The U.S. pharmaceutical industry is the world’s most important and influential market, comprising of over 40% of the global pharmaceutical market.
As an industry, pharmaceuticals will reach a value of $550 billion by 2020 in the U.S. alone.
This equates to an overwhelming prevalence of prescription medications in every U.S. household, with the vast majority of Americans taking at least 1 prescription drug daily. In fact, the average American will fill approximately 13 prescriptions this year, equating to over 4 billion prescriptions overall
Prescription Drug Usage in The U.S
The staggering scope of prescription drug usage in the U.S. ultimately means that the inherent
problem of patient adherence is also on an immense scale. According to the Center for Disease
Control (CDC), as high as 20% of prescriptions will never be filled, and a whopping 50% of
prescription medications will be improperly used. Fueling this issue are patients:
- Forgetting to take their medications
- Refusing to take their medications
- Forgetting if and when they took their medications causing accidental double doses
- Confusing what medications to take at a given time
- Confusing what dosage to take at a given time
- General uncertainty as to whether or not they properly took their medications
- Americans take an average of 4 prescriptions medications each day at age 65
- 16% of U.S. hospital admissions are related to adverse reactions to prescription drugs
- As high as 20% of prescriptions are never filled
- As high as 50% of prescriptions are taken improperly
This problem is further complicated by the lack of methodologies available to healthcare professionals to track patient adherence. There are no tools available for doctors, caregivers, insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies, or hospitals to accurately monitor, measure, and potentially mitigate these adherence issues. The healthcare industry faces a unique struggle on how to ensure that patients take the correct medications and dosages at the correct times.