In this edition, we catch up with Nitin Parekh, CEO at YOURmeds. This medication management solution uses the latest technology and mobile communication to prompt patients to take medicines correctly - and alert their carers if a dose has been missed, or the wrong medication has been taken.
Current job role: CEO
Name of innovation: YOURmeds
Tell us about your innovation in a sentence.
YOURmeds helps people to take the right medication at the right time with support from their network of family and friends improving health outcomes whilst reducing costs for primary and secondary care.
What was the ‘lightbulb’ moment?
When I realised my mother needed help, and I was 274 miles away! My mum was a type 2 diabetic, had high blood pressure and early-onset dementia. My father tried to support her but had an active life, so technology was the only viable answer.
The idea of a smart blister pack came to me when I saw my mum trying to manage a standard dosette box from Boots. I marveled at the random opening of the tabs and thinking ‘there has to be a better way, so that I know what she is taking!’ My mum was my first real world case study.
The World Health Organisation and NHS widely recognise that only 50% of people take their medication as intended. I realised that this was a global problem - if addressed, it could lead to a positive impact on people’s long term health and wellbeing.
What three pieces of advice would you give budding innovators?
1. Test the market for your product thoroughly. An innovation can work at many levels, but most are in reality either extremely narrow, or simply not scalable. Those that work best are the ones which 'add a few grains of sand to the beach', rather than 'inventing a new beach’.
2. Be patient. Adoption in healthcare will take a lot longer than you expect. There are too many vested interests that will not accept your invention; remember that if you are being disruptive, you are also disrupting peoples’ pre-conceptions.
3. To help your business stay solvent, look outside of the UK. Innovating in healthcare costs a lot of money, and most of that is spent on trying to stay solvent until you get traction.
What’s been your toughest obstacle?
Being a political football between the NHS and social care. In 2022/23 the NHS spent £10.4 billion on medicines in the community but it does not see medication adherence as a priority. Adult social care recognises that getting people to take their medication has an impact on how much long-term care they would need in the future, but the Care Act only allows care to be commissioned if a person requires support with two or more daily living tasks (e.g. eating properly, going to the toilet). Therefore, someone requiring only medication support will often have 4 visits from a carer per day, with a requirement that support for personal care is provided to justify these visits. Without providing a means to improve medication independence, it is very difficult to reduce the number of visits a carer needs to make. If the medication piece was supported with a digital technology as soon as they become known to adult social care, as is done in Stoke-on-Trent City Council, the data collected can be used to evidence a care call when the service user can no longer manage their medication.
Our biggest problem is the lack of joined up thinking between health and social care and too many people sitting in silos, worried about their own budgets and unable to see the bigger picture. With a growing elderly population, the NHS and adult social care need to work smarter. Digital technology is the way to increase capacity in the system, whilst increasing the independence and health outcomes of patients and/or service users.
What’s been your innovator journey highlight?
Our first adult social care client, Manchester City Council, taking us on. From there we have been really lucky to work with some forward thinking adult social care teams in Stoke-on-Trent City Council; Bridgend Council; and the Cwm Taf University Health Board. Recently we’ve managed to join up the conversation with some councils and ICS’s in South Yorkshire with Sheffield City Council and Bristol, that has given us hope that a joined up conversation around adherence is finally gaining traction.
What is the best part of your job now?
Seeing how the technology impacts the service users. With a little bit of support around adherence, our service users talk about how it’s helped them to feel better; manage their long-term condition; become more independent; and reduce the burden on the primary carer.
If you were in charge of the NHS and care system, what’s the one thing you’d do to speed up health innovation?
Work together, remove silos, and stop re-inventing the wheel. Every large organisation needs to agree a clear strategy that involves putting people at the centre. In our area, it would be really easy to identify the 20% of people who cost the NHS 80% of spend, let’s give them a digital medication adherence system based on their need, and then use the adherence data to understand what impact the medication taken is having on their long-term conditions.
Our phase 2 project in Bridgend City Council and Cwm Taf Morgannwg University Health Board has been funded by the SBRI, and we’ve done some development work to bring the medication information into the reporting dashboard. So, for the first time, clinicians will know what medication was taken in each round and how to advise around missed or wrongly taken medication.
We also need a hard look at systems and processes across all the health and social care landscape. Often, the only way social care teams, GPs, and pharmacies know someone has gone into hospital is due to the non-adherence on the YOURmeds systems. Trying to get data sharing agreements between health and social care is a major challenge.
A typical day for you would include…
Walking the family dog, Dylon, in the morning before I get to work!
Everyday is different but generally includes: fundraising, product development, capturing our “user gold” from service users on how the technology supports them on a daily basis, and developing our team. Recently we’ve been doing a lot of development work with the SBRI bid - so lots of catching up with the IT team.
