Medisafe Presents Results of Six-Month Medication Adherence Improvement Study at ISPOR 2016

The study showed that Medisafe users taking cholesterol and hypertension medication had 19.5% and 8.4% higher relative adherence at six months respectively compared to a control group of non-users. The US Center for Disease Control (CDC) recognizes medication non-adherence for chronic diseases as a serious public health problem, resulting in up to $300 billion of avoidable health care costs in the US annually and amounting to 10% of total US health care costs.

"This study revealed the promise of mHealth platforms such as Medisafe to increase medication adherence, which has a proven direct link to improved health outcomes, lower hospitalization rates and decreased medical costs," said Jon Michaeli, Executive Vice President at Medisafe and a contributing author of the research. "Medisafe's holistic approach of using scheduled reminders, a social support system, biofeedback, and individually personalized tools and resources, help patients sustain high levels of engagement for extended periods of time, which is critically important for chronic disease such as high cholesterol and high blood pressure."

The study compared Medisafe users entering a dosing schedule in the app for an antihypertensive (AH) or cholesterol-lowering (CL) therapy between October 1, 2014 and December 31, 2014 to matched non-app user controls. Users were matched to controls one to one based on therapy class, age, gender, pay type, geography, and if participants were new to therapy. Both groups' prescription activity was then followed using patient anonymous prescription claims for AH or CL as identified in the IMS de-identified prescription database. Persistence was calculated at the Hypertension/Lipid market level for six months, with persistence measured using a 10-day refill gap past the end of the days' supply of the previous prescription. Differences in proportions of patients that remained persistent were tested using chi-square.

The study concludes that broad use of mobile technology supporting medication adherence could lead to better control of chronic diseases and lower costs to the health care system.

The full poster presentation can be viewed on the ISPOR website and the abstract is published in the ISPOR publication Value in Health (Wade RL, Clancy B, Michaeli J). Improvement in antihypertensive and cholesterol-lowering medication persistence using a mobile technology application. Value in Health 2016; 19(3): A306 (abstract PMD53).

RESULTS

There were a total of 406 AH and 150 CL users matched to controls. The mean age of the patients was 52.5 and 54.6 years for AH and CL, respectively. The study groups were approximately equal in male-female ratio. Of AH patients, 7.9% were new to therapy, while 7.3% CL patients were new to therapy. Comparing all users to all controls at 6 months, a 5.4% higher persistence for AH (69.7% vs. 64.3%, p=0.05), and a 10.7% higher persistence for CL (65.3% vs. 54.7%, p=0.03) was observed for app users. Similar results were observed among patients that were not new to therapy, with AH app users having a 4.5% higher persistence (71.1% vs. 67.1%, p=0.09) and CL app users having a 15.1% higher persistence (68.4% vs. 53.2%, p<.01) compared to controls.

CONCLUSIONS:

This pilot study found that CL patients using the Medisafe app were significantly more persistent, while AH patients trended toward higher persistence. Broad use of this technology could lead to better control of chronic diseases and their costs to the health care system.

About Medisafe

Medisafe is the leading cloud-based mHealth platform that makes it easy for patients to adhere to the most complicated medication schedules, enables care collaboration between a patient, their loved ones and physicians, and delivers content and services personalized to specific conditions and situations. Medisafe helps all stakeholders in the care continuum use limited time and resources as efficiently as possible, reducing admissions and outpatient visits resulting from incorrect or missed doses. Medisafe is approaching three million patient and caregiver users who have recorded over 300 million successful medication doses on their iOS and Android smartphones and tablets, leading to 100,000+ user reviews that average 4.5 out of 5 stars in the App Store and Google Play app stores.

About IMS Health

IMS Health is a leading global information and technology services company providing clients in the healthcare industry with end-to-end solutions to measure and improve their performance. Our 7,500 services experts connect configurable SaaS applications to 10+ petabytes of complex healthcare data in the IMS One™ cloud platform, delivering unique insights into diseases, treatments, costs and outcomes. The company's 15,000 employees blend global consistency and local market knowledge across 100 countries to help clients run their operations more efficiently. Customers include pharmaceutical, consumer health and medical device manufacturers and distributors, providers, payers, government agencies, policymakers, researchers and the financial community.

As a global leader in protecting individual patient privacy, IMS Health uses anonymous healthcare data to deliver critical, real-world disease and treatment insights. These insights help biotech and pharmaceutical companies, medical researchers, government agencies, payers and other healthcare stakeholders to identify unmet treatment needs and understand the effectiveness and value of pharmaceutical products in improving overall health outcomes. Additional information is available at www.imshealth.com.

Contact:
Kristen Berry
[email protected] 
774-573-0455

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SOURCE Medisafe

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