MEDICATION


Patients, Pills And Platforms


Dr Ben Maruthappu, Co-Founder and CEO of homecare start-up Cera, discusses how digital homecare companies can solve the NHS medicine wastage.


It’s no surprise that one of the most complex issues facing the NHS is ensuring that patients take their medicine correctly. But while the health service spends over £15bn on pharmaceutical drugs each year, essential medications too frequently goes to waste, with only 51% of patients taking prescriptions as prescribed, according to NHS figures.


This can be attributed to a range of causes oſten outside of a patient’s control. For example, one in five people aged 85 to 89 suffer from dementia- related conditions like Alzheimer’s, which could result in them forgetting to take their medication. In other instances, patients are deterred from taking their medication because it’s hard to swallow, tastes unpleasant or causes uncomfortable side effects like nausea. Indeed, some patients are not informed of the consequences that skipping their medication could have on their health.


Not only is non-adherence to medication having a widespread impact on people’s health – up to 8% of all unplanned hospital admissions are the result of medication issues – but it can also be financially burdensome for the NHS. Unused drugs cost the NHS £850m annually, according to estimations; this money could help fund the acquisition of additional staff, beds or the latest drug innovations.


It’s clear that the level of waste could be controlled if contributing factors were more closely monitored. To date, this hasn’t been possible due to the largely offline nature of the sector. However, with advancements in technology and the advent of digital care records, this is becoming much easier to do. At Cera, for example, we are experimenting


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with Artificial Intelligence to better understand our patients and their health needs, via our bespoke AI assistant, Martha.


“The industry needs to recognise technology’s


potential to resolve chronic flaws in our healthcare


system, and significantly improve the lives of our elderly population


simultaneously – we just need to embrace it.”


AI technology obtains data on a scale much greater than any human being. By regularly updating care records on a digital platform, homecare providers can accrue millions of data points pertaining to each patient’s medical condition. These can provide a highly detailed and far more accurate picture of the patient’s physical state and even, over a sustained period of exposure to the patient, begin to predict important developments in their health.


More specifically, this technology can track how regularly the patient is taking their medication, when they’re not taking it, and how this is affecting their health. Is nausea a common side effect for them, for example? If so, among other patients taking the same drug, is there a trend emerging where patients are refusing to consume their medicine


for this reason? When a care worker inputs this type of information into the digital record, AI is so powerful that it can start to predict certain patterns.


Taking this a step further, we should soon be able to examine trends within digital care records to more easily identify the challenges the elderly face when taking their prescribed medication – even on a national scale. Understanding these underlying obstacles will help us to develop effective solutions, providing the pharmaceutical industry with unique data to ensure that current and future medications are made more accessible and suitable for patients.


It is clear that greater collaboration between the NHS, homecare providers and pharmaceutical companies – via technology – could significantly help to reduce the almost billion-pound medicine waste in the NHS. From a patient’s perspective, a greater understanding of the challenges they face with taking medication could be life changing. Ultimately, the industry needs to recognise technology’s potential to resolve chronic flaws in our healthcare system, and significantly improve the lives of our elderly population simultaneously – we just need to embrace it.


ceracare.co.uk www.tomorrowscare.co.uk


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