RICHMOND, Va., June 16, 2011 /PRNewswire/ — According to new
data published in Clinical Therapeutics, the way a
medication is packaged can have a significant impact on whether
patients take it as prescribed. The study showed that Shellpak®
calendar blister packaging from MeadWestvaco Corp. (NYSE:
MWV), a provider of pharmaceutical packaging solutions, was
associated with improvement in prescription adherence behavior in
patients when compared with traditional pill vials. According to
the researchers, a Shellpak-based adherence strategy could provide
a substantial cumulative public health benefit when broadly
implemented over a large population.
Poor adherence to medication is a growing issue across the
country. The New England Healthcare Institute estimates the current
cost of drug-related morbidity, including poor adherence, to be as
much as $290 billion annually in avoidable medical spending, 13% of
total U.S. healthcare spending. Research also shows that half of
all patients in the U.S. do not take their medicines as prescribed,
a dismal level of adherence which has held steady over the past
three decades. Poor adherence leads to worsening of disease,
serious and avoidable health risks, increased hospitalizations and
even death. Within the study, the use of Shellpak, a proprietary
calendarized 30-day, unit-of-use medication package, demonstrated
improvement in the adjusted estimates of refill persistence and
adherence as measured by length of therapy and proportion of days
covered with medication.
“We know there are many factors affecting medication
adherence, and we know that the most successful solutions will
involve multiple components,” said study co-author Lenn Murrelle,
MSPH, PhD, and principal founder of Venebio, a life sciences
research consultancy. “What’s exciting about this study is that
medication packaging alone was found to have a po
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