It’s flu season, but in the fast-pace of everyday professional life it’s common for even the most astute of us to forget to take, let alone pick up, our essential medications to keep us well and in the office. Yet for the elderly, infirm, or those with psychochemical illnesses, forgetting to take one’s daily dose can result in chemical imbalances, hospitalization, or even death.
Medication non-adherence and noncompliance costs the American healthcare system $300 billion a year: 49% of Americans forget to or altogether stop taking their prescribed medications for any number of reasons.
Worse, those most at risk for the adverse effects of medication noncompliance have initially asymptomatic or otherwise insidious diseases, such as diabetes, depression, bipolar disorder, or carcinoid cancer. In the case of psychochemical illnesses such as bipolar disorder, some types of depression, or schizophrenia, intentional nonadherence to prescribed treatments is sometimes a factor, worsening the outcomes of those with such conditions.
So, if technology is a medium to change behavior, ScriptDrop is the blockchain solution for medication adherence, helping people develop new behaviors and improve existing ones related to taking their medication.
“Our goal is to lower prescription abandonment and improve medication adherence. Our combined knowledge of pharmacy and technology allows us to do that. We identified an opportunity in the data where patients were dropping off prescriptions and then not picking them up. That led to our first product, prescription delivery, which is growing quickly,” said CEO Nicholas Potts about the technology.
For healthcare consumers, getting prescriptions can be a hassle, and it is often difficult for people to remember to take them. ScriptDrop’s ecosystem makes getting and taking your medications simpler and cheaper.
ScriptDrop is actively building out its blockchain, the Adherence Blockchain, powered by its Adherence Tokens, through which they are pushing for ubiquity in healthcare.
“We are using blockchain technology (both Ethereum and Hyperledger) to track the patient journey and their adherence in a better way. Our goal is to give the patient back control of their own data. The patient can provision who does and doesn’t have access to what is posted on our blockchain. By using tokens and blockchain, we dramatically increase the likelihood that the patient will use our token to pay down their prescription co-pay. The way in which we collaborate with pharmacies, we can guarantee to the patient that the pharmacy will take their tokens as payment for the co-pay.”
The core technology they’re building is structured around adherence through its medication reminder platform, creating greater efficiency for providers and easing the burden of co-pays for patients. Specifically, ScriptDrop incentivizes medication adherence by granting patients Adherence Tokens as a reward for interaction with their platform’s delivery and medication reminders, which they can then use to reduce their co-pays at pharmacies nationwide.
ScriptDrop isn’t alone: its two largest partners on the pharmacy side are BestRX and Albertsons. Their Albertsons partnership launch helped them deliver prescriptions to victims of the hurricane to allow them to maintain their medication regimens. This blockchain solution works lock-in-key with pharmaceutical company business models: being blockchain-based, this solution provides a more detailed patient journey, and has the potential to save pharmaceutical companies millions on co-pay cards by subsidizing that cost with their innovative technology.
ScriptDrop’s token sale is currently live for accredited investors, and their KYC is open for registration at a 5% bonus for anyone who takes part. They company is already growing quickly: they are expanding their delivery business into multiple states, with their goal being to improve the way medication adherence is handled in the U.S.
To providers, CEO Potts told me, “You know just as well as we do that medication adherence is nuanced. We want constant feedback on product enhancements so we can put your feedback into action for the benefit of patents across all provider types.”
Blockchain has made major waves in the medical industry, find out more here.
