How Accurate Are Electronic Monitoring Devices? A Laboratory Study Testing Two Devices to Measure Medication Adherence

In a prospective descriptive laboratory study, 25 Helping Hand™ (HH) (10 without and 15 with reminder system) and 50 Medication Event Monitoring Systems (MEMS) (25 with 18-month and 25 with 2-year battery life) were manipulated twice daily following a predefined protocol during 3 consecutive weeks. Accuracy was determined using the fixed manipulation scheme as the reference. Perfect functioning (i.e., total absence of missing registrations and/or overregistrations) was observed in 70% of the HH without, 87% of the HH with reminder, 20% MEMS with 18 months, and 100% with 2-year battery life respectively.