FDB and Polyglot Systems Partner to Help Improve Medication Adherence
South San Francisco, CA – March 4, 2015 – First Databank (FDB), the leading provider of clinical drug knowledge that helps improve medication-related decisions and patient outcomes, today announced that it has entered into an agreement with Polyglot Systems to be the primary distributor of Polyglot’s proprietary Meducation® simplified patient medication instructions to the hospital, ambulatory and pharmacy markets in the US and Canada.
Meducation is a cloud-based solution, accessible to healthcare providers within their clinical workflow via their EMR system or as a standalone solution, which delivers medication instructions for individuals considered to be “high risk” due to low health literacy, impaired vision and language barriers. It enables providers to dynamically create fully personalized medication patient instructions, in any of 21 languages — written at a 5th to 8th grade reading level with large font sizes, pictograms and videos — to make understanding how to take medications intuitive and simple. Meducation® will complement the company’s existing portfolio of consumer and professional medication education monographs offered through FDB MedKnowledge™.
“Since one-in-three Americans are either low health literate or have limited English proficiency, offering simplified instructions in multiple languages and easy-to-understand formats will help to increase medication adherence and patient satisfaction,” said Chuck Tuchinda, MD, MBA, president of FDB. “We are focused on providing innovative solutions that improve health outcomes and reduce healthcare costs and our agreement with Polyglot Systems significantly advances this mission.”
Key provisions in the Affordable Care Act require hospitals to demonstrate high patient satisfaction as measured by HCAHPS (Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems) scores, or forfeit a certain percentage of their Medicare reimbursement. John Dempsey Hospital, part of the University of Connecticut Health Center, saw vast improvement in their HCAHPS scores after adopting Meducation. Additionally, a health literacy study on medication adherence conducted in 2014 at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Durham, NC, concluded that Meducation positively affected medication adherence and clinical outcomes for high-risk patients with cardiovascular disease.
“Our partnership with FDB means that the majority of hospitals and pharmacies, and thousands of physician practices in the US and Canada that use FDB’s drug knowledge will now have easy access to the Meducation solution,” said Polyglot CEO, Sims Preston. “We are delighted that FDB recognizes the value that Meducation offers in addressing the needs of underserved populations as a complement to their extensive drug education information already widely available.”
About Polyglot Systems
Polyglot Systems’ award-winning Meducation® software was developed under a grant from the National Institutes of Health to bridge communication barriers between healthcare providers and patients. Improving patient understanding and medication adherence results in reduced healthcare costs and increased patient satisfaction. Polyglot’s products have been licensed to hospitals, health systems, clinics and pharmacies.
About First Databank (FDB)
FDB (First Databank), part of the Hearst Health network, is the leading provider of drug knowledge that helps healthcare professionals make precise medication-related decisions. With thousands of customers worldwide, FDB enables our information system developer partners to deliver a wide range of valuable, useful, and differentiated solutions. As the company that virtually launched the medication decision support category, we offer more than three decades of experience in transforming drug knowledge into actionable, targeted, and effective solutions that help improve patient safety and healthcare outcomes. For a complete look at our solutions and services please visit http://www.fdbhealth.com or follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn.
About Hearst Health
FDB is part of the Hearst Health network, which also includes Zynx Health, MCG and Homecare Homebase. The mission of the Hearst Health network is to help guide the most important care moments by delivering vital information into the hands of everyone who touches a person’s health journey. Each year in the U.S., care guidance from the Hearst Health network reaches 76% of discharged patients, 133 million insured individuals, 30 million home health visits, 1.88 billion retail pharmacy prescriptions and 3.26 billion prescription claims. Extensions of the Hearst Health network include Hearst Health Ventures and the Hearst Health Innovation Lab. www.hearsthealth.com