Medication adherence app to expand with university expertise

emocha mobile health is expanding its mobile medication adherence services with the help of pharmacists from the University of Maryland School of Pharmacy’s eHealth Centre.

A market leader in medication adherence solutions, emocha uses video Directly Observed Therapy (DOT) to ensure patients correctly follow medical advice and recommended medication dosages.

This is delivered via its Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act-compliant mobile app (HIPAA), through which patients enrolled in the firm’s DOT programmes will video-record themselves taking their assigned medication while working with emocha nurses and health care workers as support teams.

Currently offered to hospitals, health systems, and health insurers, emocha’s objectives through the service are to increase medication adherence, address medication-related problems, and manage the rising cost of care and readmission rates.

With the collaboration, the firm will expand the offering with eHealth Centre pharmacists providing patients with comprehensive medication review and reconciliation services through the mobile application.

“By leveraging the University of Maryland School of Pharmacy’s eHealth Center, we are able to provide the highest quality medication review to patients and expand our ability to rapidly address medication-related problems,” emocha CEO, Sebastian Seiguer said in a media statement. 

Patients can report side effects, receive reminders and track treatment progress through the app, while the university’s pharmacists will help them optimise their medication regimes and quickly respond to any negative reactions.

Medication nonadherence can be a costly affair, resulting in billions of dollars worth of unnecessary hospitalisation costs and poor health outcomes.

According to recent estimates, the US healthcare system pays between US$100 and US$289 billion in preventable hospitalisations every year because of nonadherence, with adverse drug events leading to more than one million visits to emergency departments and approximately 350,000 hospitalisations annually.

Through its proprietary technology, and the collaboration with the University of Maryland, emocha hopes to help reduce these numbers. Current research shows adherence rates of more than 90 percent among emocha’s registered patients. 

“Incorporating pharmacists who work in the school’s eHealth Center to confirm that patients follow correct technique, and to provide timely interventions to solve drug-related problems such as side effects and maximise therapeutic outcomes, makes emocha the most comprehensive solution to medication nonadherence,” says Seiguer.

The eHealth Center is the clinical arm of the Center for Innovative Pharmacy Solutions (CIPS) and specialises in providing pharmacist-to-patient medication management services through HIPAA-compliant video technology.

This now includes emocha’s DOT platform.

“At the University of Maryland School of Pharmacy, we focus on providing highly supportive services to patients through comprehensive medication review and reconciliation to prevent and reduce drug-related problems,” says CIPS Director Magaly Rodriguez de Bittner.

“emocha is leading the way on the development of health-related technologies, and we are pleased to collaborate with them to provide medication therapy management services to a wide array of patients.”