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Janssen Healthcare Innovation has launched Care4Today, a messaging platform for aiding patients with their medication routines.
The company is part of Janssen Research & Development, a pharmaceutical unit of Johnson & Johnson.
Janssen released the apps in a soft launch in June, and officially introduced the Care4Today platform July 25.
Care4Today consists of a secure messaging portal, a Website and a mobile application for Android and Apple iOS. The Web portal allows users to keep a journal of medication adherence and share the records with their doctors.
The goal of the platform is to enable consumers to take their medications, refill their prescriptions and keep up with their doctors’ appointments, David Tripi, founding partner for Janssen, told eWEEK.
With Care4Today, Janssen hopes to eliminate the “forgetfulness” of patients regarding taking their medicine, said Tripi.
Care4Today is part of a new push by Janssen into mobile health. It involves “optimizing health care delivery where health care is delivered,” said Tripi. “We believe health care is moving away from the doctor’s office.”
The messaging component allows patients to answer questions like “Did you take your medication”? Users can customize the reminders according to the name of the medication.
Users without a smartphone can still access the Website in their mobile browsers on feature phones.
“You’re able to manage your appointments, prescriptions and reminders from both the phone and the Website,” said Tripi.
Although Johnson & Johnson is a drug manufacturer, the platform allows users to conform to medication routines for any drug manufacturer’s medication, Tripi noted.
More than 50 percent of U.S. patients fail to take their medication as prescribed, according to a 2009 report by the New England Healthcare Institute (NEHI). Medication nonadherence leads to about 3.5 million hospitalizations and 125,000 deaths per year in the United States, NEHI reported.
Text messaging can improve medication adherence, according to CTIAs Semi-Annual Wireless Industry Survey for 2012.
In a 2011 study by George Washington University, called “Medication Adherence and mHealth,” a simple app such as Vocel Pill Phone was able to help patients with poor adherence and less education improve their medication routines.
Care4Today offers secure 256-bit data encryption and leaves a user’s identity unattached to medication adherence data, according to Tripi.
“It’s encrypted from the phone to the server,” he said.
In addition, Janssen can wipe a user’s device on the Care4today.com site if the device is lost or stolen, the company reported.
Users can download Care4Today from the Apple App Store or Google Play. Care4today.com will also send a link to users’ phones upon request.
Future updates to Care4Today will include additional languages and improvements on how data is stored, said Tripi.
Janssen will also add images of the pills and dynamic messaging, which would provide feedback with a message like “Great job, your adherence is 91 percent,” said Tripi. “In version 1, you have to do the math yourself,” he noted.
In addition to medication adherence, Janssen plans to develop products that apply genomic data to personalizing drug delivery.