Monitoring and Managing the Adherence to Antiretroviral Therapy in Patients with Human Immunodeficiency Virus Infection

Highly effective antiretroviral therapy (ART) can greatly reduce the fatality rate in patients with human immunodeficiency virus infection and enable them to achieve long-term survival. Medication adherence is one of the key factors to achieve viral suppression and delay disease progression. Current methods of measuring adherence can be divided into indirect and direct methods. The factors affecting adherence can be roughly divided into four categories:individual levels, drug treatment programs, interpersonal relationship problems, and structural problems. Strategies to improve adherence include short message alert, treatment guidance and planning, real-time adherence monitoring, and application of long-acting antiviral agents. Although there have been many studies on adherence, there are still major challenges in obtaining effective and scalable adherence monitoring and improvement tools.