Interactive Texting Boosts Patient Engagement

By Christine Kern, contributing writer

Texts increase medication adherence for at-risk employees.

mPulse Mobile’s partnership with pharmacy benefits manager Magellan Rx Management has demonstrated interactive texting has led to increased medication refill rates for an at-risk employee population, leading to better medication adherence rates and better health outcomes. The program had an 85 percent participation rate and increased refill rates by more than 20 percent.

Research has shown individuals who are actively involved in their health experience better outcomes and incur lower costs for healthcare insurers. In fact, patients with the lowest activation scores (those with the least skills and confidence to actively engage in their own healthcare) actually incurred healthcare costs up to 21 percent higher than those with the highest activation levels. That has led the healthcare industry to respond by implementing innovative mobile strategies in the past year in order to design and launch mobile strategies that can reach consumers via their mobile phones.

Southern Jersey Family Medical Centers, Inc. and Interleukin Genetics, Inc. are leveraging interactive text messaging workflows to better communicate with and engage consumers in their care. SJFMC aims to prompt positive behavior change among its patients diagnosed with chronic diseases using interactive text messages to communicate appointment and medication reminders and wellness-related information to patients in order to increase compliance rates. Interleukin offers a program that can transform the management of inflammation to prevent and reduce the severity of chronic diseases using genetic insights and actionable guidance.

The mPulse Mobile solution includes interactive educational text message workflows based on the individual’s genetics, inflammation levels, risk factors and readiness to change in order to activate them to adopt new habits and manage periodontal disease.