Apple's medication feature is a step in the right direction

Apple isn't inventing anything new with its medication tracking feature for the iPhone and Apple Watch, which the company announced as part of watchOS 9 at WWDC 2022. There are plenty of apps on the market that alert people when they're supposed to take their medication.

But getting people to take their medications regularly is a significant problem in health care, and about half of people prescribed medications for chronic conditions don't take them as directed. That non-compliance costs the health care system hundreds of billions of dollars a year because people get sicker when they don't take their medications correctly. And while the tool doesn't have everything on experts' wish lists for the ideal drug app, a tech company like Apple entering the ring could be a helpful development.

"I think it's a step in the right direction," says Seth Heldenbrand, associate professor of pharmacy practice at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences.

The tool allows users to enter a list of medications and set a reminder time for each medication. When taking a medication, people get an alert on their iPhone or Apple Watch to record the dose. Press "taken" or "skipped" to record the dose. In addition, the Health app will track how often users take their medications over time.

People who use Apple's medicine app will be able to share their medication history with family members or others through the Health app's sharing feature. That could give doctors an insight into how their patients take their medications, which Heldenbrand says is helpful information. But it would only be one-sided through the app, and one-sided communication around medications has historically been less successful than a system where doctors can respond, de Vera says. Nudges tend to work best if they are part of a positive feedback loop with providers.

Just offering up a reminder feature might not drive significant changes, particularly around something as challenging as medication adherence. "A patient might have a high internal motivation to start using something like this and interacting with it — but do they keep using it, and does it actually help them take their medications? That adherence needle is a hard needle," Heldenbrand says.