Biosensing Technology to Track Adherence: A Literature Review

Tracking adherence can be a useful means of identifying opportunities to provide educational intervention to nonadherent patients. The aim of this study was to evaluate the ability of biosensing technology to track medication adherence. Searches of PubMed and Ovid IPA were conducted. The criteria for inclusion were studies that tracked and reported ingestion events. Studies that did not track ingestion events were excluded from this review. Titles and abstracts were assessed for relevance, and full-text reviews were performed on all potentially relevant studies. References from the studies retrieved from the literature searches were assessed for additional applicable articles. Overall, ingestion events were detected 91.3% of the time, with many of the failed detections being related to patients not using or inappropriately using the system. In the studies that looked at the latency time, the overall mean time to detection by the wearable sensor was between 1.1 and 5.1 min. With medication nonadherence being a persistent problem in healthcare, biosensing technology presents an innovative approach to tracking adherence. The technology has been shown to be accurate in its ability to track actual medication use in patients. It has also been shown to detect ingestions with a minimal delay after administration. Accessibility may be an issue with this technology in the future, and further studies may be necessary to access the viability of biosensing technology