Remote therapeutic monitoring company PatchRx can now integrate its medication adherence insights into existing care management platforms through PatchRx Connect. It aims to eventually do so with electronic medical records, but fees and bureaucracy can make the path to integration thorny for new technologies.
PatchRx derives medication adherence insights from a device that attaches to the cap of a prescription. The device transfers data to Patch’s web app, where clinicians can view a daily adherence score, consistency trends and the amount of medication taken per day.
Now, the medication adherence data will be able to integrate with existing care management platforms through PatchRx's Connect API, Andrew Aertker, CEO and co-founder of PatchRx, told Fierce Healthcare. It can integrate with existing chronic care management platforms or remote patient monitoring platforms that want to include medication adherence data in the patient profile, he said.
“Clinicians were spending so much time just trying to find the right data points within our system,” Aertker said. “In going back and checking the EMR or going back and looking at the other care platforms, it just created these inefficiencies, and these disparate solutions just don't really work very well.”
Components of Connect include an encrypted “Gateway” that streams data via cellular to the PatchRx web app and API; the PatchRx Connect API, which allows providers to view the received data, metrics and trends in a managed care software system; patient SMS alerts; and remote enrollment enabled by its direct-to-consumer shipment capabilities, according to a press release.
PatchRx recently announced partnerships with DrFirst and Harris Healthcare, which will integrate Patch’s insights. The company has not yet announced other partners.
Patch is also in talks with electronic health record vendors, but the road to EHR integration is rockier. Aertker said it’s important that EHR companies take their time to vet new technologies, but there are many barriers for startups to obtain integration.
“The barriers that have been created for solutions to embed themselves within those web apps are so significant,” Aertker said. “And then the fees associated with us being directly embedded in some of those web apps are so high that for early-stage innovation and/or startups, it makes it almost impossible.”
Aertker said Patch hopes to see more collaboration across healthcare technology companies. During the COVID-19 pandemic, there was a boom of virtual care companies, he said. He wants to see those companies work together so that clinicians are not burdened with point solutions.
“What we want to see as a trend overall in this market is people playing nice with each other because at the end of the day, like when you put so many solutions and pieces of data that are coming from different platforms in front of the clinicians who are actually trying to treat the patient, it just doesn't serve the patient,” Aertker said.