A growing number of mHealth solutions are taking the clinical decision support model and turning it toward the patient.
When patients have problems understanding what they're told, they'll skip their medications, take them at the wrong times or in the wrong amounts – or avoid healthcare services altogether until they wind up in a clinic or the hospital. And with an estimated one in three Americans dealing with low health literacy, the market is ripe for solutions that help consumers better understand what their doctors are telling them.
The latest to jump into the ring is First Databank, the Hearst Health subsidiary that focuses on drug information for providers. FDB recently announced a partnership with Polyglot Systems to push its online platform to providers and pharmacies in the U.S. and Canada.
Called Meducation, the platform basically translates a doctor's orders into a 5th- to 8th-grade reading level, and includes pictograms and audio support for those with vision or hearing problems. It's also available in 21 languages, to help patients for whom English is not the first or most comfortable language.
"This is a very short and concise piece of education for the patient," Chuck Tuchinda, MD, MBA, First Databank's president, tells mHealth News. "It's almost like having a patient-driven piece of clinical decision support."
Lori McLean, Polyglot's chief operating officer, says Meducation targets a growing underserved population that avoids healthcare services or doesn't follow prescriptions, and instead shows up at the hospital when the situation gets serious. An estimated 90 million Americans have low health literacy, she said, and are among the primary causes of low medication adherence and medication errors.
And while most of them prefer to have their instructions printed out on paper, McLean said more and more are using smartphones and tablets, which would give them access to an interactive platform.
"These are their instructions – this isn't something you read once and throw away," she said. "The key is to make this information available to them at any time, at any place, and on any device."
Meducation is available as both a standalone solution and an add-on to the EMR, and executives say it has proven its value to providers in improving medication adherence and patient satisfaction scores. A health literacy study undertaken in 2014 at the VA Medical Center in Durham, N.C., saw a 77 percent increase in adherence among veterans taking heart medication after receiving their instructions through the Meducation platform.
Tuchinda said FDB considered the consumer-facing market at first, but felt that providers need to be at the front of this solution, guiding their patients. This platform not only targets medication adherence, he pointed out, but patient engagement.
"There's a lot of progress to be made on the patient side," he said, noting that the more a doctor and patient collaborate on the diagnosis and recommendations, the better the chances are of a patient adhering to doctor's orders.
And the more likely they'll stay out of the hospital. According to McLean, as much as 11 percent of all hospitalizations are caused by medication non-adherence.
