The Burrill Report

As Americans spend ever more time using their mobile phones, Janssen Healthcare Innovation is exploring new avenues to reach them. The company, a unit of Johnson & Johnson, spent much of the recent Health 2.0 digital health conference in San Francisco promoting Care4Today Mobile Adherence, an app it launched in July to improve patients’ drug compliance, notify them to refill prescriptions, and remind them to visit healthcare providers.

“That’s just the toe in the water,” says Diego Miralles, head of Janssen Healthcare Innovation, speaking of the first generation of its platform. “We want to be the pipe for all healthcare mobility.”

Janssen sees the app not simply as a path to helping people remember to take their medications, but also to deliver related messages about J&J products alongside those reminders, an opportunity that excites Johnson & Johnson’s marketing team.

“We feel two-way secure messaging in health is going to be a really important tool,” says Diego Miralles, head of Janssen Healthcare Innovation. “It has to be across all phones so it reaches everybody.”

As part of building that broader reach, the medication reminders app isn’t limited to reminding people just about their Johnson & Johnson medications. And it’s not just an iPhone or Android smartphone app, but also a mobile website that works on any phone with a mobile web browser, something that’s important since global smartphone penetration is now at just 27 percent, according to a recent study by the mobile strategy firm VisionMobile.

Care4Today has only about 1,000 users so far. But that user base could expand when the next major update is released, which Miralles says will connect the app to pharmacies.

Janssen also hopes to use Care4Today’s secure messaging platform to direct more patients to cardiac rehabilitation, retain those patients in those programs, and improve the efficiency of cardiac research. To that end, it is already setting up a clinical trial with Henry Ford Health System. That ties in with the company’s cardiovascular product lines around atrial fibrillation and its efforts to minimize risks, such as blood clots through its drug Xarelto.

“What we really want to do,” says Miralles, “is create a mobility solution that allows many functionalities, from behavior modification to the delivery of content, to interactions with many different partners, be they pharmacists, physicians, or patients with their providers, or families.”


October 12, 2012
http://www.burrillreport.com/article-johnson_johnson_seeks_a_secure_line_to_patients.html