The Froedtert & the Medical College of Wisconsin health network announced today they have teamed up with Proteus Digital Health and Xealth to provide an evidence-based Digital Medicines offering that is fully integrated into patients’ electronic health records (EHR).
Patients at the Froedtert & MCW health network with diabetes, hypertension, and Hepatitis C are being prescribed Proteus Digital Medicines. These solutions include DigiMeds™, medications with FDA-approved Proteus sensors, a small wearable sensor patch (patch), a mobile app for the patient and an online portal for the physician.
These Digital Medicines solutions provide accurate feedback on medication ingestion to help patients reach their treatment goals faster. DigiMeds™ capture when patients ingest their medication and communicate that information to a patch patients wear on their torso. The patch also records information about activity, rest and heart rate. All this information is encrypted and sent to the mobile app on the patient’s smartphone. The app keeps track of medication use, supporting improvements in patient health behaviors. Physicians can also access this information directly on the Proteus portal provided to them to aid in care team decision-making about drugs and dosing.
Xealth is a digital health prescribing and monitoring platform. The Xealth platform enables clinicians to prescribe customized digital health care content, apps, and services as easily as they do medications today. The Froedtert & MCW health network has been using the Xealth platform, integrated into its EMR system, for 13 months.
Through Xealth, the Froedtert & MCW health network patients who qualify for digital medicines are automatically recognized, and Proteus Digital Medicines are presented to the clinician as part of the normal EHR prescribing workflow. Once patients are using Digital Medicines, the data generated is automatically linked back to the patient record through Xealth, enabling patients to share data about their experiences with the medication back to their care team.
“Our early results indicate high adherence and improved outcomes for patients with Type 2 Diabetes and Hypertension, and patients with Hepatitis C. The ability to include Proteus in a medical record not only improves care coordination but it individualizes and broadens our view of the person. We can better partner with patients by understanding how they’re doing between appointments and increasingly help personalize and optimize their regimen more quickly.”
Bradley Crotty, MD, MPH, an internist with the Froedtert & MCW health network, and Assistant Professor, Medicine, MCW
Froedtert & MCW health network patients with Hepatitis C who used Proteus Digital Medicines achieved 98 percent medication adherence, and 100 percent of the patients achieved a sustained viral response, essentially a cure, from Hepatitis C. Patients with chronic disease management for Type 2 Diabetes, Hypertension, and High Cholesterol had 91 percent medication adherence with a reduction in average glucose levels and lower LDL cholesterol levels.
“Data from patients using Proteus Digital Medicines consistently shows the correlation between patients taking their medications and achievement of health goals. A key enabler of this is improved integration between the Proteus platform and provider systems to accurately update patient-reported data in the medical record. Xealth places the data from Proteus Digital Medicines directly in the EHR, making it easier for providers to see the objective data it provides about patients’ medication taking, their rest, steps and heart rate and to use it to have a better conversation with their patients that can help them make more informed treatment decisions.”
“We are proud to see Froedtert & MCW health network use the Xealth platform in this way to empower patients,” says Xealth CEO Mike McSherry. “Although the Xealth platform can be used to prescribe anything from digital content and applications to non-clinical services such as e-commerce product recommendations, feedback on use of medications and effect on activities and daily living is a critical need for patients and providers, making the Digital Medicines offering by Proteus a great example of how technology can improve that vital connection between provider and patient, and ultimately enable more people access to tools that can help them improve their health.”
Froedtert & the Medical College of Wisconsin
The Froedtert & the Medical College of Wisconsin regional health network is a partnership between Froedtert Health and the Medical College of Wisconsin supporting a shared mission of patient care, innovation, medical research and education. The health network operates eastern Wisconsin’s only academic medical center and adult Level I Trauma Center at Froedtert Hospital, Milwaukee, an internationally recognized training and research center engaged in thousands of clinical trials and studies. The Froedtert & MCW health network, which includes five hospitals, one of which is a nationally ranked academic medical center, more than 1,700 physicians and nearly 40 health centers and clinics, draws patients from throughout the Midwest and the nation. In its most recent fiscal year, outpatient visits exceeded 1.1 million, inpatient admissions to its hospitals were 52,483 and visits to its network physicians totaled 979,143. For more information, visit froedtert.com.
About Proteus
Proteus Digital Health® is enabling a new category of pharmaceuticals: Digital Medicines. These include widely used drugs, formulated so they communicate when they have been ingested; a wearable patch that detects medicines and captures physiologic response; mobile applications to support patient self-care and physician decision-making; and data analytics to serve the needs of health system managers. The company has more than 540 issued patents that protect this enabling technology, and regulatory clearances in the U.S., European Union and China.
Proteus Digital Health is privately held by investors that include Carlyle, Essex Woodlands, Kaiser Permanente®, Medtronic®, Novartis®, Otsuka, and ON Semiconductor®.
About Xealth
Xealth is a digital health prescribing platform that enables clinicians to easily integrate, prescribe and monitor digital health tools for patients from their EHR workflows. These can include patient education, online third-party apps and programs, device monitoring, and non-clinical services such as ride shares, food delivery and e-commerce product recommendations. Using the Xealth platform, care teams and physicians can monitor patient engagement and analyze the effects of more engaged patients. Xealth spun out of Providence St. Joseph Health (PSJH) in 2017, raising $9 million from a variety of investors including PSJH and other health systems such as UPMC and Froedtert Medical College of Wisconsin.
Source: Froedtert Health
Related Links: PR Newswire, www.froedtert.com