Apple Adds Medication Tracking to iPhone. How Will It Impact The Specialty Patient Journey? - HIT Consultant

 Yishai Knobel, CEO and co-founder of RxWare

Imagine visiting your doctor’s office. Instead of swiping a copay paper and filling retired a insubstantial signifier by hand, the receptionist says, “We take Apple Health.” You question your iPhone over a integer kiosk, instantly uploading your existent aesculapian grounds and security information. Your copay is past deducted from a wellness savings account. Voila! The doctor will see you now.

This script is nary longer relegated to the distant future. By introducing medication tracking to its existing iPhone Health app, Apple just did for semipermanent medicine cause users what it did for anyone with a carnal wallet. It paved the mode for an iPhone-native EHR tool susceptible of interoperable functionality. 

The upshot to users, eventually, will be unrivaled convenience. For pharmaceutical companies, Apple’s caller instrumentality integrates their products much intimately to patients’ wide wellness files done the powerfulness of mobile apps ― thing galore drugmakers tried but failed to execute connected their own. And for specialty drug patients, whose medical journey requires the astir clip and money, the iPhone medication tracking tool could beryllium to beryllium a godsend.

The conception of a medication tracking smartphone app is not new. Medisafe, Mango Health (acquired by TrialCard), and RediHealth are among those which service the aforesaid purpose, offering blase functions and constricted information integration with different apps. This and different existing medication-tracking tools person acceptable a precocious modular for the industry. Apple, then, cannot expect to person every iPhone user to its native medication tracker overnight. But these apps can’t instantly access Apple’s point-of-sale outgo function, oregon integrate seamlessly with Apple Watch’s health-tracking features, oregon read, respond to and stock stored Apple Health information with a provider. Allowing medication tracking within the Apple Health ecosystem promises unbound functionality ― not dissimilar the quality betwixt changing from Venmo to Apple Pay.

For iPhone users with lone a tiny fistful of progressive prescriptions, that’s not a almighty selling point. These users mightiness lone usage a medication tracker portion traveling, if they usage 1 astatine all. Specialty drug patients, whose prescriptions combat uncommon oregon life-threatening conditions, bash not person this luxury. They indispensable instrumentality much drugs much often than the wide population. Pre-loading each actionable portion of information astir each their medicine drugs ― including erstwhile to instrumentality each ― has the imaginable to unlock a satellite of conveniences.

The iOS instrumentality underlying the Apple Health model is HealthKit, a database that holds a user’s full wellness profile. It enables immoderate different app connected your iPhone to entree the information successful your profile. What does that mean for specialty drug patients? Let’s accidental I request to trim the frequence oregon dosage of 1 of my 20 medicine cause regimens. I tin participate the caller frequence oregon dosage by manus successful the Apple Health medication tracker. Then, with 1 click, HealthKit tin synchronize this alteration with the MyChart app, oregon whichever app my supplier uses to pass with me. Only a autochthonal app could facilitate specified velocity and easiness for 1 elemental transaction.

The powerfulness of these alleged “white label” engines ― inheritance apps that facilitate accusation sharing among abstracted information ecosystems ― is not constricted to healthcare. This is simply 1 lawsuit of a broader, planetary inclination toward mobile instrumentality usage. The endpoint: patients and objective providers alike will be capable to ditch their desktop computers and usage a smartphone to conscionable each their needs ― from checking into the doctor’s office, form-filling, medication tracking, and everything successful between.

Seventy-eight percent of specialty drug patients usage their mobile phones erstwhile visiting pharma sites already. They are engaging with their instrumentality successful this mode astatine each times passim the day. This subset of the patient population will inevitably payment astir from Apple’s medication tracker, pointing the mode guardant for the powerfulness of autochthonal apps to alteration an inconvenient chore into an instantaneous convenience.

About Yishai Knobel

Yishai is the co-founder and CEO of HelpAround. Prior to HelpAround, Knobel was Head of Mobile astatine AgaMatrix Diabetes, shaper of the world’s archetypal smartphone glucometer. He besides served successful Microsoft’s Startup Labs successful Cambridge and arsenic an serviceman successful an Israeli Army elite R&D unit.  Knobel earned his MBA from MIT, and has a BA successful Psychology and Computer Science.