Posts Tagged ‘InforMedix’

What I Found Today

08/25/2008 , 10:45 AM by Alex Sicre

Lots of news about medication adherence today. As part of my job, I often educate people about the effects of medication non-adherence when pitching them our services. It is surprising how many people are unaware of the pandemic, even though there has been so much research over the last 20 years about it.

I am always looking around the web for more information, and today I have found a few companies attacking medication non-adherence through a variety of ways.

At The Earth Times, a press release about Pleio launching their GoodStart program with the Outcomes Personal Pharmacy Network. I have been following this Canadian company for awhile, and it is great to see they are in the marketplace. Their niche is helping patients stay adherent to their medications for the 1st 100 days through a handful of interventions at the pharmacy level.

It is great to use the pharmacist in the intervention, however how will this slow down the fulfillment procedures at the pharmacy? Patients are already yearning for a more automated system, what if they have to wait even longer for the 1st time fill, and wait for the people ahead of them to enroll in the program?

Two stories from MarketWatch. The first, a press release about HC Innovations signing a LoA to use InforMedix’s Med-eXpert System for up to 500 of ECI’s complex patients. I have been following InforMedix for over a year, and they have made some great steps toward increasing medication adherence pill dispenser /monitor. In fact, it is being used in AETNA’s Medication Adherence Lottery Clinical Trial.

I am surprised there is not more news from the NACDS Conference this weekend, since I have only seen this press release about ValueTrak from ValuCentric and PDX. Their new program allows for linking of ValueCentric’s trade data with PDX-Rx.com’s prescription data to give manufacturers a “full visibility of their product activity”.

And finally this weird story from The Chicago Tribune about a man who stole the identity of a mentally disabled friend to get heart by-pass surgery.

“You can’t just walk in with somebody’s Medicaid card like it’s a credit card and have heart surgery done,” said Jeff Nelligan, spokesman for the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. “A doctor would need to know blood type, cardiac history, medical history and other comprehensive records that just couldn’t be faked. This doesn’t make sense.”

Very bizarre that this would happen with all of the checks and balances in place at a hospital for such an expensive procedure.

Enjoy the news!

Med-eMonitor Improves HIV Medication Adherence, BUT Look at The Test Group

03/28/2008 , 9:43 AM by Alex Sicre

I picked this up from lifesciencesworld.com, but it was on the PRWire as well. SEE my comments at the end.

ROCKVILLE, Md., March 26 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — InforMedix Holdings, Inc. (OTC Bulletin Board: IFMX), announced that results presented by Dr. David Bangsberg, an internationally renowned expert on medical adherence, at the Third International Conference on HIV Adherence, showed that HIV+ patients using its Med-eMonitor™ “smart pillbox” that monitors medication and care plan adherence, achieved an average 89.5% medication adherence rate.

The Med- eMonitor “smart pillbox” is linked to the Med-eXpert™ software system that analyzes patient information and provides Web-enabled reports and urgent outbound alerts to caregivers when patients miss medication or suffer declining health.

Approximately 1.2 million people in the US are living with HIV, with an additional 40,000 becoming infected each year, costing the US health care system approximately $50,000-$75,000 per year per patient, or $50 to $75 billion in total annual costs.

Average adherence to HIV antiretroviral therapy is under 70%, and 20-33% of HIV-positive patients will miss at least one of their doses over any given 3-day period. Given that a 10% difference in adherence by individuals is associated with a doubling of viral load, and a 21% increase in the risk of progression to full-blown AIDS; based upon the statistics above Med-eMonitor/Med-eXpert offers the potential for a 40% decrease in the risk of an HIV patient developing full blown AIDS.

The challenging population of 76 patients that were enrolled in the program not only suffered from HIV infection, but frequently were also suffering from drug abuse and severe mental illness, and were near-homeless.

COMMENTS
As I always say, I applaud anything that encourages and enhances medication adherence. It am impressed by these raised adherence rates for HIV patients, but I think regular adherence rates are even lower. Here is my one question though, the sample group of 76 patients were near -homeless, and suffered from drug abuse and severe mental illness. This, to me, does not seem like an accurate test of the efficacy of Med-eMonitor™ – since it is in a controlled environment. I am not knocking the Med-eMonitor, but certain factors have to be in place to use it: #1 being a house to put it in, a fast internet connection, and a patient who waits for the machine to tell them when to take their pills.

With such a structured regimen as HIV medications, sometimes 10 – 20 medications a day, at certain times, one would have to be in front of the Med-eMonitor all day, waiting for the cue to take their meds. So how did the study go? Did the drug addicted, mental unstable near homeless stay in a shelter, rehab facility or mental institution and have their own Med-eMonitor programmed for them? Instead of the nurse coming around with their pills, it was the machine?

I will have to look further into this study to get a real understanding of it all. It just struck me as bizarre. If you are going to announce these results, maybe not mention that the patients were mentally ill, homeless drug addicts.

I still applaud the work and the use of Med-eMonitor and InforMedix for the software they have developed to increase medication adherence. I will have to look at AlignMap to see if Showalter has any comments.