Redox and FDB Partner to Improve Medication Adherence with EHR Writeback Functionality

Interoperability-as-a-service provider, Redox, recently announced a new partnership with First Databank (FDB) to improve patient education, compliance and clinical workflow.

According to the CDC: approximately one in five new prescriptions are never filled, and among those filled, approximately 50% are taken incorrectly, particularly with regard to timing, dosage, frequency, and duration. Not surprisingly, a study in 2017 found that upwards of 26% of hospital readmissions were due to preventable medication-related issues.

Improving patient understand of and adherence to, their medication regimen (timing, dose & method), is important as we move to a value-based system.

FDB’s Meducation platform is used by clinicians to help patients better understand their medication regimen. Through this web-based platform, clinicians have access to medication information in over 20 different languages that are written in simple language (between grade 5-8 reading levels). There are videos, pictograms and a host of other materials that can be shared with patients.

By partnering with Redox, FDB will now be able to provide writeback capability from the Meducation platform back into the EPIC EHR.

Healthcare Scene had the opportunity to dive deeper into this partnership with Katie Bailey, Product Manager at FDB and Niko Skievaski, Co-founder & President at Redox.

Walk us through a typical use-case for Meducation.

Bailey: Meducation material is most commonly generated by a clinical user and reviewed with a patient during the inpatient discharge process to ensure they understand exactly what, when and how to take their medications once they leave the hospital.

If the patient or primary caretaker does not speak English, all material can be translated into any one of over 20 languages with the click of a button. The Meducation app itself is integrated within the EHR using SMART on FHIR technology and available on the Epic App Orchard; Redox works behind the scenes to ensure any material that is provided to the patient is also stored in the patient’s record.

What information is being written back to the EHR?

Bailey: PDF copies of all material (ranging from patient-specific medication instructions, mediation regimen checklists, calendar summaries, and more) can be written back to the EHR.

Why is it important to record this information back in the EHR?

Bailey: Writeback functionality ensures everything handed to a patient is documented and referenceable. This is not only important for patient safety and continuity of care, but for an organization’s auditing purposes. Additionally, it enables an organization to make the material available digitally as part of the standard discharge paperwork via the patient portal.

Skievaski: Far too often, patients are unclear about their care plan and medications when they leave the four walls of a healthcare facility – and the consequences of noncompliance can be serious not only as it pertains to the health of the patient but also from the economic side. Readmissions and non compliance cost the industry billions of dollars. FDB’s Meducation uniquely addresses this vital patient need, and we are thrilled to be part of its success. By ensuring information flows in and out of an EHR freely and accurately, we’re helping clinicians at many health care systems across the country more easily put the right information in the hands of patients for long-term health.

Will this collaboration impact the physician workflow in any way (positive or negative)?

Bailey: Meducation positively helps clinicians more easily prepare simplified, personalized resources for patients to manage their medications. Redox works behind the scenes to ensure any material that is provided to the patient is also stored in the patient’s record. From the clinician’s perspective, the Meducation/Redox data flow integrates seamlessly with workflows.

Were new features or functions added to the Redox platform to accomplish this integration with FDB?

Skievaski: Redox is able to support FDB’s scope with our existing functionality. Something unique to Redox is that we specifically designed the platform for developers building healthcare apps just like Meducation. By working with developers, we began to understand the most common workflows that were required and built functionality to support it. Nowadays, we can support a wide variety of workflows and rarely have to build new data models.

Why choose Redox?

Bailey: Redox is an industry leader in the interoperability/integration space; we partnered specifically with them for their deep expertise. This partnership allows FDB to offer and scale an end-to-end solution to Epic customers—from creating the patient-friendly resources themselves, to providing them at the appropriate point of care, to ultimately storing them back into the patient’s record. By supporting document writeback within our SMART on FHIR solution architecture, Redox is specifically enabling the “storing” function.

Why is this collaboration with FDB exciting for Redox?

Skievaski: FDB is an influential company in one of the most charged areas of the healthcare industry now – medications and med devices — to help transform the patient experience. Additionally, this partnership will help FDB work more efficiently with digital health companies and other health IT vendors.

Redox was a sponsor at 2019’s EXPO.health event.

About the author

Colin Hung

Colin Hung is the co-founder of the #hcldr (healthcare leadership) tweetchat one of the most popular and active healthcare social media communities on Twitter. Colin speaks, tweets and blogs regularly about healthcare, technology, marketing and leadership. He is currently an independent marketing consultant working with leading healthIT companies. Colin is a member of #TheWalkingGallery. His Twitter handle is: @Colin_Hung.

   

Categories