What problem will our application solve?
Most patients are currently given confusing instructions and are ill-prepared
Typically, patients are given instructions before procedures by their medical professionals in the form of general verbal and/or printed instructions. These instructions are commonly broad and non-specific to each individual patient.
This is particularly true when it comes to instructions related to medications, natural remedies, vitamins and supplements.
Experience has shown that too many patients come to operating rooms, endoscopy suites or medical imaging suites poorly prepared, having taken or stopped their medications improperly. We believe that this has likely been your experience. Our application will help solve this problem.
Specific medications need specific instructions
Very frequently patients present on the day of their procedure either
- Not having stopped certain medications when they should have OR
- Having continued taking others medications up to and including on the morning of their procedures when they should have stopped them prior to that day.
For examples, certain types of medications may increase bleeding such as anti-coagulants and anti-platelet agents. These medications need to be stopped before procedures, otherwise they may cause significant complications such as difficult to control bleeding and increase the need for blood transfusions.
On the other hand, medications for controlling blood pressure and heart rate often should be taken on the day of these procedures as to decrease negative intra and post-operative adverse cardiac events including myocardial infarction.
Other medications such as insulin need to be adjusted according to the patient's individual needs. If the management of these medications prior is not properly done, this may lead to increased risks of adverse effects associated to either low or elevated blood glucose.
Why is there a need for a better (our) solution?
Better preparation leads to better outcomes
The success of medical procedures, such as surgeries, endoscopic and imaging investigations not only rely on the skills of their medical professionals but also on how well each patient is prepared for such procedures.
If patients undergo these procedures while not being optimally prepared, their outcomes may be suboptimal. In certain situations, such procedures may need to be cancelled and postponed, causing significant physical and mental stresses to these patients, cause delays in diagnoses and treatments, result in time management inefficiencies and waisted time as well as increase in health care costs.
The information may be difficult to read
This image illustrates how typical instructions can be very confusing as they are often long and written with small size fonts. These instructions are often hard to read by people that may have limited reading skills and/or knowledge of medical terms.
Pertinent instructions are often obscured by excessive amounts of irrelevant instructions
Most to the time, generic handouts such as this one contain irrelevant information that may not be applicable to individual patients, only adding to their possible confusion. For example comments are often included about diabetic medications or anti-inflammatory when not every patient takes these kind of medications. In such situation, any comments about these medications is unnecessary and only confusing to these patients.
Many patients may end up not even taking the time to read through these types of instructions carefully as they perceive them to be too complicated in the first place.
Medications have multiple and confusing names
Most medications have multiple names, including generic and brand names. Accordingly, many patients are often unable to recognize the names that are equivalent to the ones they are taking. As an example, Eliquis ® (brand name) and its generic version named Apixaban ® may not be properly recognized as being the same and appropriately stopped by patients before their procedure, possibly leading to the cancellation of their procedure.
There are too many medications for physicians to list in a short, concise and useful document
There are too many medications for health care providers to list them all in a simple manner. This is especially true when instructions are printed in advance to be given to every patients in the same format. In other words, we believe that it is impossible to create a pre-printed set of instructions that will cover all possible medications without making such document very confusing and difficult to understand.
