Evidence map›Paper›PMID 31007485›Full record

ReviewTzu chi medical journal

Improving the assessment of medication adherence: Challenges and considerations with a focus on low-resource settings.

Saurav Basu, Suneela Garg, Nandini Sharma, M Meghachandra Singh

Open access · diamondAbstract readReview
PubMed Full text at PMC Publisher
In one paragraph

Review in Tzu chi medical journal. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 44 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
44citing papers in PubMed, 2 pooled it
7.5field-weighted citation impact, top 2% of its field
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

44 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 87 citations in OpenAlex.

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  13. Impact of Variability in Blood Pressure and Heart Rate on Beta-Blocker Adherence.Journal of clinical hypertension (Greenwich, Conn.) · 2025
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4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

4 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.

Saurav BasuDepartment of Community Medicine, Maulana Azad Medical College, New Delhi, India.
Suneela GargDepartment of Community Medicine, Maulana Azad Medical College, New Delhi, India.
Nandini SharmaDepartment of Community Medicine, Maulana Azad Medical College, New Delhi, India.
M Meghachandra SinghDepartment of Community Medicine, Maulana Azad Medical College, New Delhi, India.
Maulana Azad Medical College · IN

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

Improving patient survival and quality of life in chronic diseases requires prolonged and often lifelong medication intake. Less than half of patients with chronic diseases globally are adherent to their prescribed medications which preclude the full benefit of treatment, worsens therapeutic outcomes, accelerates disease progression, and causes enormous economic losses. The accurate assessment of medication adherence is pivotal for both researchers and clinicians. Medication adherence can be assessed through both direct and indirect measures. Indirect measures include both subjective (self-report measures such as questionnaire and interview) and objective (pill count and secondary database analysis) measures and constitute the mainstay of assessing medication adherence. However, the lack of an inexpensive, ubiquitous, universal gold standard for assessment of medication adherence emphasizes the need to utilize a combination of measures to differentiate adherent and nonadherent patients. The global heterogeneity in health systems precludes the development of a universal guideline for evaluating medication adherence. Methods based on the secondary database analysis are mostly ineffectual in low-resource settings lacking electronic pharmacy and insurance databases and allowing refills without updated, valid prescriptions from private pharmacies. This significantly restricts the choices for assessing adherence until digitization of medical data takes root in much of the developing world. Nevertheless, there is ample scope for improving self-report measures of adherence. Effective interview techniques, especially accounting for suboptimal patient health literacy, validation of adherence questionnaires, and avoiding conceptual fallacies in reporting adherence can improve the assessment of medication adherence and promote understanding of its causal factors.

Indexed as

AssessmentDiabetesHypertensionLow-resource settingsMedication adherence

Identifiers

PMID31007485
PMCPMC6450154
OpenAlexW2917002057

What OpenQuestion holds

Textmetadata
LicenceCC BY-NC-SA
Read underepoch 390

Registered trials

None linked

Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.