Policing Compliance: Digital Medicine and Criminal Justice-Involved Persons

Klugman et al. (2018) describe how new medical devices track treatment adherence more accurately than a clinician relying on his or her patient’s self-report. For example, these devices promise to mitigate barriers to adherence, such as complex medication regimens, by reminding patients when and how to take their medication. Medication adherence devices alone, however, are unlikely to address more fundamental barriers to medical care such as cost, access to affordable health insurance, trust in providers, stress, and low motivation to seek help. In fact, most interventions designed to improve adherence rates show mixed results. Where there are positive outcomes, these are often temporary (Haynes et al. 2008).