Health IT, Hospitals, Pharma, Startups

First Databank, Polyglot team up on medication adherence

Clinical drug data and medication adherence are being melded together in a deal between First […]

Clinical drug data and medication adherence are being melded together in a deal between First Databank and startup Polyglot Systems, which has developed a cloud-based adherence platform for hospitals, ambulatory care centers and pharmacies across the U.S. and Canada.

South San Francisco-based First Databank, part of Hearst Health, will use North Carolina-based Polyglot’s Meducation platform, which provides medication instructions for patients determined to be “high-risk” for missing medications because of low health literacy, or impaired vision and language barriers. It can be used as a standalone system or can be integrated into an EHR system.

Providers can then tailor specific instructions for patients — in 21 languages written at 5th to 8th grade reading levels — and includes illustrations and videos, among other features.

With medication adherence being a $290 billion annual problem, particularly among non-native English speakers, Polyglot is hoping to overcome significant communication issues that often result in hospital readmissions over missed medications.

“Since one-in-three Americans are either low health literate or have limited English proficiency, offering simplified instructions in multiple languages and easy-to-understand formats will help to increase medication adherence and patient satisfaction,” said Chuck Tuchinda, president of First Databank.

Improved adherence, the thinking goes, can go a ways in boosting patient satisfaction, which is now required of providers through provisions of the ADCA that tie reimbursement rates to satisfaction scores.

Polyglot pointed to case studies at John Dempsey Hospital, part of the UConn Health Center, which saw vast improvement in its HCAHPS scores after adopting Meducation. Additionally, a health literacy study on medication adherence conducted in 2014 at the VA Medical Center in Durham, North Carolina found that Meducation positively affected medication adherence and clinical outcomes for high-risk patients with cardiovascular disease.

“Our partnership with FDB means that the majority of hospitals and pharmacies, and thousands of physician practices in the US and Canada that use FDB’s drug knowledge will now have easy access to the Meducation solution,” said Polyglot CEO Sims Preston.

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