Why do patients follow a medication regimen? A matter of freedom or control?

Abstract The aim of modern medicine is the development of innovations in health care, such as better therapy methods and more effective medication. But what about the unknown factor, the patients? Non-adherence — patients not following health-care advice — is a major problem in health care, which affects both individual and public health. In particular, the steadily increasing number of patients with chronic diseases, e.g. 5–6 million diagnosed German diabetics, leads to severe financial and health-related consequences. Thus, this work evaluates the use of pharmacy records as a screening tool for healthcare providers to detect possibly non-adherent patients as early as possible. This work analyses the databases of two German pharmacies P1 and P2 with 4474 and 2650 datasets, respectively, to detect a pattern of non-adherent patients. Possibly influencing factors have been selected based on the World Health Organization's five dimensions of adherence. As a result, there is no pattern detectable. Thus, the question of more freedom or control may not be answered. But this result leads to reconsidering the complete understanding of adherence.