Care coordination | Proactive approach to bring together care providers to meet the needs of patients and ensure they receive integrated person-focused care across various settings | Efficient and specialised, removes burden from individual healthcare provider | Feasibility and scalability may be barriers for many practices and healthcare systems |
Self-management and education | Training with feedback to facilitate problem solving, decision making and action planning, which in turn propagate confidence in health self-management | Simple, inexpensive; promotes patient engagement and empowerment | Time consuming; difficult to measure outcomes; requires patient buy-in |
Reminders | Communication to the patient with reminder notice (i.e. pharmacist calling patient when a prescription has not been filled) | Simple, inexpensive; accurate | Time consuming; does not measure consumption (i.e. refilling at another pharmacy); logistical difficulties (i.e. accessing patient records) |
Electronic medication and device monitors | Considered the gold standard for adherence assessment; device with the ability to provide date, time and treatment duration across several therapeutics (i.e. tablets and aerosol inhalers) | Provides adherence measures not only in real-time but also with a longitudinal perspective; ability to send text message to a patient's mobile phone if the dispenser device has not been opened and can notify others including the healthcare worker if doses have been completely missed; results are easily identified; tracks pattern of taking medication | Connectivity problems; expensive; reminders most effective when personal and interactive; pragmatic concerns of data storage and who/how it may be acted upon; expensive, requires return visits and downloading data from medication vials |
Digital technology | Use of alternative devices to obtain data (i.e. home spirometry) | Ability for physicians to intervene earlier for therapy adjustment; ease of use with ability to send text messages and reminders to patients | Connectivity problems; expensive |