Medication Adherence

Nonadherence to diabetes medications costly

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This is follow-up commentary to an article I Tweeted about earlier this week. JCP: “[Express Scripts] found that patients who were adherent to oral diabetes drugs had 235 fewer emergency department visits and 50 fewer inpatient hospitalizations per 1000 patients, resulting in an average of $500 saved per patients and a total decrease of $210 … Read more

Use of digital pills to measure opioid ingestion [article]

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Here’s an interesting article from the January 13 issue of the Journal of Medical Internet Research (JMIR): Digital Pills To Measure Opioid Ingestion Patterns In Emergency Department Patients With Acute Fracture Pain: A Pilot Study (1) A group of researchers out of Boston utilized digital pills (eTectRx, Newbury, FL, USA) to observe the ingestion patterns … Read more

Medication non-adherence, is more technology the proper response?

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EMR & EHR: “Of all the things that irrationally inflate health costs, one of the top concerns is people who just don’t take their prescribed medications. Medication adherence doesn’t sound like a high-tech issue, but a lot of interesting technologies are being thrown at the problem…. At the recent Connected Health Conference I talked to … Read more

Is multi-dose packaging really a solution to medication adherence?

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Multi-dose packaging has been a part of pharmacy for longer than I’ve been a pharmacist. It’s mostly been limited to long term care (LTC), such as nursing homes, rehab facilities, etc. It’s not something that’s commonly used in acute care hospitals for a host of reasons, most notably medication regimens frequently change in acute care settings. Multi-dose packaging works best when the patient is stable and medications can be dispensed for multiple days, hence the popularity in LTC.

Recently articles have been cropping up for companies attempting to use multi-dose packing technology in the ambulatory care setting, i.e. outpatient pharmacy. The most recent of which is an article in the Tampa Bay Times, describing the M5000 robot (1) by MTS Medication Technologies, an Omnicell company. Check the video below.

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Saturday morning coffee [February 21 2015]

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“An error doesn’t become a mistake until you refuse to correct it.” – Orlando A. Battista

So much happens each and every week, and it’s hard to keep up sometimes. Here are some of the tabs that are open in my browser this morning along with some random thoughts….

The mug below was sitting next to my laptop filled with chocolate covered espresso beans last Saturday morning, Valentine’s Day. A gift from my lovely wife. Apparently she’s aware of my addiction. It made me smile.

MUG_Valentines

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The yin and yang of mobile healthcare

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My “swag bag” from the unSUMMIT contained an issue of Specialty Pharmacy Continuum, a throw-away pharmacy journal focused on specialty pharmacy practice. Like most throw-away pharmacy journals I read these days, I found the content timely and interesting.

One of the articles – Get Appy! New Tech a Bridge to Patient Care – discusses how Avella Specialty Pharmacy is using mobile technology to connect with their patients. Apparently Avella is pretty forward thinking.

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Saturday morning coffee [August 9 2014]

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“If you think a weakness can be turned into a strength, I hate to tell you this, but that’s another weakness.” -Jack Handey

So much happens each and every week that it’s hard to keep up sometimes. Here are some of the tabs that are open in my browser this morning along with some random thoughts….

The coffee mug below is relatively new. It’s one of two that I picked up in Las Vegas at M&M World during one of my daughter’s volleyball tournaments earlier this year.

Orange M&M's Coffee Mug

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Using facial recognition for medication adherence?

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While doing a routine search of Twitter I came across AiCure (@AiCureTech), which touts itself as “Computer vision and facial recognition technology to confirm medication adherence on mobile devices”. Ok, you got my attention. Unfortunately the Twitter account appears to be dead as the last Tweet listed on the account was from September 25, 2013. … Read more

PillPack: a new way of thinking about an old problem

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I read a Wall Street Journal article this morning about an online pharmacy called PillPack that’s doing something a little different. “PillPack mails its customers their medications every two weeks, but rather than putting them into several big bottles, the company pre-sorts them into sealed, single-dose packs, based on when a patient needs to take … Read more

Gema Kit – NFC-enabled medication compliance tracking for consumers

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This is interesting, the use of NFC tags to track patient’s medication compliance. Makes sense when you consider the ubiquitous nature of NFC on mobile devices these days. MedCityNews: “[Gema Kit] features stickers embedded with sensors that link to a patient reporting website. These small circles go on pills, pill bottles or blister packs. The … Read more