US-based Sentara Healthcare has selected Wellpepper to provide a mobile patient engagement solution for headaches.
Sentara is an integrated not-for-profit system of 12 hospitals and more than 100 sites of care, including a robust neurosciences programme.
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Wellpepper uses mobile devices to offer a real-time connection between headache patients and neurologists.
In order to report their headache experiences in real time, patients who suffer from migraines and other severe headaches can use the Wellpepper mobile application.
Neurologists at Sentara are able to use the information collected to diagnose, treat and monitor the ongoing progress of headache patients with an aim of providing better outcomes, fewer office visits and lower healthcare costs.
Sentara Neurosciences medical director Alexander Grunsfeld said: "We believe Wellpepper can help us provide timely care for headache patients.
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By GlobalData"Sentara encourages patients to be partners with us in their care and the Wellpepper solution offers a new opportunity to achieve that goal."
At present, when patients are referred to a neurologist, they are asked to complete surveys and try to remember what triggered their headaches.
Typically, follow-up surveys are given every three to six months, and the result is often multiple office visits and patient care is delayed until the root causes for headaches are eventually discovered.
Data collected using the Wellpepper application is sent to healthcare providers via a clinical dashboard so that neurologists can easily communicate with headache patients to alter treatment plans without unnecessary visits.
Wellpepper also offers a way for patients to log pain levels using the visual analogue pain scale and to record medication use and how much.
Wellpepper co-founder and CEO Anne Weiler said: "Too often, data collection from patients is disconnected from their care plan.
"Being able to use patients’ own smartphones and tablets to provide care plans and show results using Wellpepper is not only a way to help drive patient engagement, it is a way for healthcare providers to gather strong, real-time data and patient-reported outcomes in a way that after-the-fact surveys cannot."
