Non compliants (not very) anonymous

Hello. My name is Bob … and I’m non-compliant.  I studied medicine and pharmacology and yet I am still non-compliant. I fully buy into the benefits of the statin that I have been prescribed and yet I am still non-compliant.  I regularly discuss the massive issue of non-compliance for the healthcare sector in my role as healthcare insight and strategy consultant and yet I am still non-compliant.

I had this moment of clarity as I left London Bridge station this morning - followed by feelings of confusion, shame and recrimination.  By the time I reached the office some 10 mins later, I had worked out where the blame lay – squarely at the door of the something behaviour science calls the ‘specificity principle’. This had created a vulnerability in my ‘system’.  Give me the non-specific option to do something anytime I like and there’s always a fair chance I’ll end up not doing it!

While it’s always good to be able to confidently point the finger of blame in these situations (so I did), I realised it’s preferable to come up with a way of fixing the problem too.  I also realised first hand that we shouldn’t see non-compliance with medication as natural and unavoidable phenomenon.  There’s always something behind it and improving compliance is much more in our hands than it is sometimes assumed - we just need to understand and then ‘hack’ the system to create a better set of conditions that makes it easier for patients to do the right thing. This means spending more time unpicking people’s current routines and motivations using techniques like wearable camera lifelogging and behavioural science that take us beyond what we might learn by relying on a more traditional research process.

In my case, while it might be true that my statin can be taken at any time of day (and that flexibility is typically seen as a positive thing), that’s also the thing that makes me much less likely to take it.  So, I eventually hacked my own system by going on-line and finding some information from a random website, something that will solve my problem by giving me a specific time of day and a reason to take the medicine.

So, from now on I take will specifically take the medicine in the evening as my body starts to make more cholesterol.  I’ve not corroborated this info.  There is no need for me to do that.  It will do the job. It’s fit for purpose.

I found my experience this morning strangely inspiring - it added that motivation that comes with personal insight and empathy.  As we seek to give a drug the best chance to fulfil its potential, we need to develop products, regimes and communication that are properly tuned into people’s lives and the ‘systems’ that drive them.   That’s what true patient centricity is – integrating patients throughout the development process and not settling for non-compliance as an unavoidable natural phenomenon.

So today has been a good day.  I learned something.  I hacked my health.  I became less non-compliant.  My name is still Bob.