AVON LAKE, Ohio –Â Andrew Small and Geoffrey Hampe are casualties of the worst recession since the 1930s — the two friends lost their jobs earlier this year.
While tossing around ideas about what to do with their futures, Small — an information technology professional formerly with Ernst & Young— and Hampe — a customer service professional who was with May Department Stores, now known as Macy’s – struck on a way to enter Northeast Ohio’s growing health care market with a company of their own.
“So we talked about texting and how we could use that as something to help people out,” Small said. “With health care being a big thing here in Cleveland, we thought, ‘What if we sent out text messages for people who are on medication and need reminders to take their medication?’ ”
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Small and Hampe developed a mobile application called TextMinderRx that sends a text message to your cell phone to remind you to take your medicine or vitamins, or to take some other health-related action, like checking your blood sugar level. The two launched their service during the first week of September.
TextMinderRx joins a growing number of mobile applications in Northeast Ohio that focus on the health care industry. For instance, StaffKnex (pronounced STAFF-ka-nex) blasts text messages to nurses’ phones, asking to fill open shifts. Ideally, nurses take the shifts by responding to the text messages.
According to a 2003 academic study, 125,000 deaths and 19 percent of hospital admissions in the United States per year — at a cost of $100 billion – stem from a lack of adherence to medications. Meanwhile, legislators and policy makers try to find ways to limit the growth of health care spending. Maybe reminding people to take their meds could help lower those costs.
It seems a straightforward process to sign up for the service, which costs $9.95 per month. Go to the TextMinderRx Web site, subscribe to the service and enter the medications that you’re taking along with a reminder schedule. You can enter up to 10 reminder messages that can be delivered up to four times per day. Or you can “free-text” it, write your own reminder — in 160 characters or less.
Small and Hampe are looking for grant money to help them develop a marketing plan for their service. They see their target market as anyone who takes a medication and uses a cell phone. Already, the two are talking to drug stores about advertising TextMinderRx on the outside of prescription bags, Small said.
They also envision other ways to use their mobile application. How about a text message from your doctor’s office that reminds you to go to an appointment?
