LinkedIn·Thursday, 23 July 2026·23 Jul 2026
A very good Forbes article highlighting a critical challenge in clinical research: medication nonadherence remains one of the largest…
Bernard Vrijens
Chief Executive Officer & Scientific Lead | Honorary Member of the International Society for Medication Adherence | Exposure-informed clinical trials.
A very good Forbes article highlighting a critical challenge in clinical research: medication nonadherence remains one of the largest sources of data corruption in clinical trials.
The article rightly points out the limitations of self-reports, paper diaries, and pill counts, all of which can significantly overestimate adherence.
However, I believe it misses the most proven, scalable, and widely adopted solution available today: smart medication packages.
For more than two decades, smart packages such as electronic medication bottle caps and connected blister packs have provided objective, dose-by-dose adherence data in clinical trials. Unlike patient-reported measures, they generate a precise dosing history, allowing sponsors to identify nonadherence, distinguish drug failure from treatment failure, and improve the interpretation of efficacy and safety outcomes.
While technologies such as ingestible sensors and AI-based video confirmation are promising, their adoption remains limited by cost, complexity, and patient burden.
Smart packaging, on the other hand, has already demonstrated its value across thousands of clinical studies and millions of dosing events, making it the current gold standard for measuring medication-taking behavior in real-world clinical research.
As the industry increasingly recognizes that adherence is not just a patient issue but a data quality issue, objective adherence measurement should become a standard component of trial design rather than an afterthought.
The question is no longer whether adherence matters.
The question is: why are we still running trials without measuring it accurately?
#ClinicalTrials #DigitalHealth #MedicationAdherence #ClinicalResearch #DrugDevelopment #DataQuality #AARDEX
https://lnkd.in/eAqUP2Bm
Fixing Medication Adherence In Clinical Trials: How Technology Stops Data Corruption
https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesbooksauthors/2026/05/21/fixing-medication-adherence-in-clinical-trials-how-technology-stops-data-corruption/
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