Recently, two private sector groups set up a partnership to help improve the health system to care for patients with “Multiple Chronic Conditions” (MCC). MCC are the presence of two or more chronic conditions in a patient. Currently, one in three adults globally and two in three adults over 65 suffer from two or more chronic conditions.
According to Prabhjot Singh, MD, PhD, Director of the Arnhold Institute for Global Health in New York http://icahn.mssm.edu/research/arnhold and Chair, for the Department of Health System Design and Global Health at Mount Sinai Health System, “Health systems must do a better job of caring for patients with MCC. Our goal is to develop better methods and care models to change the trajectory of outcomes for these patients in N.Y and worldwide.”
TEVA Pharmaceutical Industries ltd., www.tevapharm.com, a generic drug company and Mount Sinai Health System http://www.mountsinai.org, a large hospital group are going to work together to gain new data and insights into interventions that will meet the needs of people with MCC.
One part of the effort will initiate a regional pilot program at Mount Sinai’s Arnhold Institute. The plan is to design and evaluate a patient-centered and integrated approach to treating MCCs and then use the approach to care for larger patient populations.
Experts in the field think that the use of technology-based solutions and remote monitoring will be able to provide on-demand treatments, as well as the use of cognitive computing to derive insights into medication interactions. They also suggest that it would be wise to use pills with sensors to generate the data needed so the medical team could monitor their patients’ adherence to medications.
Also, the thinking is to simplify the medication regimen for patients which could be done by adapting dosage plans in patients so they have fewer pills to remember to take each day. For example, providers could improve the patient’s medication adherence by prescribing fixed-dose combination medicines which combine multiple medications in a single pill.