Baltimore City Health Department Partners With eMOCHA For Medication Adherence Pilot

Aditi Pai | Mobi Health News | November 3, 2014

Health app developer emocha, which stands for electronic mobile comprehensive health application, has partnered with the Baltimore City Health Department to run a pilot on medication adherence for patients with tuberculosis.  The Baltimore City Health Department will use emocha’s app, miDOT, which stands for mobile indirect observational therapy, in the pilot.

The miDOT app will record videos of patients while they are taking tuberculosis medication because patients who are diagnosed with tuberculosis must stay under directly observed therapy for the first six months of their treatment. Videos of patients taking their medication are sent to their physicians. The app will also help patients monitor their symptoms through daily clinical assessments.

“We believe that the miDOT app will increase the health department’s capacity to provide quality care for TB patients while freeing up clinician time for other critical TB control activities,” Baltimore City Health Department’s acting deputy commissioner for communicable disease Dr. Patrick Chaulk said in a statement.  Emocha was originally developed by the Johns Hopkins Center for Clinical Global Health Applications in 2008, but in late 2013 it spun off into its own company. The software emocha created was designed to help health programs, researchers, providers, and patients improve communication, patient care, and data collection...