Health + Wellness : Innovation + Startup News

A University of Cincinnati professor is one of three leading investigators in a national study that is comparing two treatments for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, or PTSD.

The 17-site, $9 million study will take about three years to complete, and it will involve approximately 500 veterans at VA medical facilities across the country, says UC Clinical Psychiatry Professor Kathleen Chard.

Researchers will compare two proven PTSD treatments:

Prolonged Exposure (PE), which allows patients to work through painful memories by re-experiencing traumatic events in  safe and supportive environments, and to engage in activities they've avoided because of trauma. Prolonged exposure also emphasizes education about treatment, common reactions to trauma and breath retraining.

Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT), which focuses on patients' thoughts and feelings. This approach emphasizes how traumatic experiences changed the patients' thoughts and beliefs, and how those thoughts influence current feelings and behaviors. Patients identify and challenge unhelpful thoughts through structured therapy sessions and practice assignments.

The Institute of Medicine and the health arm of the National Academy of Sciences have endorsed both PSTD treatments, which are used for both military and civilian patients. One of the study's goals will be to determine which treatment works better when a patient has other problems, like depression or substance abuse.

Chard is co-author of the CPT military/veteran manual and the national CPT implementation director for the Department of Veterans Affairs.

"Both are gold standard treatments, but what we don't know is, if I have patient 'X,' which one should I put them in," she says. "What we have now is informed patient choice. We tell them about the treatments and they can decide what to do. We don't have solid research about what works best."

Chard is also director of UC's Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neuroscience PTSD division, which is based at the Cincinnati Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Medical Center facility in Ft. Thomas. It likely will be one of the 17 testing sites.

The findings of the study will have an impact that reaches beyond treatment for members of the military, as PTSD has been diagnosed in people who have never been in the miliary, but who have seen or lived through dangerous events, including survivors of physical and sexual assault, abuse, accidents and natural disasters.

By Feoshia H. Davis
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As our aging population grows, they're asking more of our healthcare providers.

Nurses increasingly are being asked to fill healthcare needs and are growing their skills and knowledge through higher education. Still, an untapped resource of nursing talent remains: men.

About 94 percent of nurses are women, and that creates challenges for men who are entering the field, as well as patients who aren't always comfortable receiving treatment from a male nurse.

These are some of the reasons that local medical and educational partners, including a University of Cincinnati College of Nursing student organization, started MENtorship, a program for male student nurses.

The nursing program has partnered with Cincinnati Children's Medical Center and UC Medical Center to develop MENtorship.

The six-to-eight week program is just wrapping up, with a group of 12 undergraduate nursing students. In addition to being mentored by professional nurses, higher ranking students also mentor younger students. So students are both mentors and mentees, says UC MENtorship faculty advisor Gordon Gillespie.

"The junior and senior mentors can tell the freshmen and sophomores what the student nursing program is really like and the commitment that it takes, so the students aren't surprised," says Gillespie, who has been a nurse for 17 years. "They could be less likely to drop out."

The program was initially inspired by a 2013 American Journal of Nursing article, "Men in Nursing: Understanding the Challenges Men Face Working in this Predominantly Female Profession,” that identified professional tribulations experienced by men in the nursing field.

Students are mentored on educational challenges and expectations, but also on dealing with challenges they'll face after school, Gillespie says.

"How do you approach intimate care for a female patient?" he says. "There are higher concerns about inappropriate touching with a male nurse. There are some cultures where it is taboo. When there are violent or aggressive patients, they were automatically assigned to me because I am the man. We talk about those issues and how to deal with them."

The MENtorship program will be evaluated this year, and there are plans to offer it again based on feedback from this semester's participants. If given board approval, it will be offered for a full year starting with the 2013-2014 academic year.

By Feoshia H. Davis
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Applied Decision Science is a field-based research and development company that specializes in the the study and development of new ways to improve decision-making in high stress situations.

Founded by Steve Wolf, along with Laura Militello and Dr. Gary Klein—two authorities in the fields of human cognition and the budding study of naturalistic decision-making—Applied Decision Science is dedicated to improving the choices made by people in arduous situations (medics, soldiers, firefighters, etc).

By obtaining their data firsthand from the field and by interviewing pertinent subjects, Applied Decision Science can create protocol applications that enhance the chances of successful and beneficial decisions. This is a distinct difference from lab-based research, which separates the researcher from the core of their study.

While their military work is confidential, the work the company has done for the healthcare sector continues to enhance peoples’ lives. Their most recent efforts for the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention involve an application that helps healthcare providers identify patients at a higher risk of colorectal cancer, one of the deadliest iterations of the disease.     

Rooted in Wolf’s work of studying the potential for enhanced decision-making, and coupled with Dr. Militello and Klein’s expertise, Applied Decision Science was started largely thanks to the Hamilton County Development Company in Norwood. Through the business incubator, Applied Decision Science has overcome many of the struggles similarly sized startups encounter.

By Sean Peters

Miami University junior Samuel Frith was on vacation three years ago, and spent a little too much time in the sun. Today, when the rays get a little too intense, he relives a painful part of that vacation.

"My lips are very sensitive when I'm out in the sun," he says. "I get really bad sun poisoning and blisters when I go out in the sun."

Frith went through all of the cosmetically available lip balms around, especially those with high SPF levels, but they just didn't work.

"I wasn't getting any relief," he says. "I even tried the brands that were SPF 30 or 40."

Last summer, he decided to take things into his own hands, and create The Ultimate Lip Balm. It's a balm that would help sun-sensitive people like Frith. Active outdoor types could also use it, and it even has medical applications—chemotherapy patients often get severely dry lips during cancer treatment, and they could benefit from Frith's balm as well.

Frith, a finance and entrepreneurship student, was one of the top winners during this month's Innov8 for Health business pitch event. He was one of four $1,000 prize winners in the student track.

Frith's past experience includes working on a cosmetic lotion project for GA Communications in Chicago, which helped him learn about the process of getting a facial care product to market.

"I did a lot of reading and research about the FDA and regulation of product claims," he says. "While I was there, I learned about SPF, sun care products and the facial care industry."

After doing further Internet research, Frith decided to work with a Cedar Rapids, Iowa, company—Raining Rose—to develop the lip balm. Raining Rose is a small, custom lip balm manufacturer known for using organic and natural ingredients. The company and Frith are working to develop a formula aimed at making the lip balm last longer, and therefore, be more effective, Frith says.

"After SPF 30, [sun protection quality] plateaus," Frith says. "You have to come up with other ingredients that will stick better on lips, or attributes other than SPF to make a higher quality lip balm."

Currently, he's working to raise $15,000 for product testing. He hopes to get The Ultimate Lip Balm onto lips by late fall.

By Feoshia H. Davis
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A group of Cincinnatians are working to create a community-based cooking school and bistro in Over-the-Rhine.

101 The Cookery is an effort to teach basic cooking skills, help families feel more at ease in the kitchen and promote healthier eating.

"We want people to learn the skills they need to create healthy food in their kitchens," says Ty Carr, an industrial design student at UC's DAAP, who is helping lead the project. "So many people rely on convenience and frozen foods."

Carr was one of eight student entrepreneur finalists who pitched health and healthcare improvement ideas at the Innov8 for Health 2013 Challenge and Idea Expo.

101 The Cookery was launched as a concept last year, and is nearing the implementation phase, Carr says. He and his partners are continuing to pitch the idea to potential funders, community groups and business organizations.

"We're in the process of trying to get the green light from different organizations in the city and raise money," Carr says.

The Cookery project comes as the problem of "food deserts," or urban areas without convenient access to fresh foods or well-stocked grocery stores, has gotten more attention. Areas of OTR face some of those same challenges, but has one jewel in Findlay Market, the state's oldest continuously operated public market.

Carr, originally from Cleveland and now living in Clifton, believes OTR is the perfect place for his concept.

"I really didn't plan on staying here long-term, but something happened over the last two years," he says. "I started spending a lot of time in OTR, and people there have an intense sense of community. There is something about OTR—people love their food and their food history. It's the perfect venue for something like this."

101 The Cookery will likely contain for-profit and nonprofit elements, and there are also plans to release a "home cooking" cookbook soon.

You can get more information about 101 The Cookery from its recently launched website. You can also stay connected through Facebook and Twitter.

Written by Feoshia H. Davis
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Going on maternity leave changed Gail Yisreal’s life in more ways than having a new baby to take care of.
 
When she returned to work, Yisreal says she learned her position was no longer there, so she began to look for a different job.

As wife and mother to a blended family of nine children, she might bake up to 11 birthday cakes in a year. But she hadn’t considered turning her knack for kneading dough into earning dough until she baked a wedding cake for a couple from her family’s place of worship. Not only did they like the cake, they suggested she start selling them.
 
Listening to her fans, Yisreal founded A “Mother’s Touch” Cakes with the nurturing tagline, “Making fresh homemade cakes when you don’t have the time.” Celebrating her two-year anniversary as a registered business in August 2012, A “Mother’s Touch” features signature and custom made flavors of fresh, savory gourmet, organic and vegan cakes and cupcakes that are good—and good for you.
 
“I didn’t know anything about decorating, so I took a class to learn more decorating skills," Yisreal says. "And I was shocked to find out that 95 percent of the cakes you buy are box cakes—because everybody wants the decoration. I started doing some research about the trans-fats and artificial ingredients, and I vowed that everything I baked would always be natural and from scratch.”  
 
After working as a waitress for two years and in management at Starbucks for six years, Yisreal developed a love for coffee. She jokes that most ex-Starbucks managers feel they know enough about coffee to create their own line, which she actually did for A “Mother’s Touch.”
 
Having tried organic coffees with weak flavor profiles, she researched and found Dean’s Beans, a fair-trade pioneer that allowed her to design her own custom blends. Her signature A “Mother’s Touch” blend is made with Mexican and Indonesian beans and pairs with her carrot cake as an after-dinner coffee.
 
“I’m really proud of my coffee and the fact that it really was custom blended for what I wanted to complement my desserts,” Yisreal says. And, true to her mission to serve natural, sustainable goods, she says that her blends are 100 percent organic, fair-trade certified and are shade grown.
 
Being on the scene without a storefront hasn’t stopped Yisreal. Instead, she’s building her brand as the “cupcake lady” who networks everywhere and invites people to taste samples of her creations. Yisreal also tapped into hidden markets by hosting deals through social media.
 
“I did a Living Social promotion last year, which was huge,” Yisreal says. “That first day, I think I got 1,500 hits on my website, and probably about 85 deals, which I thought was really good for people who didn’t know who I was.”
 
And even though she sells more cakes today, the ease of transporting cupcakes built her clientele.
 
“When I first came out, because of my financial situation, literally, cupcakes were paying my rent,” she says. After she and her husband separated, she remembers what it was like to go from making an annual salary of $60,000 to less than $20,000 a year. But she doesn’t do it all alone.
 
“I have three almost-teenage girls; 12, soon to be 15 and 17, so they are my preppers,” Yisreal explains. “It’s hilarious because we’ll be in the kitchen and everybody has their big bonnets on, and they’re scraping carrots, mashing fruit, lining the liners. I have a girlfriend who I’ll sometimes sub-contract out to do deliveries. And if it’s a huge event—like for the Autism Foundation, I had to knock out 40 dozen cupcakes—I have two sisters, and at the time I had just split up with my husband so we were in literally an 800-square-foot apartment. The kitchen was all of maybe 150-square-feet, we put out six-foot tables and we were like an assembly line! It was hilarious, but we got it done. It was like an I Love Lucy episode!”
 
By Mildred Fallen

Candice Peters doesn’t reach for platitudes when asked what she wishes women knew about working out. Her goal is simple and straightforward: “That they can lift heavier!” The trainer and founder of Hyde Park Body Boutique has carved out a niche just a few miles north of downtown with her women-only workout facility.

Unlike the typical gym, there are no ellipticals and no treadmills; the primary services offered are various workout classes, as well as in-home personal training provided by Peters and her staff. It can be hard to identify the most popular class because they’re usually booked with young professionals in the evenings and, often, new or stay-at-home moms in the mornings, but Peters says TRX and Spincinnati (think of a spinning class with light weights and pumped-up music) classes fill up quickly.

“We cater to women of all ages,” Peters says, noting a concentration of young professionals ages 25-34, especially those who recently got married or plan to have kids soon. Still, she adds, “We have athletes, we have people who haven’t worked out in years and we have people who are looking to lose 150 pounds.”

Peters’ staff comprises an office manager and five part-time trainers who help local ladies get stronger. Peters isn’t a proponent of crash dieting or even protein powder in particular, and she says that she reminds all of her clients that 80 percent of their fitness is due to nutrition, not working out.

Another 80/20 rule she follows is her advice about effort levels. “In general, if you have to be doing great things 80 percent of the time, the other 20 percent of the time you can slack off. You have to give yourself a break.”

She should know; Peters works an 80-hour work week, and plans to launch Over-the-Rhine Body Boutique in June. Along with her training and teaching, she’s fundraising with SoMoLend and planning a social media campaign to raise crowdfunding for new equipment. For a woman on the move, it's just one more way to stay active.

By Robin Donovan

Nancy Trapp has very few excuses for not getting in regular workouts. The Pilates instructor and owner of Studio NT works from her home, which is equipped with mats, machines and plenty of space to stretch.

Trapp grew interested in Pilates after lower back and hamstring tension left her seeking a fix. Yoga didn’t work, but she found relief with classical Pilates. After six weeks, she says, “I was standing up taller. My husband didn’t have to remind me not to slouch anymore.”

Trapp’s typical session lasts 55 minutes and she recommends clients come twice a week. She offers group mat classes to supplement individual sessions. She earned her certification from the Pilates Method Alliance after completing a 600-hour training program in May 2012.

Pilates (and especially classical Pilates) is different from yoga in that it focuses not just on mat exercises, but also involves a range of equipment that facilitates exercises promoting core strength, balance and stability. Some modern Pilates instructors offer mat-based classes for practical reasons, but Trapp, who often works with clients one-on-one, prefers the mental work of figuring out which exercises best fit each individual.

“I have a client who is 75 and has never exercised in her life who comes two days a week," says Trapp. "Now, she says, ‘I can’t miss a day because I feel great.' "

And the senior client is not alone. “I’m loving my older clientele, my 60s, 70s and older. I’m getting some more referrals for people that age. I like to teach everybody, but they can feel the difference quicker than somebody who might be doing all different types of [exercise].”

For Cincinnatians looking to stretch themselves in a new way, Studio NT may be just the place to start.

By Robin Donovan

Although Inna Aracri describes herself as “a regular person” in her health coaching work—she is not a nutritionist or a dietician—her approach to coaching incorporates techniques that might puzzle a mainstream medical practitioner.
 
Ukraine-born Aracri is the proprietor of Inna’s Harmony LLC, a health consultancy that takes a holistic approach to improving people’s overall wellbeing. The bulk of Inna’s Harmony clients are looking for help with common problems such as losing weight or improving energy levels, but what sets Aracri apart is her approach, which mixes nutrition, general health counseling and spirituality.
 
So, while Aracri might spend the bulk of her time teaching people how to eat healthy and prepare nutritional meals, she also offers crystal healing and reiki along with raw food training, recipe tips and cooking demonstrations.
 
"If people are open to the alternative modalities, I always offer energy healing as a part of the package,” says Aracri, who offers package deals to encourage clients to try her other services. “People are more familiar with health coaches or food counselors versus energy healing. But by learning how to deal with their body—there’s more to it than muscles and tissues and bones—they open new doors to learn how they can help themselves through spiritual development.”
 
For Aracri, advising her clients means not only talking about healthy eating habits, but also teasing out the reasons they’re not thriving. For some, she advises more time outdoors; for others, she discusses the importance of healthy relationships.
 
And while she’ll work with people of almost any age, Aracri says she sees lots of people in their 40s. “They have family, career, finances, but they’re not happy because they don’t feel good,” she says. “They neglect their bodies because they feel fine when they’re younger, but when people reach their 40s, they may start not feeling good. The body can only serve so long without breaking down on the wrong fuel that you put into it.”
 
By Robin Donovan

“People always say, ‘Be careful working with your best friend,’ but we’ve never had those negative experiences. Our relationship and the way we know each other has been such a strength,” says Lisa Mills, a psychologist, and co-founder of research consultancy Sprout Insight, of her 22-year friendship with co-founder Kathy Burklow.

Mills and Burklow became friends as graduate students in psychology, working together first at the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center. In 2006, frustrated by the disconnect between scientific advancement and community engagement, they left Children’s to launch Harmony Garden, a nonprofit community research center focused on improving the health of Cincinnati girls.

Building on the idea of helping community members be heard and understood, the duo pivoted last February, launching Sprout Insight, a market research and insight consultancy. These days, the leverage decades of clinical and research experience while work closely with companies, hospitals, nonprofits and branding firms that target African American, Latino and Asian shoppers.

“Unless [companies] get better at collecting information about racial and ethnic minorities, they’re going to continue to miss opportunities in their industries,” Mills says. “There are a lot of consumer insight and market research companies, but very few are looking at consulting with businesses and corporations about gathering insights from racially and ethnically diverse populations.”

Accordingly, the women help organizations identify what types of data they need and how to gather it, both quantitatively through customized surveys and qualitatively, often through focus groups that allow the pair to gain deeper insight into consumers.

In practice, that might look like tweaking an existing survey to avoid leading questions or to gather more specific data. It could also mean setting up focus groups at a church or recreation center (rather than the typical observation room) to allow meaningful feedback and insight to flow. “Taking [people] out of their community, you may get answers, but they may not be relevant answers,” Mills says.

And so Mills and Burklow keep bringing new voices to the conversation between companies and consumers, hoping for the same goal sparked their friendship decades ago. “Kathy and I are really about the bridging of the gaps,” Mills explains.

“For our society to work together, everybody needs to be knowledgeable on some level so that they can sit at the table, and communicate.”
 
 By Robin Donovan

"Going Green" isn't just a feel-good initiative for businesses. It can have real economic benefits. Those benefits -- lower utility bills, less waste, among others -- are there to take advantage of regardless of whether the business considers itself green.

That's the message organizers of this year's Energy, Economy and Environment (3E) Summit want businesses to grasp. The 4th annual 3E Summit is Oct. 5, 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Xavier University's Cintas Center. Tickets are $50 each, with discounts for Green Umbrella Members and students.

"There's a lot of small and medium businesses out there, the people making widgets, who don't always have time to think about how to green their business," says Cincinnati's Sustainability Coordinator Steve Johns.

The Summit hopes to remedy that, giving these businesses concrete ways to become more energy efficient, as well as insight into how that affects the bottom line.

There will be two panel discussions on Green Business. One is a CEO Roundtable featuring local companies that decided to incorporate green concepts into their businesses. The panel will feature Mac's Pizza, emersion DESIGN, Compost Cincy and Burke, Inc.

"Most of these companies aren't producing green products, but thought it was important to take care of energy and waste needs more effectively," Johns says.

A second panel discussion will feature reps from UC Health and Procter & Gamble highlighting their efforts to green their supply chain by seeking out sustainable suppliers.

"You can really have a competitive advantage by having a green business," Johns explains.

The Summit also will feature a "Speed Greening" session, where experts will be on hand to answer specific questions about greening businesses. Those experts can answer questions related to electric and natural gas, waste disposal, transportation and water.

In addition to the City of Cincinnati, the 3E Summit is hosted by Green Umbrella, Xavier University's Brueggeman Center for Dialog, the Greater Cincinnati Green Business Council, and USGBC Cincinnati Chapter.

Register and find more information at the 3E Summit website.

By Feoshia H. Davis
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Green Cincinnati. It’s ubiquitous these days, with our civic progress appearing both in national headlines and at eye-level, in the bike-shares and local markets that seem to spring up almost daily.

If you’re struggling to keep up with all this change—in a good way, of course!—or if you just have two cents to share, head to Northside Tavern at 6 p.m., Oct. 10 for the free, public “State of the City” environmental forum.

The forum, organized by Cincinnati Green Group, hopes to recreate the success of last year’s event, which saw over a dozen city council candidates fielding questions—on everything from curbside recycling to fracking—from more than 150 attendees.

This year will feature WVXU’s Ann Thomson as facilitator, with speakers Mark Fisher from the Cincinnati Zoo and Neil Seldman from the DC-based Institute for Local Self-Reliance.

Cincinnati council members will be on hand once again for Q&A.

Larry Falkin, director of Cincinnati’s Office of Environmental Quality, will deliver the State of the City address. Falkin plans to highlight recent strides in the areas of energy, green building and waste management, as well as a number of transportation solutions—such as the forthcoming Zip Car auto-share program—making Cincinnati debuts in 2012.

Falkin points to the Green Cincinnati Plan, an 80-point sustainability blueprint officially adopted by the city in 2007.

“We wanted to use less energy, more renewable energy, and we had a series of strategies for how to get there,” he says. “In five years, city government has done energy efficiency retrofits on 70 city buildings and installed solar energy systems on 20 city buildings. We’ve created a nonprofit organization and gotten funding for them to do work in the private sector, and that organization, the Greater Cincinnati Energy Alliance, has completed energy retrofits on more than 1,000 homes.”

As a city, Falkin says Cincinnati reduced its greenhouse gas emissions by 8.2 percent, surpassing the goal outlined in the 2007 plan.

Falkin also plans to discuss Cincinnati’s energy aggregation program, which now provides 100 percent renewable energy for 60,000 residents and small businesses.

Despite recent progress, there is still room for improvement, particularly in recycling and adoption of zero-waste strategies that other cities use.

“There are communities around the nation and around the world that have made zero-waste pledges,” says Melissa English, Development Director for Ohio Citizen Action, an 80,000-member coalition that canvasses the state promoting environmental consciousness. “[These cities] pledge to send as little as possible of their waste streams to landfills or incinerators, and instead recover those materials—which is essentially money, it’s resources that we’re choosing to bury in the ground—and put that back to work in our economies.”

The environmental group leader points to the Rumpke landfill as an example of how much waste the region still discards ineffectively.

“We have the nation’s sixth-largest landfill in our county, in Colerain Township, and it’s not just the city of Cincinnati that’s filling it up,” English says. “Any sort of zero-waste strategy will be much more effective and farther-reaching if it is [adopted as] a regional strategy.”

Find out more:

• Post questions in advance of the event.

• RSVP for the State of the City environmental forum.

• Download the city’s sustainability plan.

By Hannah Purnell

Like all with an entrepreneurial spirit, Xavier University junior Anthony Breen is a problem solver.

While he was spending a few days at a local hospital visiting a friend, he met some young children who'd been diagnosed with illnesses. He immediately saw a challenge that he could meet.

"When kids are diagnosed, they are given pamphlets written for adults and by adults. It's not in any way engaging. It's scary," says Breen, a finance and entrepreneurship major, with a minor in accounting.

It was from that experience that Breen developed a web-based app that uses storytelling to teach diabetic children about their disease in an understandable way. It's aimed at ages 2 to 12.

The app, MyHealthyTale, follows a diabetic character through a 15-minute story where the child can answer questions about their chronic disease by following the character through the story. The story pulls from a database of questions, mixing them up. So each time children read the story, they get different questions.

"The can name a bear that goes through the story and customize it," Breen says. "It's a fun way to learn that's not scary."

MyHealthyTale is the inaugural offering of Breen's Minerva Health Learning Systems, one of the winning companies for the new Innov8 for health Startup Accelerator.

MyHealthyTale will soon be available at the iPhone App store, and available on Android in the next three months. In addition to the story book, there's also information and support resources for parents, including the ability to direct email caregivers and other parents with diabetic children.

Breen is working with Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation and diabetic educators at Cincinnati Children's and The Christ hospitals. Eventually, he wants to expand the app, with stories that cover a range of illnesses.

"Really, this can be used for any medical condition," he says."Right now we're just entering the market, and we want to move this into asthma and obesity."

By Feoshia H. Davis
Follow Feoshia on Twitter.

Dawn Sheanshang, a pharmaceutical sales rep, became sick of medications one day. Despite her insider knowledge, she couldn’t handle the medication regimen of a loved one who’d recently been discharged from the hospital.

Determined to help, Sheanshang searched online for solutions but found no easy answers. Out of her frustration, MedaCheck was born. With the help of startup acceleration Innov8 for Health, and a partnership with Jeffrey Shepard, a self-described “serial entrepreneur with a Ph.D.,” this high-tech health startup – and its eponymous app – were born.

“More and more today, medication regimens are extremely complicated, with many different drugs and people’s changing presciriptions," Shepard says. “People are using mobile devices for a slew of different things. We wanted to target our product around medication adherence – ensuring they’re taking the right pill at the right time, in the right amount and having it set up with a system to ensure they’re actually doing it.” 

Instead of simply placing a reminder on your phone, this app works with the pharmacies, utilizing frequently updated, high-resolution images of the approximately 16,000 medications catalogued by the National Library of Medicine.

When it’s time to take a medication, a user can click on the pill box to open it, then view their medications using photos and bulleted lists of pertinent details: medication name, dosage, etc. Reminders, including a phone-call reminder if a dose is missed, are also built in.

The challenges of developing such an app include the necessity of HIPAA compliance and generics that constantly change.

“The challenge is making sure that you’re not making specific claims around medication consumption,” says Shepard. “We don’t give anybody advice or share any information about any specific individual.”

The company is running a pilot of the app in November in collaboration with Cincinnati-based Kroger, with the hopes of making the app public in mid-November. Users will pay a small fee to download the app, which will be available through their pharmacy.

A web-based app as well as native apps for mobile devices is available.
 
By Robin Donovan