Wildflower Health has made its app Due Date Plus available to Medicaid patients in Texas and Louisiana. Its app is designed to help public and private payers predict, prevent and treat high-risk pregnancies. Wildflower is part of a wider group of digital health companies that seek to provide resources for low-income populations.
Among the services its Due Date Plus app supports are smoking cessation programs. Its app refers patients to them based the statistic it cites that 30 percent of adults who are below the poverty level smoke, compared to 16 percent of adults who are at or above the poverty level, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Since it launched its service in Wyoming last year, through Xerox, more than 800 pregnant women have used the application, according to an emailed statement from a spokeswoman. Xerox is seeing an average of 13 visits per month by active users.
In an interview earlier year when it raised $5 million, CEO and co-founder Leah Sparks said that its strengths include the ability to guide users to physicians in their network, giving users a better understanding of what their plans covered and what they did not, connect them to enterprise systems and help health plan clients gain insight into their applications.
There are a few apps and services for expectant mothers already. Text4 baby, for example, provides free text messages with information for women and new mothers on how to have healthy pregnancies and additional information for one year after the baby is born. All that needs to be done to subscribe to the service is to text BABY into a mobile phone or BEBE for Spanish users. It’s organized by National Healthy Mothers, Healthy Babies Coalition with the support of 700 partners, such as the Centers for Disease Control.
The service has had more than 76,450 subscribers in Texas alone since its start in 2010 through the end of October, according to its website. In Louisiana, it has had more than 23,300 users.
Other app developers that are targeting or expanding their services to include Medicaid patients include Omada Health, which developed an intervention program for obesity-related chronic conditions for employers and health plans. Ginger.io has collaborated with Verizon and behavioral health services provider Centerstone to reduce ER visits by changing healthcare utilization patterns.
A Deep-dive Into Specialty Pharma
A specialty drug is a class of prescription medications used to treat complex, chronic or rare medical conditions. Although this classification was originally intended to define the treatment of rare, also termed “orphan” diseases, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the US, more recently, specialty drugs have emerged as the cornerstone of treatment for chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.
Photo: Flickr
