The average adherance rate to HIV treatment worldwide is 70%. Poor adherance remains the strongest predictor of treatment failure. With the current daily pills, there is more room for missed dosages.

Giovanni Traverso, a researcher from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Brigham and Women’s Hospital in the US, stated that “we wanted to come up with a system to make it easier for patients to stick to taking their treatments. Changing a medication so it only needs to be taken once a week rather than once a day should be more convenient and improve compliance.” He also expanded on the implications of this new technology, saying that “once-a-month formulations might even be possible for some diseases. There are lots of patients this could help, including people with dementia or mental health disorders such as schizophrenia.”