Online Personal Health Records Services Help Improve Medication Adherence, Study

Diabetics who use online personal health records tend to adhere to their medications thereby improving health outcomes, according to a latest finding.

The  latest study published in the journal Medical Care, claims that patients suffering from diabetes who use online patient portals to perform tasks like scheduling appointments, accessing their health records, viewing the results of lab tests, ordering prescription refills and emailing their respective care providers, adhered to their medications and also saw improvement in their cholesterol levels.

To prove the hypothesis, the study was conducted on 17,760 patients suffering from diabetes who received care from Kaiser Permanente in Northern California from 2006-2010. The average age of the subjects was 62 in which 40 percent were non white minorities. The subjects had an average of more than six chronically used medications and 11 outpatient visits in a year.

"Medication adherence and other health behaviors are often the hardest things for a health care system to influence," senior author Andrew J. Karter, PhD, research scientist at the Kaiser Permanente Division of Research in Oakland, Calif., said in a statement.  "Offering patients the option of ordering prescription refills online may create efficiencies for pharmacy operations, convenience for patients, and also improvements in adherence and health."

The study subjects who were prescribed cholesterol lowering medication were basically divided into three groups based on their usage of the online refill portal - 'occasional users', they requested for medication on the portal irregularly; 'exclusive users', they requested their entire refill through patient portals. The last was the control group which never used any online refill function.

On evaluating the participants' data, the researchers noticed that there was a six percent drop in medication non-adherence and poorly controlled cholesterol among the exclusive users compared to the occasional or non users of online refill function.

Lead author Urmimala Sarkar, MD, an assistant professor at University of California San Francisco concluded saying, "this research is an important step in understanding the benefits of portals beyond convenience. Given the clear connection between medication adherence and improved health outcomes, this study provides insight into how online portals may improve health outcomes."