Words by GOLD newsdesk
Patient adherence is the focus of a new project launched by the Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI) and led by Pfizer.
The five-year project, entitled ‘BEhavioral and Adherence Model for improving quality, health outcomes and cost-Effectiveness of healthcaRe (BEAMER)’, brings together 28 European partners from academia, civil society and industry to jointly address the negative patient outcomes and significant costs associated with poor patient adherence.
Co-led by Merck KGaA (Darmstadt, Germany) and managed by the University of Porto, BEAMER aims to acquire a comprehensive understanding of the underlying factors that influence patient adherence, irrespective of the therapeutic area, through pilot studies involving 18,000 patients across six countries. It is hoped the results will enable stakeholders to design flexible and effective solutions that could promote broad and consistent impact within a real-world context.
“We are incredibly excited about the potential of BEAMER to improve treatment adherence among patients with many different conditions, from all walks of life,” said Claire Everitt, BEAMER industry Project Lead and Engineering Team Lead at Pfizer. “The positive impacts of successful drug development and diagnosis are greatly reduced if patients aren’t following their prescribed treatment regime. We hope this project will provide the tools to help industry, doctors and healthcare systems improve treatment adherence rates by identifying and addressing patient needs.”
It is estimated that 50% of patients don’t take their medicines as prescribed, which contributes to 200,000 premature deaths annually in the EU, leading to an estimated €125bn in avoidable hospitalisations, emergency care and adult outpatient visits each year.
