MAP Health Management and Lief Therapeutics are tying up to monitor patients with substance use disorder to learn how detecting and addressing elevated anxiety early can improve outcomes for these patients.
Designed to support providers of behavioral health and addiction treatment, MAP’s platform includes telehealth offerings and remote engagement devices and apps. Lief makes a sensor worn on the ribcage that tracks heart and breathing rates to monitor anxiety.
The partners will launch a pilot program next month, MAP said in a statement. It will involve 50 patients already using MAP and who have a history of anxiety issues. They will wear the Lief Smart Patch, which syncs with a mobile app.
MAP will transmit the data collected to a data store, where it will be used to detect elevated anxiety or panic attacks and coordinate care. The system will then send alerts to case managers, who will communicate with individual patients as they experience symptoms.
“About 40% of individuals served by MAP have a history of anxiety issues,” said Jacob Levenson, CEO of MAP Health Management, in the statement. “What’s very clear in our data is that people in recovery from addiction but with untreated anxiety issues tend to have poor outcomes. We believe that elevated anxiety is a leading indicator of a potential return to substance use. The Lief Smart Patch is going to enable us to get actionable data in real-time to change the trajectory and affect a better outcome.”
The duo plans to present population-level data to national insurance carriers and health systems showing how effectively treating anxiety in people with substance use disorder can affect clinical outcomes and costs.
The partnership with Lief is just the latest in a series for MAP. In February, the company teamed up with Intent Solutions to monitor medication adherence in people with substance use disorder. The pilot program had patients whose risk of relapse was already being monitored by MAP use Intent’s smart, portable medication dispenser. The biometric device, called TAD, dispenses the right dose at the right time and connects to a mobile app to tell patients when to take their medication.