Poor adherence to prescribed medicines remains a stubborn cause of treatment failure, and mobile technology has been offered as an inexpensive way to address it. This review draws together published trials, systematic reviews and methodological papers on mobile health interventions for medication adherence, reporting no new data. Text message reminders show the most consistent benefit, particularly in HIV treatment and chronic cardiometabolic disease, while smartphone applications and electronic reminder devices have a thinner and more variable evidence base. Effects tend to be modest, short-lived and dependent on engagement. Heterogeneous adherence measures, short follow-up, small trials and weak reporting of intervention content limit confident pooling, and robust long-term, clinically anchored studies are still needed.
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O’Sullivan et al. (2026) studied this question.
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