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Indigenous Peoples

  • Increased Compliance
  • The RxPense® Hub
  • Secured, Controlled Daily Dispensing
  • Remote Monitoring

Indigenous Peoples and Medication Adherence

“Indigenous peoples” (often referred to as, “Aboriginal peoples”) is a collective name for the original peoples of North America and their descendants. In Canada, the Indigenous peoples’ population grew by 42.5% between 2006 and 2016, resulting in the fastest growing population in Canada.

Indigenous peoples have a strong cultural heritage with unique issues to coexist with non-indigenous populations. For example, a recent article in Impact Ethics, managed by the Novel Tech Ethics research team in the Faculty of Medicine at Dalhousie University suggested that Canada’s biggest health problem is indigenous health. In spite of our amazing, free healthcare system, the problems facing indigenous peoples are many.

Examining just one issue, indigenous peoples remain among the most “at risk” for medication non-compliance and medication (and substance) abuse and are among the largest recipients of “daily dispensing” prescriptions. These are prescriptions which are considered to be the most critical and the most “abused” causing doctors and pharmacists sufficient concern that they decide to deliver one day’s worth of Rx drugs every day.

The pharmacist must document the reason the patient is unable to manage their drug therapy independently when dispensed as a 7-day supply. Typical reasons include a risk of intentional overdose, consumption of methadone for the treatment of opioid use disorder, risk of dependence to, or misuse of, a drug that cannot be addressed with weekly dispensing. Other reasons include severe cognitive impairment, severe mental disability, severe psychiatric illness or severe physical disability that cannot be addressed with weekly dispensing.

If we then consider the national Opioid Crisis, indigenous peoples are among the most affected.

RxPense® Benefits for Indigenous Peoples

An advanced and secure medication dispensing system like the RxPense® will significantly increase medication adherence and virtually eliminate double-dosing and overdosing. It will also solve many of the challenges of “medication diversion”. Increasing connectivity to Health Care Professionals (HCPs), including case workers, Personal Support Workers (PSWs) and pharmacists, with additional connectivity to family and caregivers, will provide measurable benefits such as:

  • Remote monitoring of medication compliance by physicians and pharmacies, patient conditions, including vitals
  • Telemedicine
  • Support before and after clinical appointments to “facilitate the patient journey”
  • Greatly improved “health equity assessment” – access to relevant data is no longer a challenge
  • Vastly reduced travel costs (1 in 5 Indigenous patients travel >250km for consultation/treatment)
  • Direct and timely support for missed doses and anomalies
  • Virtual support groups and more frequent interactions with PSWs and HCPs

Telemedicine acceptance is rising throughout the world, bringing virtual doctor visits to remote communities. This personal videoconferencing will serve more rural and remote indigenous communities. Combined with advances in digital health and biometric sensor technologies, we can now better support self management. (Bringing Reconciliation to Healthcare in Canada – March 2018). But what does that mean?

Better medication management at home (or LTC/residence) means far fewer hospitalizations and doctors visits; better socialization and productivity; greatly increased quality of life. It means greater autonomy for indigenous patients. It means less emergency care & more home care.

medication adherence for indigenous peoples

Secured, Controlled Dispensing

The RxPense® offers a high value solution for all these conditions. Better health care, delivered through better medication security, better monitoring, better connectivity, better data and better medication compliance will result in better patient outcomes.

The RxPense® will reduce cost at many levels. Medication dispensing; patient follow up and remote monitoring; data capture and analysis; delivery of health care services. Secure telemedicine is enabled.

The RxPense® can significantly contribute to the overall health outcomes and well-being of indigenous peoples.

The RxPense® offers

  • Vastly improved medication adherence via notifications, ease of use (nothing to open), prepared and ready to take, confirmations and audit trail.
  • Improved monitoring through connected sensors, alerts to caregivers, cloud based recording and consolidation of data and alerts.
  • Improved security, elimination of medication “diversion” through better physical and virtual security.
  • Improved efficiency and reduced cost through staff reductions.
  • Reduced hospital admissions and mortality through better medication delivery and management.
  • Better care, better outcomes with proper medication adherence and monitoring.

The RxPense® can significantly contribute to the overall health outcomes and well-being of indigenous peoples.

The RxPense® Hub

RxPense®* is a medication dispensing and remote monitoring solution that ensures indigenous peoples at home, local community or remote locations, take the correct medications on time and notifies caregivers or health care professionals if they miss a dose. It can also capture (through external sensors), monitor and store vitals along with the electronic patient record for better follow-up by doctors and pharmacists. It gives users access to digital health care and telemedicine.

Alerts and notifications include a series of visual, audible and vibration prompts to the patient and email, SMS and Cloud-based recording for caregivers. RxPense® secures and automates the dispensing of DisPill® packaged medications through a patented process, and reduces the risk of medication non-compliance, prolongs life and increases quality of life for the patient.

RxPense®* is the ideal pill dispenser for indigenous peoples. Remote locations are no problem. Controlled, monitored, authenticated doses ensure the right medications are delivered to the right person at the right time. Abuse is minimized. Adherence is increased.

Connected

In addition, the RxPense Hub features a full set of modern communications technologies specifically targeted for seniors, that enable both voice and “videoconference” communication directly from the device. These same technologies will enable “virtual doctors visits” that require no travelling, no time-off for a family member to accompany the patient.

Remote Monitoring

The ability to remotely monitor each client, both from the point of view of their medication compliance and from connected sensors that include everything from vitals monitoring to connected fall detection devices to quality of sleep devices, enable the residence to provide a significantly enhanced (and commercially desirable) service for its clients and their families.

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