Most families getting together over the Thanksgiving weekend studiously avoid the kind of awkward conversations about politics, religion and healthcare that are likely to end in arguments, tears and slammed doors. But the entrepreneurs behind Noble.MD want doctors to use its health IT program to provoke conversations on what can be notoriously touchy subjects like vaccines, smoking cessation and weight management, to improve health literacy and change the way people deal with certain healthcare issues. The idea is to do it in a way that doesn’t turn patients off but is direct enough to stimulate their interest.
It has personified its patient engagement tool with a name — Theo. An iPad-based questionnaire screens patients, identifies specific patient risks, and delivers a video. It does a before and after assessment of patient knowledge, attitude, and readiness for change in connection with an intervention for a specific topic. The whole process is designed to take about 5 minutes. Its target customers include payers, accountable care organizations, and hospitals.
Todd Johnson, the CEO, founded Noble.MD in 2012. In a phone interview with MedCity News earlier this month he talked about a study of its technology with Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia for the Human Papillomavirus vaccine. “This area suffers from a combination of misinformation. Doctors don’t feel comfortable talking about it and tend to shy away from it. Our platform offers a great way to give patients facts in a consistent manner. They can broach the conversation. The novel approach there is it’s designed as a program that a child and parent go through together. It gives adults the facts.”
HPV vaccines are a good example of an area where NobleMD believes it can improve the number of vaccines given. It cites current stats that show less than 33 percent of girls and 15 percent of boys receive the full three-dose regimen. This, despite CDC recommendations that every child be vaccinated at age 11 or 12. It’s not difficult to understand why since it’s a balance between parents’ squeamishness of having a sex talk with their kids while trying to protect them.
Johnson also sees opportunities in other areas like improving adherence and understanding of conditions like congestive heart failure, flu vaccines, fall prevention, and exercise. A collaboration with Florida ACO ChenMed to increase flu vaccines, particularly among elderly, Spanish speaking patients, produced a 22 percent increase in vaccine rates. Successfully informing people about healthcare issues like flu vaccines and fall risks could mean fewer trips to the emergency room.
In conversations with large payers it sees the ability of its technology to save money by targeting specific patients at the doctor’s office rather than casting a wide net. Johnson said the company doesn’t view its platform as a replacement for other patient engagement tools, but something that complements them. It is also eyeing a couple of opportunities in notoriously challenging areas, such as palliative care.
Its board members include a couple of folks from Safeguard Scientifics, including Gary Kurtzman, the managing director for healthcare, and Ming Fang, a principal in healthcare. It also includes some of its collaboration partners such as Dr. Paul Offit, the director of the Vaccine Education Center and a pediatrician in the division of infectious diseases at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, and Dr. Chris Chen, ChenMed CEO.
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.
With physician’s limited time with their patients, several health IT companies have looked at how to improve the quality of interactions to make these appointments more meaningful. Earlier this year I wrote about Duet Health’s Patient Intelligence Index to show doctors the level of their patients’ interest and understanding of their condition. One goal is to help physicians better understand what their patients’ challenges are and use that information to tweak how they communicate with their patients. Another business, @PointofCare, takes a different approach by using data based on feedback from patients on adherence to help inform clinical decisions.
