According to a recent IMS Health study, poor medication use by clinicians and patients costs $200 billion each year in the U.S., or 8 percent of all U.S. healthcare expenditures. To improve medication use and safety, MedSnap, LLC introduces MedSnap ID, an iPhone® application for clinicians, health systems, hospitals, clinics, ACOs, pharmacies and home health providers. MedSnap ID uses computer vision technology to quickly identify an entire set of patient pills and screen them for safety.
"Medication history taking is a critical part of ensuring a safe medication experience," explains Dr. Patrick Hymel, CEO and co-founder of MedSnap, LLC. "Yet figuring out what a patient is actually taking is time consuming and error-prone. Our technology allows the patient to demonstrate what they actually take – perhaps directly from their pill organizer - and in seconds, an accurate medication list can be generated, complete with pertinent drug-drug and drug-disease interactions. We've designed this technology to empower clinicians and healthcare systems to undertake improvements in medication safety at the individual and enterprise levels."
MedSnap ID Identifies Prescription Medications in a Snap
MedSnap ID provides clinicians and healthcare professionals with a subscription-based service that identifies prescription medications using MedSnap's patent-pending computer vision technology and precision Snap Surface. Using the iPhone camera, the app identifies prescription medications, including generics, by name and strength, screens for drug-drug and drug-disease interactions and provides detailed clinical information via a professional database. The application also exports Snap reports through print and email. MedSnap ID is currently available for iPhone 4S and iPhone 5.
MedSnap ID Enterprise Provides Mobile Medication Reconciliation for Health Systems
Taking it one step further, MedSnap ID Enterprise is designed for health systems, emergency medical service providers and home health organizations to integrate MedSnap data into existing information systems and provide centralized review of medication regimens across the organization. In addition to the features found on the individual version of MedSnap ID, the Enterprise version can securely import the MedSnap regimen into the patient's electronic health record or EHR. For home health providers, MedSnap Enterprise provides a centralized data review and analysis across the organization's user base for quality assurance and documentation purposes.
"In the Emergency Department, clinic, pharmacy or during a home health visit, it takes valuable time for a clinician to manually identify and screen a dozen or more patient medications from a brown bag, unlabeled bottle, or pill organizer," explains Dr. Hymel. "Also, errors in prescription writing, dispensing, or patient management are a common, yet under-recognized source of adverse events. With MedSnap ID our goal was to make rapid medication regimen assessment a new vital sign."
Crowd-sourced Effort to Expand Visual Pill Library
Over the past eight months, MedSnap has engaged hospitals, schools of pharmacy and clinicians to join MedSnap's Pill Mapping Project, an ongoing healthcare initiative designed to visually map the identities of thousands of prescription pills. By doing so, MedSnap has expanded its proprietary Visual Pill Library to include more than 3,000 of the most popular prescription pills in the U.S. User submissions of new medications allow the Visual Pill Library to grow. MedSnap's quality assurance team reviews each submission for independent verification, then adds it to the Visual Pill Library for the benefit of the entire MedSnap community. With MedSnap ID, healthcare professionals will be in a unique position to leverage MedSnap's visual pill identification technology to improve their medication safety and reconciliation processes.
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