On-Demand Instructional Medication Video Platform Helps Improve Adherence

My wife was recently prescribed a medication and dutifully filled it at the local pharmacy. In addition to the bottle of brightly colored pills, she was given what seemed like an entire ream of paper, including the receipt and lots of fine print information about the drug. All of which, she promptly put aside without even a glance. Aside from the most meticulous among us, this is a familiar experience. 

Most patients are given few instructions at the time a prescription is written, and of these instructions even less are remembered by the time the patient arrives home.  But these instructions are important. Every drug comes to market with an extensive library of knowledge, developed over years. This data is important for the proper use of every drug ever approved by the FDA or prescribed by a physician.

The FDA realizes that this information is important and requires that the information be provided at the point of dispensing, but to little benefit.

A small company, VUCA Health, started by pharmacist David Medvedeff, PharmD, MBA has developed a solution. Realizing that patients needed this information in an easily digestible manner, David felt that the best way would be on-demand video.

VUCA Health feels it all comes down to improving health literacy. They believe that patients who are empowered with reliable and understandable information are able to participate in care decisions and self-manage their health better than patients who lack this knowledge. This is particularly true with medication adherence, which improves when patients can easily and conveniently access information about their prescriptions.

VUCA’s video platform, called MedsOnCue, is the largest and most robust medication video library in the world, designed to support the operational needs of all sorts of health care organizations, as well as provide patients with the information they both need and expect. 

VUCA has created about 3000 professionally produced videos that cover the top 85% of prescriptions written in the United States (based on an analysis of 100 million prescriptions). Each 90-second video contains the name of the drug, the reason for taking it, the correct dosing, side effects, and other pertinent information. All videos are available in English and Spanish.  A team of pharmacy doctors with over a half century of collective acute and outpatient experience develop the content for each video.

The videos follow a 7-step format with content pulled from the FDA approved prescribing information, patient package inserts, medication guides, and consumer medication information. They incorporate many of the key patient educational talking points endorsed by the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists’ Guidelines on Pharmacist-Conducted Patient Education and Counseling.

MedsOnCue videos are available via a custom-branded website optimized for touchscreen tablets, kiosks, or any web-device. The on-demand site includes an alphabetical listing of medications and video options that can be viewed immediately or emailed to the patient or caregiver. 

MedsOnCue is available through a growing list of Pharmacy Management Systems and dispensing automation system partners. It is fully integrated with the majority of the industry’s leading platforms. In fact, MedsOnCue service is ready to be turned on in pharmacies and other health care facilities across the United States. Once turned on, a QR code will automatically print on prescription labels and enable patients to watch medication videos as well as other patient education information on their mobile devices anywhere, anytime, including at the hospital bedside!