Westfield, NJ – A business plan that began as a way to help her college-aged son get out of bed in time for classes might soon help Amy J. Yoffie tackle the ever-growing – and expensive – problem of medication compliance.
Yoffie and her business partner, Jean Steckler, last year launched iReminder, LLC and are now looking to market “Compliance for Life,” a Web- and telephone-based solution to improve medication compliance and persistence by gently reminding people to take their medicine when they’re supposed to.
National studies indicate that half of all Americans diagnosed with a chronic medical condition fail to follow their medication regimen. Resulting medical problems, medication updates and visits to the doctor or hospital are estimated to cost employers, healthcare agencies, government and pharmaceutical vendors between $100 billion and $200 billion a year.
Yoffie said those statistics struck a chord after her plan to develop a wake-up calling service for colleges fizzled. She took a survey of the healthcare market and realized there weren’t many solutions to get people to take their medication.
Yoffie and Steckler are now shopping their “Compliance for Life” solution, seeking a pharmaceutical vendor who would finance a pilot program within the next half-year. After that, they plan to market the solution to managed care providers, pharmaceutical firms, disease management companies, insurance vendors and hospitals.
“This is such an obvious solution to a big problem,” says Steckler, who, like Yoffie, has a long background in the pharmaceutical industry.
Yoffie and Steckler list several scenarios on the company’s Web site outlining how “Compliance for Life” might be useful. Suggestions range from a caregiver keeping track of an elderly person’s daily regimen of medications to a parent monitoring a college-aged diabetic’s daily blood tests and insulin shots to a psychiatrist sending weekly reminders to members of a therapy group.
Offered as an Application Service Provider (ASP) on iReminder’s own services and licensed to companies who want to integrate the technology into their own systems, “Compliance for Life” offers several features. A multi-channel delivery system allows for messages to be delivered by telephone, text message or e-mail, and a customized delivery sequence allows for several reminders if the first message isn’t received. An alert system allows case managers and family members to be contacted if message transmission fails, and alternative phone numbers and e-mail addresses can be entered into the system to account for people who might be moving around from one location to another. Finally, the system also contains a platform for educational messages and regimen instructions, and allows for reminders for such actions as scheduling a doctor’s or dentist’s appointment or filling a prescription.
“It does have an interactive ability and component,” says Yoffie, who sees the system evolving to handle small pieces of individual information, such as blood pressure or weight. “We like to think this is much more effective than telling people to go to a Web site.”