For any health insurance company, the best case scenario would be when patients continue to pay their premiums but remain healthy - that's when the company will get to collect premiums without having to worry about claims. But, unfortunately, neither is that possible nor is it feasible because of stringent regulations and medical laws. And the biggest challenge now for every single payer in the market, including bigger companies like UHG, is - 'how to keep the members healthy and help keep their financial things in order' as the amount of co-pay is also high.

Looking at the increasing healthcare costs in terms of insurance, repeating footfall to hospitals, and patients not being medication-compliant, UHG decided to create a mobile app which will have a holistic approach to improve patient health as well as save its customers money by giving a tool so they can make informed decisions about prescription drugs.

When the insurance giant approached [x]cubeLABS, our innovation and results-driven engineering helped build a powerful app like ScriptHub which enables users to compare branded and generic drugs both in terms of choosing alternatives and also pricing. It also helps customers in locating and finalizing a pharmacy, and benefit from its robust medication reminder system.

What's Unique About ScriptHub?

ScriptHub is the first-of-its-kind app to be integrated with an EMR which is a tough thing to do in terms of mobility. Now EMR vendors are open to mobile integration but one can understand how difficult and challenging it is if a big player like UHG tried for 2 years to make it possible.

When you visit a doctor with a medical condition, he will prescribe medicines to cure you of your illness. So what has been prescribed could be a branded drug (which is far more expensive) or a generic one, though the efficacy of both is the same. This tool enables patients to compare branded drugs with their generic equivalents, and probably request the doctor to change the medicine and suggest a generic alternative.

But it's not as simple as it sounds and there's a lot of technology involved - the tool speaks to a database where a list of the generic equivalents of branded drugs is maintained, and that's how the app works and makes it unique.

How Did We Make It Possible?

UHG used our analytics platform Upshot extensively and also conducted market surveys to find out what kind of features do people want in the app. Usually such surveys are done with a focus group of 10-12 people. But by using Upshot, UHG treated the whole market as their focus group to understand what the market is ready for - by asking questions & getting feedback, besides integrating analytics.

Thanks to the feedback and analytics integration, features like Medicine Cabinet where patients or caregivers will know about adverse drug reactions, were incorporated into the app.

e-Prescriptions:
The app talks with the EMR where the patients' e-prescriptions are stored and processed. When you visit a doctor and he prescribes you medicines, the app will pull up the pharmacy of your choice and the list of prescribed medicines will be directly sent there.

Search/Choose Alternatives:
Now the power of searching and choosing alternatives for prescription drugs lies with the patients. The e-prescription module helps consumers do this and compare prices too, besides checking with the doctor if the drug can be changed. So, it's a win-win situation for everyone involved – the payer and the consumer.

Customer Engagement:
The app is also a way to engage consumers as they understand well about the drugs they are taking, the side-effects, the commonalities, and if a high-dosage prescription drug can be split into two, etc.

Compare Pricing:
The drug pricing module helps to search for the price of a drug and compare prices in different pharmacies and decide which pharmacy you want to choose. The option to change the pharmacy is also available.

Medicine Cabinet:
You can pull in 2,3 drugs into the medicine cabinet and it will tell you if there're any adverse reactions as certain drugs may not be compatible with other drugs. This feature benefits young families with kids.

Pharmacy Locator:
It helps you locate a pharmacy in your neighborhood, choose a pharmacy as your favorite, or set a preferred location and get your e-prescriptions routed there for easier pick up.

Robust Reminder System:
In order to keep the costs lower and decrease footfall, the patient needs to be medication compliant. The sytem is built in such a way that the user needs to take the medicines at any cost. The built-in analytics platform keeps track of the patient's medication record.

User-friendly Design:
As we have a few complex features because of the wide range of user base across different age groups from 15 to 70 years, the healthcare app is designed in a user-friendly way keeping in mind the needs of a teenager as well as an elderly person.

Integrating the app with the EMR, and building APIs for consumption as well as for delivering data is very tough and was, therefore, our major technical challenge. We've worked very hard to solve this issue and tasted success with EMR integration.

The storing of the reminder data, and pushing it to analytics is another crucial aspect of this app which was challenging.

HIPAA compliancy needed to be tackled too - as new rules keep getting added every year, it's essential to be up-to-date and make sure all HIPAA rules are complied with in the app.

We had help from the industry as we followed up with EMR vendors, understanding their requirements and how their system actually functions, how the mobile app can use that data - that research has helped us tremendously.

The app is HIPAA compliant and it's quite secure in terms of privacy of the medical records. As we're good and experienced in terms of technology, providing HIPAA solutions with its usual encryption and security integrated aspects was easier than expected.

We've made sure that we provided security both during the data transfer from EMR to mobile and also by doing an AES encryption when the data is at rest. When we push out data, it'll be encrypted and sent. While receiving data too, it'll be decrypted and received.

User base increased after the EMR integration as the initial non-EMR version saw a lot of downloads which encouraged the company to go ahead with the release of the EMR-integrated version.