NHS to adopt Healthera's digital medicines adherence tools

A UK company backed by NHS England has unveiled its patient management platform to address medication adherence issues.

Healthera is looking to improve proactive healthcare and patient adherence through an extensive health management platform that comprises an app, a pharmacy software platform and an analytics platform for GPs.

The Healthera app lets users scan QR-codes of medicine labels to automatically create a pill-taking schedule, book pharmacy appointments for important jabs and order repeat prescriptions.

Healthera’s Pharmacy Suite patient management platform gives pharmacists access to real-time medicines data which they can then offer advice to patients, answer non-urgent medicine concerns and make recommendations about complimentary products via an app chat feature.

The Smart Health analytics portal gives GPs access to their patients’ medicine schedule, medical notes and adherence statistics.

“Following successful product trials we are confident that Healthera is leading a new era of connected digital health by turning pharmacies into digital ‘personal healthcare hubs’ and empowering patients to make informed decisions about their medicine,” said Quintus Liu, chief executive of Healthera. “This is great news for pharmacists and patients, carers and GPs, and the wider healthcare economy.”

Over 50% of the UK population is currently on prescriptions, yet proper medication adherence is a huge issue. Only an estimated 16% of people on new medications take it as directed, almost a third of all patients stop taking their medication 10 days after initial prescriptions, and almost half of those that stop taking their medicines do so deliberately – the rest do not realise they’re taking their medication incorrectly.

This represents a big problem for the NHS where poor medicines management is thought to result in around £4 billion of medicine wastage.

In March, Healthera received funding from the Small Business Research Initiative for Healthcare (SBRI Healthcare) - the NHS England initiative intended to drive digital innovation to help address unmet health needs in the UK - based on its potential to ease pressure on emergency services.

In a report released by the SBRI earlier this month, a predicted £1 billion could be saved through the scheme. In the past year, the programme has awarded 26 and 18 phase 1 and 2 contracts respectively to businesses, resulting in a total of £17.5 million investment.