Janssen Healthcare Innovation, a Johnson and Johnson company, is introducing a provider-facing component to its Care4Today mobile health manager application, the company announced from the stage at Health 2.0 in Santa Clara, California today.
"It’s called the patient dashboard, and it allows provider to manage patient adherence in real time," Janssen marketing director Fran Devlin told MobiHealthNews. "They get their own page, patients can opt in to be monitored and then it’s really about speed to impact. When they start to lapse, you can see it in real time, and institute provider coaching, or whatever intervention is most appropriate. As opposed to right now, when the provider might have to wait weeks or months between appointments, and only find out there's a problem when there’s too many pills in the bottle or something."
In addition to the dashboard, Care4Today is adding full Spanish language functionality, which increases the reach of the app in the United States while setting the company up for international launches. They're also in the finishing touches of completing a German version, Devlin said.
The new dashboard offering will not necessarily be only for physicians, but could also be used by pharmacists, care managers, or diabetes managers. Anyone who works with patients and has a vested interest in their adherence can request a dashboard credential from Janssen. The company will then give them a unique identifier that they can give out to patients. It's then the patients' responsibility to input that into their existing Care4Today apps to start the near real time data reporting.
Devlin said that the range of possible recipients of the data is a strength of the program, because not all physicians will be willing to make managing patients' adherence part of their workflow.
"We can’t take on the workflow for them, but the idea is, and I think it’s one of the strengths, there are other stakeholders around the patient," he said. "Identifying someone in that chain somewhere that will take this on is important."
He said that Medicaid Advantage plan managers and ACOs, for instance, have expressed interest in the program because they're concerned with bottom line health outcomes, which medication adherence can improve. Care4Today will still be usable as a patient-facing application for those who choose not to opt in or those whose providers choose not to opt in. The Dashboard will be an additional behavior change lever, along with social tools, gamification, and charity-based rewards.
Last year, Care4Today announced its partnership with the now-defunct Aetna CarePass. Devlin said that, although CarePass is shutting down, Care4Today is working on an API to provide its data to other aggregators, including Apple's HealthKit.
"Our lead developer likes to say we want to be sort of what Fitbit is," he said. "Anybody who wants Fitbit data on their platform can have it. It was a good learning from CarePass that the seven-day adherence score was meaningful to them, as important as steps and calories. If you want to talk about overall wellness, this is a key feature to have."
