Medication adherence for patients with mental illness.

Medication adherence has been studied for some time; however most research has focused on able-bodied patients or the elderly living independently. What has not been studied nearly as much is medication adherence for people with psychiatric or mental illnesses. In this paper, we present a framework that includes the specific challenges in medication adherence for patients with mental illness, algorithms and protocols for evaluating adherence, and some on-going work in developing effective solutions. The architectural framework and associated algorithms leverage the context-aware computing capabilities available on many mobile devices. The system is designed to be able to collect and offer situation-aware information on medication use and adherence for healthcare professionals and other designated persons.