Overview

New Zealand-based Medi-Map is the leading medication management software for care organizations. It needed a comprehensive solution that could help patients improve the self-management of medicines. Allion Technologies developed MyMeds mobile app that makes medicine management simpler for these patients.

Problem: Medication Non-Adherence Among Patients

Medication non-adherence among patients, especially with chronic diseases is extremely common. They take so many medicines that they lose track of it. Hence, they need medication adherence – taking medicines correctly as prescribed by the healthcare professional. This means the patients not only have to remember taking medicines on time, but also follow the directions of usage properly and get the stock of medicines filled on time.

According to an article published by McKinsey, 50-60% of patients with chronic diseases miss their doses, take wrong doses, or discontinue the treatment in the first year. A joint study conducted by Boston Consultant Group and Cigna shows that 24% of patients forget to take the medicines while 10% of patients can’t get the prescription filled, picked up, or delivered. Various studies highlight that the non-adherence rate among patients with severe mental illness ranges from 30-65% globally.

Here are some other alarming facts about medication non-adherence:

• Around 125,000 deaths occur every year in the United States due to medication non-adherence.
• 33%-69% of medical-related hospital admissions are due to medication non-adherence.
• Medication non-adherence costs $100-300 billion annually to the healthcare system.

With an intention to help patients improve adherence, save lives and reduce the burden on the healthcare system, Medi-Map was looking for an appropriate solution.

Solution: A Mobile App to Make Medicine Tracking Easy

Medi-Map wanted to partner with a solution provider who would not only bring technological expertise but also offer insights from the product perspective. Allion Technologies fulfilled its requirements. Greg Garratt, CEO of Medi-Map says, “Allion Technologies showcased the expertise with understanding our needs in a field which is foreign to them. They were our ideal choice to build a mobile solution that would make lives better as well as save many lives.”

Allion Technologies understood that they needed to develop a solution which ‘improved compliance, and motivated and encouraged adherence among patients.’ It was also crucial to ensure that the app offered an intuitive solution that will not only solve the existing problem but also make it easier for the potential users to understand and use the app effortlessly. This thought process led to the genesis of the MyMeds mobile app.

Process: A Detail-Oriented Approach Through Scrum Project Management Framework

After an elaborate brainstorming, Allion Technologies concluded that Scrum was the most suitable framework to meet the project requirements. Allion Technologies undertook the following steps to develop the MyMeds mobile app:

• Develop User Personas: Multiple user personas were developed before the wireframing to cater to the solution for the target users. This helped to understand that a majority of the participants belonged to the elderly age group. This indicated that mobile app must offer experience, user interface and functionality to the users.

• Conduct Interviews: Interviews were conducted with the participants to gather required information and strategically design the solution.

• Defining the Scope: A backlog was developed to cover the complete solution. Prioritization was also done along with the client’s need to lay out what has to be included in the first version of the solution.

• Bringing Development Team: After the scope was decided, the development team stepped into the picture to conduct a thorough analysis for sprint planning and decide what will be delivered at the end of each sprint. Throughout the development process of the project, scrum ceremonies were held in each sprint.

• Gathering Client’s Feedback: The client’s feedback and inputs were considered throughout the development stage. The development team provided deliverables as testable builds from sprint 01, and a few changes were made to the original scope as per the feedback. The suggestions were tracked in the backlog to be considered for inclusion in the post-release iterations.

The decision to use Scrum for this particular project proved to be useful given the flexibility that was required in making necessary adjustments to deliver the best possible outcome.

MyMeds Mobile App: Benefits and Features

MyMeds serves as a one-stop medication management platform to help patients live their lives to the fullest without worrying about when to take the next dose or restock the medicines. It has an easy, user-friendly interface considering the profile of the users.

MyMeds comes with useful features. It has the ability to:

• Enter and update the medication.
• Set up the dosage schedule.
• Get reminders when a scheduled dose is due.
• Track the administration of the medication.
• View a timeline of scheduled medications for the day.
• View history of administered medication.
• View a list and detailed view of entered medication.
• Send a resupply request to the pharmacy to receive or pick up medication.
• View the history of resupply medication.
• Alert the emergency contact when the user was not active on the application for a certain period.

Result: Improvement in Medication Adherence

Medi-Map and Allion Technologies closely monitored the impact of the solution on the users of the MyMeds app. We were able to achieve the following results:

• Reminders about the due dose showed a significant improvement among users to adhere to medication on time.
• Functionality to engage the users with marking adherence had a positive impact on the users.
• Streamlining of the medication refilling process reduced the chances of non-adherence among users.
• Caretakers and emergency contacts of the patients found the solution to be useful for being able to receive alerts in a possible case of an emergency.
• Medical professionals and caretakers of the patients have better visibility of medication adherence history for correct diagnosis of their patients.
• The intuitive design of the app has helped elderly users without technology knowledge to use the application with ease.

MyMeds has also been instrumental in enabling Medi-Map and other stakeholders in the healthcare system to identify the causes that are likely to contribute to non-adherence and take preventive steps to address them.

About Medi-Map

The Medi-Map platform manages all aspects of medication in a facility-based environment. It has developed audit tools and the ability for facility management to generate reports at an individual facility level or a wider corporate level.

About Allion Technologies

Allion Technologies is a trusted partner of choice for technology services. It crafts and envisions the ideal, and most lucrative software product or offering for businesses.