The Owl App

Less than 50% of medications are adhered to as prescribed by physician and there are over 125K deaths annually due to medication side-effects. With over 4.5 Billion drugs being prescribed in 2021 and nearly two-thirds of all primary care appointments results in a prescription.  This is just within the United States, however, medication adherence is global. Globally, non-adherence is associated with poor clinical outcomes, reduced quality of life and high healthcare and societal costs. Costs are mainly caused by excess hospitalizations and impaired work productivity. In 2018, my family contributed to these numbers as my father passed away from a medication side-effect while under ICU care. 

The Owl App, is a mobile application for patients with a web portal back-end for care team members. As medications is entered into the app, we source data from credible resources (Harvard Health, American Heart Association, etc) that provide insights to patients on how to help live with a disease or new medication schedule. 

We setup reminders for the medication, doctor appointments and digitize the drug label so the patient or care givers always have access to important information. 

A patient can select an accountability partner in the event they are late or miss a medication they partner would be notified to check-in with them. 

Finally, a patient can report back any symptoms, social determinants or plainly how they are feeling as well as objective input from wearable or connected devices. 

This allows a care team to monitor a patient between visits, send notifications and request more information. 

We are currently working consumers in both the African-American and Hispanic Latino communities who were adversely affected by COVID-19. Helping to take ownership of their health and have better conversation with their care team. Additionally, we support women's health as it relates to more unique medications and multiple medications. 

Our solutions addresses their needs as they have information available to them and reminders that guides them on the importance of medication and their schedules. It help promote better conversations and healthier outcomes.

Our company's leadership is from the African-American community and we have bi-racial families (Caucasian, African-American, Hispanic/Latino). We are not outside of the community we serve and we also work with local advocacy groups and lay leaders on sharing the importance of health equity and patient empowerment. 

We hope that working within the Challenge we can continue to better understand the needs of the patients and how to help advocate for their care with the care teams so that the right information is timely and actionable. 

We would like to expand our technical knowledge and resources to expand our product features. 

Our solution is different as we reinforce the importance of the primary care physician while empowering the patient to take ownership of their own health. With newer technology, we apply machine learning techniques to identify the probability of side-effects and also render content specific to their medication or disease classification. 

We want to improve the quality of life, one patient, one medication at a time. Reduce deaths due to side-effects and increase adherence. 

We track medications taken on time, appointments made/kept, increase literacy scores. For us, it's good health and well being #3 but also #15, life on land as we can reduce the number of pharmacy drug labels printed per year which on average requires around 300,000 trees annually. 

We work with individuals that see value in our application where they experience better health outcomes for themselves but also begin to enjoy a higher quality of life. When faced with a medication or disease challenge, they become more mindful of their situation, the importance of their schedule, health, wellness and communicating with their care team. 

Through this encounter, information is shared to people close to them (family or extended) which creates an impact with another person to have the same results and taking ownership of their health. Secondarily, their care team sees sustainable improves in the person mental and physical well-being. 

We use React Native for the mobile application that connects to AWS and Sage (ML), when approved, information is then passed into a web portal for physician / care team access relative to their patients content for care. We use SNS nude notifications as well as SMS and plan to incorporate an AI bot for a gamification experience for the user. We also have integrations with wearable and connected devices. 

Our current team structure is as follows: 

African-American Male - 3

African-American Women - 1

Caucasian Male - 2

Caucasian Women - 1

Hispanic/Latino - 3

Asian/Pacific - 1

Military/Veteran - 3

Men: 7

Women: 4

We create environments are are inclusive and supporting of all people.