Part of the problem with the notion of compliance is that it implies a passive patient. While patients might have been expected to be docile in the 1950s, 21st-century patients are used to interaction and involvement. They are used to receiving personalized information-from online stores that recommend items they might like to apps that tell them where their friends are to drugstores that remind them when prescriptions are due for refill-and then making their own decisions. No wonder they don't do what they're told.

Many have examined the compliance problem from both the medical and psychological perspective. Vermiere and colleagues from the University of Antwerp, Belgium, reviewed the literature-which addressed as many as 200 different variables-and concluded that "...non-compliance remains a major health problem ...Read more