Page 6 - DME Pharmacy, April 2019

remembering, their medications. To help keep patients on their feet, manufacturers are offering a new wave of respiratory drug delivery devices equipped with features that help improve the delivery and measure performance of the device
— and in some cases, the patient.
MONITORING USAGE
“One of the challenges physicians are faced with in caring for their asthma and COPD pa-
tients is knowing if their patients are using their inhaled medication as they should,” says Tushar Shah, M.D., global head of Specialty Clinical Development & Medical Affairs at Teva Pharma- ceuticals. “Offering a tool that enables doctors to see data on their patients’ inhaler usage will allow them to have more productive conversa- tions about identifying issues and how to man- age their illness.” Patients four years and older can use the device, so the data can also help parents manage their children’s conditions.
Device monitoring now also aims to help the patient before he or she needs a scheduled
(or unscheduled) visit to the doctor. “Digital medicines provide patients with a greater sense of control over their disease by placing the tools to self-manage in the palm of their hand,” says Chris Hogg, chief commercial officer for Propel- ler Health. “With a digital medicine, a patient can use their smartphone or computer to remind them to take their medicine, understand when and where they’ve been experiencing exacerbations, communicate with their provider on their symptoms and gain insights into what triggers their exacerbations.”
Remote monitoring for respiratory devices started with CPAP and other sleep devices,
but the data produced and recent technology developments like Bluetooth and 4G (soon 5G) opened new horizons for monitoring more por- table devices. As Medicare demands ever more justification for treatments, solutions that can provide real data are increasingly popular.
“We’ve prioritized clinical outcomes since the beginning, including demonstrating improve- ment in medication adherence by 58 percent and symptom-free days by 48 percent,” Hogg says.
Propeller Health’s product isn’t a nebulizer or inhaler; it’s a set of easy-to-attach sensors the pa- tient installs on any existing inhaled medication device, paired with a web or phone app the pa- tient can use to monitor their own behavior and share information with caregivers. The sensors track the patient’s medication usage and send it to the app, which crunches the data and pres- ents it to the patient in graphic form. The patient dashboard uses GPS data to monitor environ- mental factors like weather and air quality as well as medication schedules and symptom incidents. The app produces reports the patient can take to a doctor or therapist to manage treatment.
“The types of medicine that can be paired with a digital companion vary by company and disease state. Propeller covers more than 90 percent of the inhaled medications for asthma and COPD on the market, including widely used medicines from GSK, Novartis and Boehringer Ingelheim,” Hogg says. “Propeller’s platform connects to both rescue medications, which work quickly to relieve asthma symptoms, and controller medications, which patients take
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