How can we help ensure patients continue to take their medications as prescribed? Doctors, caregivers, life sciences companies, and even companies in other industries have attempted to answer this question for as long as medications have been available. But it is not a simple answer. The reasons why a patient may not take their medication are plentiful, and as a result so are the solutions now available to attempt to solve this issue. In fact, the number of new solutions just keeps growing every year.

According to an August 2021 report from the Business Research Company, after experiencing a decline in 2020 due to pandemic, the medication adherence market is expected to recover and grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 11.4% from 2021 and reach $4.2 billion in 2025. Furthermore, it is estimated to reach $6.5 billion in 2030 at a CAGR of 9.2%. One reason for this growth is an increasing demand for personalized healthcare technologies as patients look for advances in how healthcare is delivered following the pandemic.

To help readers get a better sense of this ever-growing market and the newest solutions, strategies, devices, and partnerships attempting to make non-adherence a non-issue, PM360 asked companies to let us know what they are doing, how it is unique, and why it is proving to be effective to this point. Here are the 10 best new adherence solutions we received this year.

AdhereHealth and Levrx Technology

Adhere Platform and Levrx Practice App Integration

AdhereHealth and Levrx Technology

Glenn Wirick
Chief Commercial Officer, AdhereHealth
Glenn.Wirick@adherehealth.com

This year, AdhereHealth announced a new integration with Levrx Technology. The combined solution enables health plans and self-insured employers to realize immediate pharmacy cost savings and near-term medical cost reductions by integrating Levrx’s plan-specific and real-time prescription insights into the Adhere Platform medication optimization offerings.

Anchored within the Adhere Platform, the medication optimization solutions create insights based on medical claims, pharmacy claims, and direct patient and provider engagement to automatically identify patients at the highest risk for non-adherence. The system generates targeted analytics that are updated daily and integrated into the various clinical workflows to prioritize high-risk patients and guide personalized outreach. Insights from predictive analytics enable care teams with actionable insights as they engage patients to close critical medication optimization gaps.

With the addition of Levrx capabilities, AdhereHealth can enhance its impact by adding prescription formulary opportunity analytics into its data-driven medication optimization workflow. Conversely, the Adhere Platform’s analytics are integrated into Levrx Practice App technology workflows for providers.

Unlike other formulary optimization solutions, Levrx delivers plan-specific and real-time prescription insights. This can be superior to the general or national information that other solutions use because they account for the patient’s plan-specific formulary, accumulator, and real-time pricing. Levrx also engages physician groups and members directly, giving healthcare consumers the information needed at the point of care to keep costs low, avoid prescription rewrites, and prevent cost-related non-adherence.

Andaman7

The Andaman7 Platform Solution

Andaman7

Vincent Keunen
Founder and CEO
b2b@andaman7.com

Andaman7 is a Belgian-American eHealth company that was created to significantly improve communication and efficiency in collaboration between patients, doctors, and researchers. Its treatment adherence solution is an extension of the company’s global “care and research” platform and has been on the market for just over one year. The foundation of the platform is the PHR (Personal Health Record), which puts the patient firmly in control of their health management by helping them gather and access their personal health data anywhere.

The solution can be utilized both for care programs (i.e., remote care, care path management, etc.) and for research use cases, such as clinical trials, decentralized clinical trials (DCT), real-world evidence (RWE) studies, etc. Within the platform, a medication schedule can be set both by the patients themselves (self-monitoring) or by care providers and sponsors of studies. The platform is also capable of helping with adherence in other types of treatment, such as digital therapeutics (DTx) to support evidence-based therapeutic interventions driven by software to prevent, manage, or treat a medical disorder or disease.

For some countries (typically the U.S.), Andaman7 can also connect to online databases to very precisely reference exact medications, both prescribed and OTC, which offers quality improvement during research studies. However, OTC drug consumption, including real-world intake data, is available to researchers only after patient consent, which is the foundation of the Andaman7 approach that promises “security by design and privacy by default.”

CareTrack Health

Patient Adherence System

CareTrack Health

Andrew Mills
Co-Founder & CEO
andrew.mills@caretrack.comCareTrack Health is a fully integrated physician practice extension. The patient adherence system enables primary care physicians to monitor whether Medicare patients are following their care plans to proactively identify and escalate earlier interventions in-between appointments. With CareTrack, practices can prevent hospitalizations, close patient adherence gaps, improve quality measures, and drive more proactive screenings and services adoption while increasing Medicare reimbursement rates.

Since critically and chronically ill patients’ non-adherence accounts for 33% of hospitalizations nationally, medical practices’ ability to provide patients with a tailored, systematic care plan outside of the office results in dramatically improved clinical outcomes. In addition to making patients happier and healthier, a CareTrack practice saw more than $2.3 million in additional Medicare reimbursements last year and is anticipated to exceed $4 million in additional reimbursements this year.

Enrollment rates for the CareTrack platform are 4x higher than other vendors or in-house programs, and 85% of patients remain on their care plan “track.” Plus, its intuitive workflow automation within the existing EHR helps remove the complexity of out-of-office care for in-office clinical staff.

DrFirst

Timely

DrFirst

Jennifer DiGennaro
VP, Client Strategy & Business Development
jdigennaro@drfirst.com

DrFirst’s core business of electronic medication management puts the company in a unique position to improve medication adherence with Timely. This solution addresses the most common and costly reasons behind prescription abandonment. Timely delivers the clinical education patients need to be informed about their medication, the financial support to aid affordability, and the personalized behavioral reminders at critical points in the therapeutic journey—from first fill to renewal—to help patients stay on course with their provider’s treatment plan.

Launched just before the pandemic, Timely offers a personalized mobile communication experience extending the reach of prescribers to support the patient journey where and when it matters most—at what DrFirst calls the “point of inception.” This is where adherence stakes are highest—when a patient is making the decision to start and maintain treatment. Timely goes to work as soon as the prescription enters the electronic health record, sending the first mobile communication to the patient from the provider to reinforce the clinical decision, keeping patients engaged, informed, and empowered to stick to their treatment plan.

In the last year, Timely helped improve adherence by as much as 14% for some patients. Furthermore, with 1.5 million patient engagements a week, Timely has shown a 99% retention rate. This level of engagement from patients has helped drive partnerships with more than 50 life sciences brands who are seeing patients remain highly engaged as more than 65% are sustaining their engagement over time, while 35% respond interactively to resources that support their providers’ prescribed therapy.

EVERSANA

ACTICS Patient Relationship Management

EVERSANA

Simon Andrews
President, Data & Analytics
simon.andrews@eversana.com

ACTICS Patient Relationship Management (ACTICS PRM) is EVERSANA’s highly configurable, scalable, and HIPAA-compliant platform that helps clients drive therapy adoption and adherence. Driven by predictive analytics and machine learning, ACTICS PRM allows manufacturers to rapidly identify patient behaviors and patterns to develop personas and predict the “next best action” for personalized engagement.

The platform combines multiple data sets to create insights into access, affordability, and adherence barriers impacting patients, and offers corrective actions to improve adherence. It creates:

  • Customized support plan treatment pathways based on available data
  • Communication touch points directly to patients on their preferred channels (text, email, etc.)
  • Patient hub enrollment/engagement metrics combined with social and real-world data to provide a holistic view
  • Predictive analytics along the patient journey, such as identifying the best intervention strategies to drive positive patient behaviors and adherence
  • Optimized patient assistance and copay programs with data-driven patient centricity

The program tracks several different metrics depending on each client’s program specifications, but common metrics include patient loyalty, medication possession ratio, therapy gap days, and patient churn rate at any given time. The company’s patient churn prediction modeling has developed a benchmark to help clients measure the success of their individual programs by integrating pharmacy claims, medical claims, EMR, lab, and other data sources and track commonalities between high-churn patient cohort and patients who are actively on therapy. To date, the platform has been able to reduce churn by 20%, helping more patients stay on therapies.

GoodRx

Pharma Manufacturer Solutions

GoodRx

Aaron Crittenden
GM of Manufacturer Solutions
acrittenden@goodrx.com

One of the most common reasons for medication non-adherence is affordability. In fact, GoodRx Research has shown that 1 in 3 patients who take prescription medication for a chronic condition reported skipping at least one prescription fill due to cost.1 GoodRx’s partnerships with pharma manufacturers and other key stakeholders in the healthcare industry enable them to offer discounts which have helped patients fill at least 80 million prescriptions that they otherwise could not afford.1 Furthermore, the company’s customer support center receives several tens of thousands of calls each month and has a 99% customer satisfaction score.

In addition to building blocks such as consumer trust, reach, patient advovacy, and affordability solutions, GoodRx also recently acquired vitaCare, a prescription services technology platform, to further enhance its adherence offering by making it more personalized and scalable. While other current solutions approach adherence from either an automated technology perspective or a highly manual process, GoodRx believes the answer lies in a technology-enabled yet humanized approach where the company can be embedded across the patient, provider, and prescription journey as a trusted partner.

The combined capabilities, across GoodRx and vitaCare, have allowed for an adherence solution where users can track medications, earn rewards for compliance, stay educated about the condition, receive reminders, chat with a nurse, talk to a provider, and more. This integrated approach for patients, providers, and caregivers to stay engaged in their therapy ultimately helps to move the needle when it comes to medication compliance and adherence.

References:

1. https://bit.ly/39CSSYo.

KEEP Labs

The Modern Medicine Cabinet and Remote Therapy Monitoring Platform

KEEP Labs

Jeff Wandzura, RPh
CEO
jeff@keeplabs.com

KEEP’s Modern Medicine Cabinet and Remote Therapy Monitoring Platform provides real-time visibility into daily dosing events, informing proactive, data-driven interventions that connect patients to support when they need it most. Through passive data capture, and the flexibility to support all dosage forms, KEEP offers a seamless way to extend specialty medication support services into the last, and most important, mile of the therapy journey—the patient’s home. With many high-cost, specialty medications requiring cold chain storage, KEEP’s dedicated cooling unit reduces wastage and ensures the medication is stored safely with tamper-proof access controls to unlock and open the box.

KEEP’s real-time view into patients’ medication journey allows for immediate, personalized, and pro-active interventions that optimize adherence while improving health outcomes. Actionable interventions are programmed on a therapy-specific basis through the device screen, text messages, or an alert to a care team member or HCP who can provide additional support. KEEP’s platform removes time-consuming barriers that rely on manual data entry to track doses and has created a frictionless, automated system that tells a more accurate picture without forcing any significant changes for the patient.

This frictionless experience extends to the pharmacy with no change in dispensing practices or packaging. Also, integrations with HCPs, HUBs, and other support organizations help to identify, triage, and support patients in a targeted way, based on real-world data. KEEP was named in the top 100 best inventions list in TIME magazine following its launch in 2020.

NovaXS Biotech Corp.

Telosis

NovaXS Biotech Corp.

Tianyi “Jonathan” Xing
Co-Founder and President
jxing@novaxs.coNovaXS is on a mission to simplify the medication self-administration process and improve remote healthcare adherence. Its patent-pending technology Telosis is a smart needle-free drug platform that allows patients to self-administer medications subcutaneously or intramuscularly within 0.3 seconds and tracks long-term treatment progress.

The injector device syncs with the patient’s smartphone app. This allows patients to complete the whole treatment process, from drug preparation and drug administration to treatment monitoring, side effect reporting, and communication, with one click on their device and smartphone. The patient is able to self-manage and self-administer treatments with help from step-by-step customized video tutorials, see calendars outlining the injection schedule, and receive feedback for their adherence patterns and side effects. Care providers can view adherence data, patient-reported side effects, and connect directly to their patients if needed. The real-time injection data collection and treatment reminders boost adherence and help care providers make smarter health decisions.

Needles cause patients pain, anxiety, pose safety risks, and for some people receiving injection therapy is a traumatic experience. Aversion to needle injection-based therapies and treatments is a major barrier to adherence for those with diabetes, human growth hormone deficiencies, allergies, and chronic illnesses. For hopeful mothers using IVF, fertility shots add pain to an already emotionally and physically tolling process.

NovaXS is in the prototype improvement stage and has signed eight letters of intent with in vitro fertilization centers in Southern California. NovaXS is in preparation of submitting an International Review Board protocol with the University of Illinois at Chicago’s Fertility Center. The FDA 510(k) submission is expected to take place in Quarter 3 2023.

Orbita

Orbita Outreach

Orbita

Patty Riskind
CEO
hello@orbita.ai

Orbita, a provider of HIPAA-compliant conversational voice and chat solutions for healthcare companies, recently introduced Orbita Outreach. This new communication module offers an omnichannel outreach approach, enabling pharmaceutical brands to interact via the modality most convenient for the patient—web, voice, email, and SMS. The company works with brands to tailor information in a way patients can understand and complies with regulatory requirements.

Through Orbita Outreach:

  • Patients receive automated communications cascaded across various channels (e.g., first email, then SMS and, if necessary, phone). A current client is experiencing 86% engagement using the Orbita Outreach omnichannel approach.
  • The intelligent virtual assistant answers specific questions or directs patients to other resources (e.g., their provider for a dose adjustment).
  • Patients will automatically be escalated to a live agent if their responses indicate an adverse event.
  • Companies can integrate the solution with CRMs and other systems of record, so every piece of information exchanged with virtual assistants and live agents is documented.

When used to support integrated, multichannel outreach campaigns, Orbita Outreach maximizes patient engagement while automating key workflows to free up overworked staff.

Prescryptive Health

Prescryptive Health

Josh Richardson
Chief Commercial Officer
Josh@Prescryptive.comPrescryptive Health is a healthcare technology company delivering solutions that empower consumers. Prescryptive’s secure, mobile-first products provide people with the information they need to make informed decisions and take control of their health.

Prescryptive Health provides next-generation, mobile market access and medication adherence solutions for pharmaceutical manufacturers. Recognizing that education and reminders are only part of the adherence equation for patients, Prescryptive’s solution empowers patients by integrating price transparency with awareness and education, eliminating surprises or confusion at the pharmacy counter.

Within minutes of the prescription being written, the patient receives comparative prices at pharmacies near them, sees manufacturer’s coupons and drug education, and understands what their employer plan covers—all on their mobile phone. This saves patients both time and money, accelerating first fills and improving long-term adherence to drug regimens while reducing the administrative burden on physician practices and reversal/resubmission of claims by the pharmacy.

Prescryptive has more than 60,000 pharmacies in its network with solutions built on blockchain to ensure end-to-end data encryption. Pharmaceutical manufacturers can customize the solution based on the brand’s objectives and patient population’s needs. Brands can use Prescryptive Health’s HIPAA-compliant, secure solution to have patient-friendly direct-to-consumer mobile engagement and get real-time patient feedback from first fill to refill and/or abandonment—identifying and addressing key inflection points along the way that influence the patient’s continuation of treatment.

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