Coordinated Care Management

October 14, 2011

Front Porch Center Achieves mHealth Grant for 'Minding Our Meds' Project



The Front Porch Center for Technology Innovation and Wellbeing has been awarded a $77,150 mobile health (mHealth) grant from the Center for Technology and Aging for its “Minding Our Meds: Demonstrating Senior Medication Adherence with Cell Phone Texting Reminders” project.

In a release, Kari Olson, president of the Front Porch Center for Technology Innovation and Wellbeing, said, “Given that 91 percent of persons aged 57 to 85 take at least one medication weekly, we understand the importance of finding widely available and affordable solutions that can be tailored to meet seniors’ needs.”

“Working with great partners like CareSpeak Communications, UCSF, Sprint, One Economy and the Front Porch family, we are excited about adapting the use of everyday mobile technologies like cell phone text reminders to support the medication management needs of active, on-the-go seniors. This is what the Front Porch Center for Technology Innovation and Wellbeing is all about -- finding ways to creatively apply technology as a tool to help individuals live life their way,” Olson added.

According to officials, this project will address medication adherence among active, independent older adults using a cell phone texting service. The focus will be on 150 adults aged 50 and above who live across Front Porch communities and other neighboring senior centers.

It was revealed that the goals of “Minding Our Meds” will demonstrate that mobile alerts and monitoring help improve medication adherence in chronic disease management. It also helps in the delivery of a replicable and sustainable model by leveraging a mHealth technology solution for medication adherence.

Davis Park, director of the Front Porch Center, stated, “This project is about keeping seniors healthy, independent and connected. To the extent that a simple and widely available communication tool can help accomplish this makes it that much more powerful.”

Officials explained that for enhancing medication adherence, “Minding Our Meds” will use CareSpeak Communication’s mHealth platform, which is a two-way SMS-based medication reminder service. This service is available on all cell phone and smartphone devices with a texting plan. It can conduct pre- and post-intervention surveys to collect data to track medication adherence, user satisfaction with the technology and overall health and wellbeing.

Also it will offer a replicable model that synergizes education, training and Web-based resources with lessons and techniques to improve medication adherence. The project launched along with One Economy Digital Connectors is a community service that strives to train older adults on how to set up and access CareSpeak accounts through its Web-based dashboard.

In July 2011, Center for Technology and Aging awarded mobile health grants to Front Porch Center for Technology Innovation and Wellbeing and four other organizations with funding from The SCAN Foundation to demonstrate the best ways to implement mobile health (mHealth) technologies for older adults with chronic health conditions.


Shamila Janakiraman is a contributing editor for HealthTechZone. To read more of Shamila’s articles, please visit her columnist page.

Edited by Tammy Wolf
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