Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center will soon be using a new method to make sure patients take their medicines how and when they’re supposed to take them.
Wake Forest Innovations, the commercialization arm of the hospital, has reached a licensing deal with one of its startup companies Causa Research. The Winston-Salem company, spun out of the Wake Forest School of Medicine in 2012, has developed an online survey platform that helps patients adhere to their treatment regimen.
The licensing agreement was announced at the 12th annual Tech Briefing hosted by the Tech Council of the Winston-Salem Chamber of Commerce. No financial terms of the agreement were disclosed.
Causa was founded by Dr. Steven Feldman, a Wake Forest Baptist dermatologist. Feldman saw in his clinical practice that patients poorly followed their medication instructions. His research team used electronic monitors on medication bottles to measure how well patients adhered to their treatment regimen. Initial studies showed that patient adherence quickly fell to 30 percent in some instances.
Feldman found that online surveys proved effective in helping patients stick to the regimen.
“When we regularly administered an online survey to our patients that was designed to make them feel cared for and supervised, their adherence skyrocketed,” Feldman said in a statement. “We were able to often double adherence by utilizing this outreach method.”
Feldman and his team are currently testing the online survey technique in patients with high cholesterol, high blood pressure, diabetes and depression at Wake Forest pharmacies.
