Merck & Co. and Geisinger developed two EHR-friendly programs to boost medication adherence, reduce drug errors and help patients and providers connect on their care—and now they're taking those apps to market.
The partners are in talks with several health IT companies about rolling out the two programs, Strategic Program Director Julie Rockey told FierceMedTech. “We’re taking what we’ve built at Geisinger over the last several years and looking to make it available to the broader marketplace,” said Rockey, who helps lead the collaboration.
The apps, MedTrue and the Family Caregiver Application, are the fruit of a six-year partnership between the Big Pharma and the hospital system. MedTrue integrates medication data from several sources, including prescription fill data, to provide a verified list of medications for each patient.
"We know from prior work that about 70% of our medication lists are inaccurate, and these inaccuracies can lead to medical errors," Mike Evans, Geisinger’s VP of enterprise pharmacy and chief pharmacy officer, said in a statement. "The MedTrue application provides an interface that seeks to clean up medication lists, so patients and providers can be on the same page regarding medication use and better care decisions can be made."
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Meanwhile, the Family Caregiver Application, pilot-tested with Geisinger's oncology patients, includes a shared calendar to help staffers work around a patient's personal schedule to set up procedures and medication doses. It also gathers contact information for various providers to help patients air their personal preferences and goals as their treatment progresses.
The programs were designed to plug into a variety of different EHR platforms—using the SMART on FHIR set of data standards, or Substitutable Medical Applications, Reusable Technologies and Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources—while patients and caregivers access the programs at home through a web portal.
The two companies plan to conduct real-world outcomes studies, with the goal of providing more scientific evidence for the programs’ use, expecting to see results in the second quarter of 2019.
In July, Geisinger and AstraZeneca teamed up on EHR-integrated products to help asthma patients and providers manage their care between office visits. It includes a mobile app assistant that provides asthma-related weather forecasts and medication reminders, and allows the patient to log symptoms and triggers.
And last year, Purdue Pharma tapped Geisinger to develop apps that allow patients with chronic pain to send information to their physician through an iPhone or Apple Watch. The digital approach to pain management records real-time data and delivers it to their EHR, allowing providers to modify painkiller prescriptions.