Capillary microfluidics for monitoring medication adherence.

Medication adherence is a medical and societal issue worldwide, with approximately half of patients failing to adhere to prescribed treatments. Despite decades of work, hundreds of interventions, and thousands of publications, no significant global progress has been made in improving medication adherence. Even as early as 2002, a provocative review published in JAMA suggested that many of the studies on strategies to improve medication adherence produced only modest effects and that "innovative approaches to assist patients to follow prescriptions for medications are needed.[1] The goal of this minireview is to examine how recent work on microfluidics for point-of-care diagnostics may be used to enhance adherence to medication. Considering that an improvement in medication adherence can have a much larger effect than the development of new medical treatments, it is more than time for the research communities working on chemistry, biology, pharmacology and material sciences to consider developing technologies to enhance medication adherence. For these reasons, this minireview is not meant to be exhaustive but rather to provide a quick starting point for researchers interested in joining this complex but intriguing and exciting field of research.