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Catalyst Behavioral Sciences is a research and consulting firm that specializes in applying psychology, cognitive science, behavioral economics, and marketing sciences to understand and change consumer decision-making and behavior. 

Medication Nonadherence Background

Most consumer behavior is under control of the unconscious mind. Of the non-conscious factors, habit is the most important driver of brand growth. Habit represents both obstacle and opportunity. Obstacle, because competitive brand users existing habits prevent purchase and use simply because they passively and subconsciously default to their usual brand routine. Opportunity, because for repetitive tasks like disinfection habit represents the brains preferred approach because it frees up cognitive resources.

Problem: a biopharmaceutical company was troubled by their patients' medication nonadherence problem

my impact

the team

I worked directly with the CEO on this project to understand clients' needs and provide final deliverables, in which I was solely in charge of diagnosing the problems and collaborated with the CEO on designing the prototype.

Digging into these problems allow my team to come up with the question: What were factors determining human habits formation/change and behavioral barriers of complying?

methodology

  • Firstly, I spent 3 weeks conducting qualitative and quantitative analyses of market trends on environmental products as well as academic research on habit formation and shift

  • Then, I spent 1 month to define problems, complete usability tests and diary studies of patients' medication intake processes

diagnosis

same behavior had different motivations

  • Upon analysis, two groups of nonadherent patients were identified

    • One group of people simply just forgot to take medications due to a lack of reminder/cue​

    • The other group intentionally (mostly implicitly) chose not to take medications as they did not trust healthcare providers

solution: digital reminder tool

How it worked: a valid, reliable, and scalable method to identify the top factors impacting adherence for different types of patients, drugs, and time points so pharmacists can give tailored advice/nudges that significantly improve adherence

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© 2025 by Chenyu Wang.

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