C (2001) A systematic review of the associations between dose regimens and medication compliance. Clin Ther 23:1296–1310

Background: Previous reviews of the literature on medication compliance have con-firmed the inverse relationship between umber of daily doses and rate of compliance. However, compliance in most of these studies was based on patient self-report, blood-level monitoring, prescription refills, or pill count data, none of which are as accurate as electronic monitoring (EM). Objective: In this paper, we review studies in which compliance was measured with an EM device to determine the associations between dose frequency and medication compliance. Methods: Articles included in this review were identified through literature searches of MEDLINE ®, Psychlnfo ®, HealthStar, Health & Psychosocial Instruments, and the Cochrane Library using the search terms patient compliance, patient adherence, lec-tronic monitoring, and MEMS (medication event monitoring systems). The review was limited to studies reporting compliance measured by EM devices, the most accurate com-pliance assessment method to date. Because EM was introduced only in 1986, the litera-ture search was restricted to the years 1986 to 2000. In the identified studies, data wer