Walgreens is teaming up with HealthPrize Technologies to offer digital patient engagement, education and gamification for medication adherence platform through Walgreens.com. The Walgreens program powered by HealthPrize is expected to finish development later this month and will be co-marketed by both companies to pharmaceutical sponsors. It is planned to be offered to patients filling certain brand-name prescriptions for chronic conditions such as diabetes on Walgreens.com.
Medication nonadherence is a significant challenge for both the healthcare system and patients. It is estimated to be the cause of $290 billion of otherwise avoidable cost to the U.S. healthcare system each year, including poor health outcomes.
The HealthPrize Action Engine® platform utilizes gamification, concepts from behavioral economics and incentives redeemable at Walgreens to motivate patients to engage and learn about their condition and to remain adherent to their medications. Participating patients may be offered weekly condition-related quizzes and surveys, daily health tips and fun facts, leaderboards and competitions, daily medication prompts via email or SMS (at the patient’s option), monthly refill reminders and medication adherence scorecards
The HIPAA-compliant program will also allow participating patients to track any of their other medications filled at Walgreens. It is planned to be ready for implementation with partners in Q3 2016 for diabetes, with additional conditions such as GI, high cholesterol, depression, asthma and COPD, expected in market by the end of the year.
