Medication adherence is a big problem, and recent studies are bringing the actual costs and causes into sharper focus. At the same time, health care reforms such as electronic health records and prescriptions, as well as new incentives from the US government, have encouraged investors to tackle solutions to the problem. Questions remain about the impact of these reforms, but the companies profiled in this issue, HealthPrize Technologies, PillJogger, RxAnte and SentiCare, see an evolving climate in which their medication adherence technology solutions can turn into profitable businesses.

Companies with new, often implantable devices that enable the remote monitoring of patients aim to enable a new, more efficient kind of disease management. However, one of the biggest hurdles to adoption of disease management to date has been lack of reimbursement. The patients that can most benefit from disease management--sufferers of congestive heart failure, for example--tend to be elderly people that are covered by Medicare, which has no mechanisms to reimburse for disease management. So, beyond the usual hurdles that device companies face, of working the kinks out of technology and proving its clinical value to physicians, patient monitoring companies also need to find the right delivery model that helps them get paid for their technology.