Digital Pharma
How digitalization of pharmaceuticals will change the experience of interaction with medicines
Is there such an area of human activity today where digital technologies would not look? Medicine and pharmaceuticals — one of the most conservative areas of our life — are also being actively modernized. The general director of the Medicata company (the developer of the first in the Russian platform "Electronic prescription") Boris Gorodetsky, CEO of the company "Medicata".
To make an individual approach to each patient, you need to know a lot about him
It is fashionable and convenient to monitor your health today. Software developers offer products with an extensive range of functions for those who care about physical fitness: MyFitnessPal calorie counter, applications with pedometer, heart rate monitor, electronic cardiograph and nutritionist MiFit from Xiaomi, Huawei Health, Samsung Health, Apple Health and Google Fit. Despite the fact that more and more space is allocated to the "health" direction in smartphones, most often such software is intended for household use and will not be useful to a doctor when helping the owner of a fashionable gadget.
For medical purposes, especially in an emergency, extensive personal data is required: from the history of past illnesses to the immunological status of the patient. The speed of collection and completeness of this information sometimes save the patient's life.
In the leading countries in the field of healthcare development, electronic medical records are used today. In a single electronic document, detailed information about the patient is collected and stored — physical parameters, measurement dynamics, an archive of instrumental examinations, diseases during life, a chronicle of the drug therapy used. Such information about the patient becomes instantly available to doctors of various profiles who lead the patient.
In addition, information from electronic cards, which is collected in an impersonal form, is used in the training of artificial intelligence, which learns to recognize and predict diseases.
Software products such as Epic, Praxis, Cerner, Nextech, Allscripts, Meditech compete in the world. GE and Microsoft are also developing software in this direction.
In Russia, the service of maintaining electronic medical records is also practiced: it is widely used in private medical centers. In state medical institutions, the service is already available in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Belgorod, Perm, Bashkiria. Other regions are next in line.
Among the main difficulties are developers both in the world and in In Russia, it is noted that it is impossible to combine information from various medical institutions into a single patient's medical history due to the incompatibility of the software used. Solving the problem of data migration will increase the efficiency of medical care and reduce its cost, in particular due to a decrease in the number of repeated examinations.
Assignment without errors
According to disappointing data, up to 22,000 people die in England, about 11,000 in Germany, and up to 55,000 in Russia annually due to medical errors. According to the FFOMS, in Russia, in every tenth case, medications are prescribed without taking into account their interaction and individual characteristics of the patient. But digital services are now penetrating deeper into medicine and are already ready to protect the patient from medical errors.
For example, the medical solutions support service "Screening of medicinal prescriptions" from the company "Medicata" is able to reduce the likelihood of medical error by analyzing drug-drug interactions and drug-patient interactions according to 14 evaluation parameters. The platform contains information about all medicines and components registered in Russia, while the data pool is updated weekly. As a result of the doctor's work with the service, the patient receives the most effective medication, taking into account age, health status, the presence of chronic diseases and medications taken.
Similar services are developing in parallel in different countries:
- The American UpToDate solution positions itself not only to support medical decisions, but also as an educational platform for physicians, through which patients receive care based on the most up-to-date medical science data. The service is used by more than 1,000,000 doctors working in 30,000 medical organizations in 174 countries around the world;
- RAMPmedical in Germany analyzes the recommended therapy and provides the doctor with information about possible risks and conflicts of the selected medications;
- British Medal assists in accurate diagnosis;
- Canadian Cohesic offers support solutions to help with cardiovascular diseases;
- The Irish bedside technology TAPA Healthcare is able to predict the negative consequences of the use of therapy through the use of artificial intelligence algorithms.
Easier and cheaper
After passing examinations and receiving an appointment, the patient goes to the pharmacy for medicines. Insurance medicine programs covering the costs of medicines that are common in the world are not yet taking root in Of Russia.
Therefore, the Russian patient is faced with a number of decisions that need to be made independently and at his own expense — in which pharmacy the necessary drug will be available, how the prices for it differ in different outlets, or maybe it's better to order the medicine online. In addition to financial, patients and pharmacy staff note another problem: the buyer often cannot make out what the doctor prescribed — incomprehensible handwriting requires decoding. And due to the fact that the patient does not know which group of drugs the medicine belongs to, he does not buy an analogue that the pharmacist advises. The use of an electronic prescription, a platform that connects a doctor, a patient and a pharmacist, will help solve the problem. An electronic prescription for a patient is a mobile application that does not require any additional skills. At the pharmacy, you will only need to present a QR code on the smartphone screen to buy the prescribed medicine, and after the purchase, the application will remind you of the next time of taking the medication. The doctor feedback function allows the doctor to monitor the course of treatment: to see if the medicine has been purchased and how it is being taken, if necessary, the doctor can adjust the treatment or remotely extend the prescription.
With the help of an electronic prescription, the patient has the opportunity to track prices and discounts for the right medicine in the pharmacies closest to him and decides where to go for a purchase. According to the developer — the company "Medicata" — in the near future, electronic prescriptions will include a version for the visually impaired, will be able to integrate with voice assistants. It is also planned to supplement the service with the option of monitoring the menstrual cycle and pregnancy calendar. In the electronic prescriptions that European doctors prescribe to patients in the EU countries, there is another useful option — they allow you to buy medicines outside the country of residence.
With home delivery
The coronavirus pandemic has demonstrated how important home delivery of medicines is. However, according to a VTsIOM study, since April 2020, when this service became officially allowed, 85% of Russians have never tried to buy a medicine with delivery. Some do not know how to order goods over the Internet, others need the help of a pharmacist. In addition, patients are still forced to visit pharmacies in person, since some of the medicines prescribed by the doctor can be purchased only after presenting a prescription, and the meaning of online ordering is lost.
Digital technologies help to solve these problems. A pilot experiment on the remote sale of prescription drugs is being launched on the territory of Moscow, the Moscow and Belgorod regions, where it will be possible to order any, including prescription, remedy at home. This becomes possible if a service for maintaining electronic medical records of patients operates on the territory of the region and electronic prescriptions are issued. After the pilot is completed in certain regions, the introduction of ER and remote delivery of prescription drugs is planned to be scaled up throughout the country. It is expected that this initiative will contribute to reducing the incidence rate during periods of a surge in SARS epidemics, since pharmacies are the most likely place of transmission of infection from a sick person to a healthy one.
Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru