CARE+

• 

  CARE+ PROTOTYPE

Inspiration: As healthcare professionals working day in and out of the Pharmacy, we were inspired by the real-life challenges faced by our cancer patients and their caregivers - particularly in the area of medication claims, refills and deliveries.

Medication refill today requires complex coordination, not only based on the number of pills left but also timing to the next start date of chemotherapy cycle and considering monthly Medishield and Medisave claims limit. If done well, the result is an optimal chemotherapy treatment with minimal out-of-pocket expenses. In actual reality, missed doses, last-minute delivery orders and confusion amongst patients and caregivers when seeking pharmacists' advice over the phone add to unnecessary stress in an already difficult journey. On the other hand, pharmacists also face burnout from the endless queries on the optimal amount of medicine to order based on claims limit and expediting medication delivery for last-minute orders.

Furthermore, a study on financial impact done at NCCS, amongst 314 patients receiving chemotherapy, revealed low awareness of cancer drug subsidy schemes can be and how’s its related to the treatment, necessitating a need to integrate and provide patients and caregivers claim insights that can be accessed and acted upon.

We studied existing market solutions: (1) Health Buddy, though able to integrate with SingHealth's Pharmacy system to show balance of medication on prescription and directly trigger medication delivery upon ordering, does not remind when medicine is running out. (2) Generic apps on medication dose reminder such as Medisafe and My Therapy, though simple to use and sets a reminder based on the number of pills left, does not consider the next start date of chemotherapy cycle and monthly claims limit. It also does not trigger the medication delivery process upon order of medication unlike Health Buddy.

This motivated us to envision CARE+.

What it does: Following this year's theme of reducing burn out and improving care, CARE+ is a mobile application that simplifies the chemotherapy journey. Key features include (1) calculation of optimal medication medication delivery schedules (2) Financial planner that helps optimise the amount of medicine that can be collected every month based on claim limits (3) directly trigger request for medication delivery and (4) personalised, gamified educational resources on the medicine and financial-related resources like cancer drug list subsidies etc.

How we built it: We created and designed the app using Cogniss, with some context launches to external websites, Google calendar, generative AI tool (party rock) and AWS SES API.

Challenges we ran into: Initially, we found that not all ideas we had such as calculation of optimal medicine delivery schedule and quantity were executable with the Cogniss application. We were also unable to integrate with existing SingHealth systems to automate the data entry (by user) and trigger the medication delivery process. Hence, we had to pivot our solution and improvise by putting a few other applications together.

Accomplishments that we're proud of: We are super proud that we managed to put together a one-stop app despite the limitations we initially faced with idea vs functionality of the technology we leveraged on.

What we learned: Innovation is an iterative cycle of discovery and design; made even more special with multi-disciplinary collaboration!

What's next for CARE+: Besides the future plans stated in our video pitch such as App Store/Google Store, HH+ integration, constant improvement with user feedback and implementing failsafe mechanisms, we also hope to be able to try building some of the calculations and logic back-end with Cogniss, removing the need to context launch to other applications, making it a truly user-friendly one-stop app for patients and caregivers.

Built With

• amazon-ses
• api
• cogniss
• partyrock