ATU637 – MedMinder Pharmacy with Jessica Giguere

Hi, this is Jessica Giguere and I’m the Regional Account Director for MedMinder Pharmacy, and this is your assisted technology update.

Hello and welcome to your assistive technology update, a weekly dose of information that keeps you up to date on the latest developments in the field of technology designed to assist individuals with disabilities and special needs. I’m your host, Josh Anderson with the INDATA Project at Easterseals Crossroads in beautiful Indianapolis, Indiana. Welcome to episode 637 of Assistive Technology Update. It is scheduled to be released on August 11th, 2023. On today’s show, we’re very excited to have Jessica Giguere. She’s the regional account Director for MedMinder Pharmacy, and she’s going to tell us about MedMinder Pharmacy and all the great things it can do to assist individuals with medication management, when to take it, how much to take, and a lot of other really cool things that the device and the pharmacy are able to do. Don’t forget, listeners, we’re always looking for your feedback. If you’ve got an idea of somebody we should have on as a guest, perhaps a story that we can cover on here, something really cool you heard about, we always love getting your feedback.

You can always send us an email at tech@eastersealscrossroads.org or call our listener line at (317) 721-7124. Also, don’t forget to check out our sister podcasts, ATFAQ or Assistive Technology, frequently Asked Questions and Accessibility Minute. These should be available wherever you get your podcasts, and I know you know where to get podcasts because you’re listening to this one. Also, if you’re interested, a transcript of today’s show is available at eastersealstech.com, those transcripts are generously sponsored by INTRAC, and you can find out more about INTRAC at indianarelay.com.

Speaking of finding our transcripts over at eastersealstech.com there’s a lot more information you can find over there. You can also find our tech tip videos. These YouTube videos come out every Monday and are great little tidbits, just little things you can learn about different pieces of assistive technology. Many of those things you can learn about there you’ve probably heard of some of their creators and other folks associated with them on this show before, but get an actual look at kind of some of the things that they might be able to do. You can also find blog posts and tons of other information about ATX, the INDATA Project, and the Clinical Assistive Technology Program here at Easterseals Crossroads. But for now, let’s go ahead and get on with the show.

Listeners, medications can be a life-saving thing and can also be a giant confusing pain in the rear. Remembering which ones to take and when, ordering refills, remember if I took the medication, and just a lot of other issues and more can really lead to individuals maybe taking the wrong meds, skipping meds, or taking too many. Well, our guest today is from MedMinder Pharmacy and she is here to tell us about their solution to this and other issues. Jessica, welcome to the show.

Thank you.

I’m really excited to get into talking about MedMinder Pharmacy, but before we do that, could you tell our listeners a little bit about yourself?

Sure. So as Josh said, I’m Jessica Giguere. I’ve been with MedMinder Pharmacy for the last four years, helping members adhere to their medication, and I have a background in healthcare of all spectrums for about 20 years.

Nice, nice. Well, we’re very glad that you came on the show today and that you kind of moved on to MedMinder. So I guess we’ll kind of start with the big picture. Can you just kind of tell us, big picture, what is MedMinder Pharmacy and maybe kind of why was it started?

Yeah, so that’s a great question. Thank you, Josh. So MedMinder pharmacy was started about 15 years ago. Someone invented the device when they were student at MIT with the knowledge from nurses, so nurses that were in home taking care of their members. So the person that invented the device went and asked these nurses what would be best for their patients and the accessibility to take their medications. So MedMinder is a fully comprehensive pharmacy that maximizes our enterprise software for complete visibility to members medication management and triggering behaviors. We have our automated pharmacy that presorts medications up to four doses per day, and our pharmacy is comprised of a delivery service and our technology that provides visibility and real time monitoring to caregivers, providers and health insurance companies as well. These services truly keep their members on their medication regimens, and we love to say that our services really help to minimize behaviors triggered by medication nonadherence, minimize hospital readmissions and admissions, and truly keep patients feeling their best and help to reduce caregiver stress while saving cost overall to the healthcare industry.

For sure. So let’s dig in just a little bit. Tell us about the device.

Sure. So the device weighs about seven pounds. It has 28 compartments and four rows, so members can again take up to four doses per day. We have common configurations of an AM and PM. How it is delivered, if a member takes one medication a day, they would receive an entire one tray per month on a 28 day cycle of delivery. If they take medications twice a day, they would receive two trays per month. If they take medications three or four times a day, they would receive medications four trays per month. Now the device will alert members to take their medications for up to two hours, and part of this progression is really crucial to members that have hearing impairment and vision impairment as well. Our first alert progression starts with a flash. So let’s say for example, Josh, you take your medications at 8:00 AM the device will start to flash at 8:00 AM for only the right compartment that’s supposed to be accessed.

So the flashing is really, like I said, very helpful to users that are hearing impaired because they can see the flashing. If they’re vision impaired, it’s also helpful for peripheral vision and our screen will display, Josh, it’s time to take your medications, let’s say around 8:30. Member doesn’t adhere to that flashing component by 8:30. We can send, in any language, a customizable greeting that will say, Josh, it’s time to take your medication. Or it can say, mom, it’s time to take your medication and check your blood sugar. We can put in any customized command in any language today. However, the devices enterprise platform has the capability to have a caregiver or anyone come in and voice record a message. So if it’s a specific language or we work with many members who have cognitive impairment, and it would be more comfortable to have a family member or a caregiver’s voice letting them say, take your medication.

Okay. Now, if someone, again, we work with members that have cognitive impairment, mental health and physical disabilities would be alarmed by a voice command at that 8:30 timeframe, the device can just beep, and there are three levels of volume. So the platform can be used for people to go in and change timeframes, voice commands. So if for example, someone has an appointment and someone wants to address something on the appointment, it can say, good morning, Josh, take your medications and you have an 9:30 appointment. So we give providers, caregivers complete access to our software enterprise to be able to go in and really take care of the member remotely. So that’s a great feature. Now, if the member has not taken that eight o’clock flashing, the 8:30 voice command or beeping, by nine o’clock, we send an automated phone call to the member’s home again reminding them to take their medication.

Let’s say member didn’t pick up the phone by 9:30, we can send a text message, phone call, or an email to a caregiver or a provider, home health agency, anyone involved with a member’s care, which truly gives these members a level of independence while being managed from afar. So our goal is to really help members in the communities integrate back into the communities to be more independent, and again, with us having the confidence providers, caregivers to be able to really help manage them from afar. Now, once the member takes their medication, all they have to do is open the little compartment and all alerts will stop. Now, one really great feature that we have is a remote locking component, which again, can be accessed through the MedMinder Connect, and what they can do is they can go in and remotely lock the device or unlock the device.

So what this does is it only allows the member to access that one compartment that is alerting at the right time and day of their dose, while all other compartments will remain locked. At the bottom of the device, there is a key accessible for extra security. So if a member should not have any access to the device, it is very secured. So the device does feature a 12 hour battery life in the event of a power outage, but we do suggest it should be plugged in at all times. It is built with a Verizon SIM card, so it has cellular data connected to it. People can also connect to wifi if they have it in their home for stronger connectivity. The device also displays a screen that provides the weekly weather forecast. You can upload any photos to make it a wonderful experience while taking your medication, see their families, dogs.

We have people that love LeBron James, but any uploading in the software enterprise for photos can be accessible and accessed. So we do have camera visibility for virtual platform if people are interested in that. So you can essentially monitor members through our platform and actually see what’s going on in the home. It’s very interactive. One of the most important features of the device is that members can be monitored from afar. Okay, we provide real time monitoring. So in the device, there is a sensor under each cup, and every time a member takes the cup out, it is recorded and stored on our secured MedMinder Connect, and we provide access to any users involved with Members’ care. So you’ll be able to see if a member actually took their medication and at the exact time they took it, we provide weekly monitoring scorecards. So again, that’s all accessible through our MedMinders Connect to really maximize the platform and be able to identify behaviors associated with the medication regime.

We can also generate reports from the MedMinder Connect and provide adherence scorecards and adherence rates to providers, caregivers to let you all know how your members are doing in their homes. So this is a really, as I mentioned before, a cost saving to the healthcare industry by having our devices in a member’s home really continues to keep them independent. It can reduce nursing care in the sense of, one, we know there’s a huge nursing shortage and instead of a nurse having to go into a home seven days a week, maybe they go in five days a week. If someone calls out, we can remotely monitor them from afar. We work with other disability organizations that really utilize MedMinders solution to save the cost of care and really make members feel more independent by our platform, by being able to visibly see what’s going on and have that adherence and data to measure.

Oh, yeah, and I can see where, especially because a lot of folks, that’s something they’re maybe working on behaviorally, so being able to have that data, you can show are they improving over time on this? Is it something we need to continue to work on, or is it something that is really kind of being done independently with those prompts? And I like that it’s very, very customizable to the individual because for some folks that flashing light might be a horrible annoyance and something I that I don’t really want, or like you said, maybe having a family member’s voice or something is great, but not having to have the cost of a DSP, a nurse or somebody to be there to do the medication. But also for some folks, not having someone harping at them constantly in their house is probably a great accommodation as well.

So I like that you can still have the comforting voice or whatever kind of works for you, but not have to actually physically have the person there. And Jessica, you might have kind of mentioned this, but as far as refills, those are kind of just almost automatically handled. Is that kind of correct?

So we do have two options, and we feel that members are more successful when they use our presorted and prepackaged organized trays that do go with the device they fit in nicely. But yes, so our whole pharmacy team will onboard a member, do a full medication reconciliation and stay in full communication with providers, case managers, and really help with their individual care plans. So every 28 days we deliver the medications and mid-month we provide a cycle call, and this is done by a pharmacy technician. And what this cycle call performs is to ask the member, hey, how are you doing? Is there any medication changes? Is there any drug interactions? And how’s the device going? When you are a pharmacy user, those are the calls that are in place. Now, if people choose not to use our pharmacy, for example, MedMinder’s licensed in 35 states.

Our pharmacy is located in Nord, Massachusetts, and we service the entire state of Massachusetts with our delivery and courier services, but we are able to provide pharmacy services in 35 other states. But for the states that we’re not licensed in, or if, for example, they just want to have the device accessible, they can rent out the device as well. So that is an option, but we do feel that when it’s a one stop shop, all inclusive, it makes for a better outcome for the member. Again, reducing medication errors where we have our pharmacy team overseeing the medication management. So we do perform MTMs and we’re able to consistently communicate with all parties involved. If someone chooses not to use our pharmacy, the onus would be on the families or the nursing team as well to ensure that they’re filling and they know where things are going. We do have seven days a week, eight hours a day, tech support and pharmacy support.

Nice. Very, very nice. And yeah, I’m sure that not having to load the device yourself, but I do like that it’s still available, even if maybe my state, I don’t actually have the kind of pharmacy capability, it is nice that I can still kind of do that. But Jessica, I know you’ve been doing this for a little while and I’m sure you’re probably going to hear some kind of success stories and things like that. Do you have a story maybe that you can share with us about somebody’s success, maybe in independently doing their medication management or some other way that MedMinder pharmacy has been able to help them be more independent?

Absolutely. I have many stories. When I started with MedMinder, I really wanted to see how the device platform worked and interact with it myself and with others. So I had a lady that was referred to us by a provider. She had severe mental health. She was in and out of the hospital. She was in her sixties, and they warned me, they said, before you go into her home, she’s very anxious. She believes that there are rodents and all kinds of infestation in her home, but we can assure you there’s nothing there. Her meds are all over the place and we really need to get her on a regimented cycle. So I said, okay. I called this lady, I said, I’m coming over. Your provider had requested I come out and show you our software platform that will help you take your medications. And she says, okay.

I come in and she says to me, oh my goodness, I’m sorry, my house is such a mess. Look at the ground. You see the mice scratches. I says, oh my God, yes. I’m so sorry. I hope that someone’s taking care of it. And as I’m in her home, I show her the device and she says, oh, that’s interesting. And she wasn’t so accepting of the device at first. Oh, I don’t need something like that. I’m fine. But as I’m looking around her home, I see posters and shrines of LeBron James, and I love this story because it’s really interesting. So to the special edition, limited cereal box, LeBron James. So as I’m sitting with this lady and I’m talking with her about how the device works, I said, what if I can upload photos of LeBron James? That was it for her.

It was sold. She says, you can do that. So yeah, so I spent 20 minutes uploading photos of her man, that’s what she called him, and she couldn’t have been more happier. So really every morning she’d get up, have her coffee, take her meds, and be able to see her man on her screen. Okay. So a month later I get a call from her and she says, Hey Jessica, how you doing? I said, great. I checked in with her a few times before she was doing well. She goes, I’m feeling so much better. Do I still need this software platform device? And I said, yeah, I think you know, you want to keep using it. It’s yours. No one’s controlling it’s all yours. So it’s working and let’s keep doing it. So checking with her provider a few months down the road, in turn, this woman had had less behavioral outbursts, less hospitalizations, and really minimized her behaviors by taking her medication as prescribed and her man on the screen.

So that was a really good story. I have one more if I could share.

Oh, for sure. Yeah, we have time. Go ahead.

Sure. So working in the senior population, mental health and disability, I had a senior, someone had called me from an organization and said, this woman really is going to be admitted to a nursing home. Her meds are everywhere. We need your system. Can you come in? So I met at this woman’s home who had just been discharged for a UTI, some behavioral issues, not sleeping. She was a very pleasant woman, went in, I said to her, this is your device. No one’s going to control it. It’s just going to say it’s time to take your meds and you’re going to take your medication. The interesting fact was this woman couldn’t recognize her granddaughter, really had cognitive impairment, but could take the medication on time by that simple cue.

So I set this woman up on a Monday, let’s say, and then on Saturday, and her family was apprehensive. They were kind of in denial that she had memory impairment and thought she was fine, but they lived an hour away. So I set the woman up on Monday. I checked in on Wednesday with her. I went into her MedMinder Connect app and I saw she was taking her meds accordingly. So part of what we do is we want to really ensure when someone’s first onboarded that they’re successfully taking their medications. So we do check 41 days retention of the device. Anyway, so on Saturday at noontime, I get a call from someone kind of upset and it was her granddaughter from an hour away from where we were, and she was with her grandmother and she said, grandma told me she didn’t take her 8:00 AM meds.

I said, oh, let me look on the MedMinder Connect and see what’s going on. So I looked on her MedMinder profile and it assured me that she did take the cup out at 8:00 AM and put the cup back three seconds later. I shared this information with the granddaughter and she was like, oh, in turn, they were more open to using the MedMinder Connect and being able to remotely manage their grandmother from afar. They were more receptive at this point to using it. I gave them full access. Grandma’s UTI cleared up, she was sleeping better at night. She was able to stay in her home for a year longer than anticipated. So from there, we definitely grew great relationships with all parties involved with that organization. It truly proved what remote monitoring can do in the safety of it. So I do have one more, if I can give one more.

Yeah, I think we got time. Go right ahead.

Really quickly. This is another great story. A son called me, he’s late forties, has his own family and has kids, and he was saying to me, my mom has Alzheimer’s, and my father’s very overwhelmed. He said, they’re coming to my house twice a day, Monday through Sunday. I can’t do this. I set his mother and his father up with two MedMinder devices and he was ecstatic. He called me, he says, Jessica, I can now visit with my parents once a week, and it’s very pleasant opposed to running around having them come to my house every single day. And it’s a success story because dad didn’t have the kind of burden, so to speak, of managing his meds and his wife’s meds. So it truly has been a lifesaver for so many individuals at MedMinder, and that’s really what makes me very happy to be here. And I’ve really found my niche with MedMinder Pharmacy.

And I think that passion definitely shows, and I love that she was able to get her man on there on the thing and accommodations. If people don’t like something, they’re not going to use it. So just finding a way for them to like it. And kind of like you said, with medication it’s hard because I mean really with or without a cognitive impairment or memory issues, did I take those meds this morning? And for a lot of medication the well, I’ll just take it again to make sure isn’t really an option or a good thing to do. So no, I think those stories really kind of highlight the way that it can really help folks with all kinds of different needs.

So Josh, what really separates MedMinder from other pharmacies and technologies, of course, the MedMinder pharmacy combined with the adherence device. But one thing I like to say about all of our staff at MedMinder is we are truly very serious about how we treat our customers and our high touch customer service. We understand the difficulties around medication adherence and really try to have the highest quality of customer service out there.

Jessica, very important, if our listeners do want to find out more kind of about MedMinder pharmacy and the device and just other ways that it can help them out, what are some ways they can do that?

So you can visit our website on www.medminder.com, and that’s www dot M-E-D-M-I-N-D-E-R dot com. For more information, you can sign up, you can sign up for a meeting and just discuss services and options.

Awesome. We will put that link down in the show notes so that folks can easily get to it. Jessica thank you so much for taking time out of your day, coming on and just telling us about this great accommodation that can really help folks with something that pretty much all of us need it at some point and really be able to help folks be able to do this a little bit more independently, but also give the caregivers and staff that peace of mind knowing that these things are actually happening. So thank you again so much.

Thank you so much for having us.

Do you have a question about assistive technology? Do you have a suggestion for someone we should interview on assistive technology update? If so, call our listener line at (317) 721-7124. Send us an email at tech@eastersealscrossroads.org or shoot us a note on Twitter @INDATAProject. Our captions and transcripts for the show are sponsored by the Indiana Telephone Relay Access Corporation or INTRAC. You can find out more about INTRAC at relayindiana.com. A special thanks to Nicole Prieto for scheduling our amazing guests and making a mess of my schedule. Today’s show was produced, edited, hosted, and fraught over by yours truly, the opinions expressed by our guests are their own and may or may not reflect. Those of the INDATA Project, Easterseals Crossroads, our supporting partners, or this host. This was your assistive technology update. And I’m Josh Anderson with the INDATA Project at Easterseals Crossroads in beautiful Indianapolis, Indiana.