To help people keep track of the medications they are taking, GoodRx is launching a digital medicine cabinet. As stated earlier, this app has been developed to increase medication adherence, or how well you comply with your doctor's orders regarding medication intake. A section of the website called the Action Center provides you with a daily summary of what you need to do every day. This is to ensure your treatment is up to date.
Several apps are available to help people remember to take their medications daily. There's an emerging trend among online pharmacies and telehealth apps called GoodRx, but one company is taking things a step further by creating a digital medicine cabinet for its users. By creating a one-stop shop for comparisons, reminders, and refills, the idea is to provide an easy way for people to earn financial rewards for taking their medication on time.
Medicine Cabinet, an innovative solution designed to help consumers manage their medications, is the latest addition to GoodRx, a resource for healthcare savings and information. With Medicine Cabinet, people can manage their prescriptions easily. They can get refills and daily pill reminders through the app. They can also search for low-priced prescriptions, find low prices, and earn rewards for staying on track with their prescriptions. Medicine Cabinet's capabilities will make it easier to adhere to treatment plans by making prescription management easier, smarter, and more relevant. Their overall healthcare costs will be handled more cost-effectively due to this, according to the company.
To improve medication adherence, you will want to increase your ability to follow your doctor's directions and take the medication effectively. Many things can contribute to low blood pressure, high cholesterol, or stress, such as taking antidepressants or antibiotics regularly. According to the pharmaceutical journal US Pharmacist, the best results can be obtained when adherence rates are in the 80 percent range for those using lifelong medications. It may sound as if that is not a challenge, but studies show that half of all patients who suffer from chronic diseases have trouble taking their medications in the manner prescribed to them. Approximately $300 billion is spent on health care in the United States every year as a result of that.
To improve health outcomes, manage chronic conditions, and reduce healthcare costs, medication adherence is one of the main determinants of healthcare system effectiveness. A study by the National Institutes of Health estimates that 50% of all American adults do not take their medications as prescribed and one of the reasons for this is the lack of affordability. Twenty to thirty percent of prescriptions never get filled because of this. In addition to having multiple prescriptions, the company noted that it becomes more challenging for patients to adhere to their treatment regimen.
Most medication apps indeed provide you with notifications when it is time to take your medication, but this service is just one part of the solution. Even the most diligent patients may find it difficult to stick to their treatments for a variety of reasons, such as medical costs or a lack of health insurance.
GoodRx's Medicine Cabinet feature has one interesting feature that makes it stand out. It also addresses barriers beyond forgetfulness, which is worth mentioning.
This is why GoodRx's Medicine Cabinet incorporates an Action Center which, in conjunction with your prescription, makes it easy for you to keep on top of your treatments on the day in question.
As an additional feature, you can set regular reminders for taking your medications and getting refills set up. This can be combined with recommendations for the pharmacies that have the best price on a specific medication, so you always know when to take your medication. As part of this, there is also a prescription dashboard that displays the previous prescriptions that have already been filled by GoodRx. This means that any new prescriptions will automatically populate so the existing GoodRx users do not have to enter any data manually.
Medicine Cabinet is designed to help consumers throughout their patient journey. This is not just at the doctor's office, but at the pharmacy and home too, enabling them to seamlessly manage their prescriptions across their entire healthcare journey.
With GoodRx, customers are offered prescription assistance along with personalized tools that keep them involved in their health care. These tools will help them keep track of their prescriptions.
There is some preliminary data from GoodRx which indicates that users who engage with Medicine Cabinet are four times more likely to claim a prescription at the pharmacy as non-registered users, based on early data from the platform.
The GoodRx mobile app allows users to manage more prescriptions. This results in a 40% higher prescription filling rate in the first half-year following the date on which the patient first filled a medication, compared to non-registered users. Until now, these data points have been used to illustrate the value of Medicine Cabinet in terms of giving GoodRx users the ability to remain on top of medications and keep them under control.
A nice way to encourage people to fill out prescriptions that aren't filled as often is to give them small financial incentives, and Hull reports that early beta tests of Medicine Cabinet say that users who are enrolled in the feature claim prescriptions 400 percent more often than users who are not enrolled. Nevertheless, there is a lot of uncertainty regarding whether or not financial incentives are effective in developing and maintaining healthy habits. In some circumstances, these incentives are beneficial, but in other circumstances, they have been shown to not be viable for long-term change when it comes to long-term rewards.
The Medicine Cabinet from GoodRx, however, also illustrates the tensions that are currently prevailing within the health tech industry. The use of large datasets is one of the greatest advantages of using features that rely on them. It's neat, for instance, that Medicine Cabinet does not require users to enter prescription information manually since it draws from previous claims to automatically populate prescription information for the next prescription.
In addition to having a single hub for all of your medications and refills, it plays a very significant role in keeping an individual on track with everything they need to take, reminding you when to take that medication, and rewarding you when you do so consistently.
Despite the convenience of information sharing between doctors pharmacies and tech companies, it would not be unreasonable if you were to feel leery about the idea of sharing personal data between them.
