the issue’s severity and places blame on patients. Studies find that at least 125,000 people die each year from not taking their medications as prescribed, and healthcare utilization related to medication non-adherence costs more than $300 billion a year. Yet medication adherence is an entirely solvable problem, and possibly the lowest hanging fruit in healthcare today: with a massive market for solutions just around the corner due to increased funding and M&A activity. Technology can now deliver and scale human-powered interventions that have proven effective for decades, built upon a decades-old public health approach called Directly Observed Therapy (DOT).
