Telehealth technology, body sensors on smart watches, and hundreds of health-focused mobile apps are increasingly popular tools for monitoring patient well-being. Experts project that these and other innovative technologies will soon lead to a health care landscape that is vastly different from today’s.
Despite these breakthroughs, “many hospital systems and clinics still depend on yesterday’s technology — or even last decade’s technology,” according to Emily Ko, a student at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) School of Pharmacy. Furthermore, the digital divide for people from lower socioeconomic backgrounds and rural areas hinders access to these innovations, thus exacerbating health disparities.
To address these issues, Ko and classmate Amir Behdani recently created an award-winning app prototype called myDigital Analytics and Responsive Care (myDigitalARC) to improve health care access for low-income patients. It is designed to provide free clinics, which often have limited staff and resources, with real-time tracking of patient vitals such as blood pressure. Patients can take these measurements at home and text the information through the myDigitalARC platform on their smartphones. It is then securely sent to a data dashboard visible to their health care providers, allowing them to see patient progress without the need for in-person visits.
“The way myDigitalARC’s pipeline is set up allows us to keep the price tag at no cost for free clinics, which means better access to health care providers, improved bidirectional communication, and a streamlined, HIPAA-compliant pipeline for the low-income patients,” Ko says. “I believe that access to data and consistent patient empowerment can help to better patient outcomes.”
The myDigitalARC dashboard will be able to monitor blood pressure, blood glucose, weight, exercise minutes, and other factors that patients can easily measure at home. By tracking this information in real time, health care workers can intervene at an early stage when concerns arise — such as a pattern of high blood glucose readings for a diabetic. The result is better health outcomes for users while costs are kept down for both patients and providers.
“I personally think in an era [in which] a lot of prominent health technology companies are shifting their focus to investing in expensive devices and tools that might not be accessible to everyone, we should not lose track of the big picture,” Behdani says. “Our health care system has many disparities already, and the increased use of technology could be our chance to bridge this gap.”
While there are other tracking services on the market for clinics and hospital systems, they are usually unaffordable for free clinics, according to Ko and Behdani. Many patients are unable to pay subscription fees for robust health care apps and monitoring services, and low-income individuals may lack home devices.— such as Bluetooth technology and voice assistants — required for these monitoring systems. In addition, many of these services only track one condition or chronic disease, thus requiring clinics to use separate subscriptions for monitoring other concerns, such as diabetes, hypertension, and more.
“What’s unique about myDigitalARC is that our data pipeline is modular, so we can tailor the collected data and its dashboard to exactly the clinic’s needs,” Behdani says.
He and Ko co-founded Pharmacists for Digital Health (PDH), a student group and national nonprofit, in January 2021 after realizing there are limited resources for students to explore digital health or develop skill sets for solving real-world challenges. PDH’s mission is to create a global platform “to discuss and engage in the innovative applications of digital health in pharmacy and health care and to shape the future of digital health solutions through education,” its website states.
“I personally think in an era [in which] a lot of prominent health technology companies are shifting their focus to investing in expensive devices and tools that might not be accessible to everyone, we should not lose track of the big picture,” Behdani says. “Our health care system has many disparities already, and the increased use of technology could be our chance to bridge this gap.”
The group recently placed second in a national collegiate competition, Pharmacy Quality Alliance Healthcare Quality Innovation Challenge, for the development of myDigitalARC.
Pharmacy professionals are expected to play an increasingly important role in the integration of digital health technology, according to a November 2021 article in Pharmacy Times. “Pharmacists may find themselves serving as coaches, curators, and digital translators for patients, accessing data on remote patient monitoring platforms, assisting with setting up software or devices, engaging with patients via hybrid care models, and matching individuals with medication and a digital companion, all to contribute to health and wellness and support treatment optimization,” the authors write.
Students and professionals who are interested in designing and implementing digital health technology to help underserved patients should begin by imagining the patient’s viewpoint, according to Ko. “What is it like being a patient with limited access to transportation? Or a patient experiencing difficulty moving, perhaps with a less than ideal living situation? Imagine how one factor like socioeconomic background can color that whole image,” she says.
Behdani encourages anyone who has a passion for serving low-income communities to consider the many capabilities of digital health. “There are tons of opportunities and initiatives that pharmacy students can take to help patients from low socioeconomic backgrounds with technology, like the myDigitalARC project,” he says. “The first step is to see the problem from these patients’ perspectives and try to solve the issues in a manner that is applicable to everyone. Everything else will come in place afterward.”
The Center for Healthy Hearts, a local free clinic, has been working with PDH to implement myDigitalARC. Ko and Behdani are also collaborating with another VCU pharmacy student, Silas Contaifer, who researches virtual reality technology, to transfer the myDigitalARC data pipeline into the Amazon Web Services platform to prepare for scaling the application.
“We are learning things we never thought we would learn when first starting pharmacy school. In the meantime, as second-year PharmD students, we are learning about therapeutics and clinical outcomes that will ultimately better inform our final product that will better serve clinics,” Ko says. “It has been a beautiful experience being able to contribute a solution as mere students.”●
Mariah Stewart is a senior staff writer for INSIGHT Into Diversity. To learn more about Pharmacists in Digital Health, including information on starting a campus chapter, visit pdhrx.org.
This article was published in our January/February 2022 issue.
