Situation
For patients living with chronic conditions, staying on treatment can be difficult for many different reasons.
In the UAE, patients receiving treatment for conditions including psoriasis, psoriatic arthritis, ankylosing spondylitis, asthma and chronic spontaneous urticaria faced barriers ranging from limited disease awareness and concerns about self administration to affordability, psychological challenges and simply remembering to take treatment.
No matter the reason, compliance for treatment using two specific medications for these conditions were very low, with a treatment dropout rate as high as 55% before 2016 which put patients at high risk of poor health outcomes.
A pharmaceutical company responsible for manufacturing these medications was eager to find a new solution to help patients stay on treatment.
Solution
Axios recognized that improving adherence required understanding the individual patient rather than applying a single intervention across the entire population.
Axios used its proprietary Patient Needs Assessment Tool, or PNAT, to identify the individual factors that could lead a patient to discontinue treatment.
Built around the World Health Organization’s five dimensions of adherence, PNAT uses a qualitative and semi quantitative assessment to identify patient risk factors and concerns.
The results are then used to develop a personalized adherence plan targeting the specific barriers identified for each patient.
This allows support to be matched to the patient, whether the barrier is education, treatment administration, emotional support, affordability or another factor.
Results
Since the program began in late 2016, treatment dropout among enrolled patients has fallen from 55% to 9%, while average yearly treatment compliance has increased from 70% to 90%.
Patient enrollment has also grown from an average of four patients per month in 2016 to an average of 27 patients per month, with more than 1,300 patients reached since program launch.
Physician engagement has grown as well, with more than 150 physicians now referring patients to the program, representing a 211% increase.
The program has also helped address individual patient barriers. In one example from the source material, a patient who was afraid of receiving an injection at the hospital was supported by an Axios nurse who administered the injection at home, allowing the patient to begin treatment.
