Medisafe Helps You Avoid Costly Healthcare Expenses

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 82 percent of American adults take at least one medication and 29 percent take five or more. However, only 50 percent correctly follow their medication schedule, and 700,000 suffer an emergency due to medication mismanagement each year.

Medisafe was created to make remembering to take medications easier. Founded in 2012 by Omri Shor, the company’s CEO, and his brother Rotem (CTO), it’s now among the top medication management apps on the market with over 4.2 million registered users.

Created to Eliminate Medication Mismanagement

“In 2012, my father, who is diabetic and hypertensive, came to me and asked if I had seen him taking his medications,” Omri Shor recently told RewardExpert. “I gave him a very straightforward answer, which was ‘No.’ While I meant ‘No, I have not seen you,’ he understood it as ‘No, you haven’t taken them.’ He immediately took a second dose of his entire medication regimen that included an injection of fast-acting insulin.”

The result was a life-threatening overdose, but Shor caught the error in time and his father is still alive today. “It easily could have ended up differently,” he added. “The experience made us understand that there is a real problem in medication management for my father and many like him, so we founded Medisafe.”

Medication Reminders and Much More

As the first-of-its-kind cloud-synched mobile medication management platform, the Medisafe app helps users manage the medications they take for chronic health conditions—such as diabetes, high blood pressure, and high cholesterol—as well as more complex conditions such as cancer.

In addition to hourly, daily, or weekly pill reminders, the app gives you a place to track blood pressure, glucose, and other health measurements that they can then share with your physicians. It will remind you to order medication refills, notify you of potentially dangerous drug interactions, show you pharmacies with the lowest out-of-pocket costs for your medications, and even alert a family member or caregiver—known within the app as a Medfriend—if you miss a medication dose.

“Adding a Medfriend is a great service for patients,” Shor added. Past analysis by Medisafe of 1,617 users found that adding a Medfriend improved medication schedule adherence in 71 percent of the patients, with 40 percent of non-adherent users becoming adherent.

Medisafe’s newest feature—launched in November 2017 and known as Safety Net—uses artificial intelligence to enhance the app’s medication reminders.

“Using mobile phone GPS, whether you are disconnecting from your home wi-fi, and all sorts of sensors, Medisafe can identify where you are,” Shor explained. “That means that if you haven’t reported that you’ve taken your meds and you’re leaving home, the app will pop up a notification. For some medications, taking them [at a certain time] is not critical. But for others, this could be a lifesaver.”

Shor noted that Medisafe users must authorize the app to monitor their phone’s GPS and other sensors, and said that reviews of the new feature have been overwhelmingly positive.

Reduce the Risks of Financially Devastating Hospitalization

While Medisafe is undoubtedly saving lives—125,000 people in the U.S. die due to medication mismanagement each year—it is also helping patients protect their finances by reducing their healthcare expenses. Medication mismanagement “costs the U.S. healthcare economy about $300 billion annually,” Shor said.

Additionally, it has been estimated that the direct medical costs of three chronic conditions—namely diabetes, high blood pressure, and high cholesterol—amount to $106 billion every year. But one study conducted by Medisafe and IMS Health found that use of the Medisafe app by patients with these chronic conditions improved their medication schedule adherence.

This improved adherence decreased the risk of an expensive hospitalization by 38 percent for patients with diabetes, 39 percent for those with high blood pressure, and 45 percent for those with high cholesterol.

“Being admitted to the hospital is a pretty costly event,” Shor said. “When you take your medications, you dramatically reduce your risk of hospitalization. You’re also improving your health and saving a lot of money as an individual. That leaves money for better things, like buying your family gifts at the holidays.”

To learn more about Medisafe or download the Medisafe app for Android or iPhone, visit medisafe.com.