Bringing Health Home

Summary

Individuals suffering from Serious Mental Illnesses (SMI) are at risk for serious adverse health and social outcomes compared to the general population due to a high prevalence of chronic physical health disorders such as cardiovascular disease, hypertension, and Type II Diabetes, along with consequences of mental distress such as suicide, substance abuse, and acute stress.While pharmacological treatments exist for these conditions, they have limited effectiveness in SMI populations because: (1) up to 60% of individuals with SMI do not take their psychiatric or somatic medications as prescribed, (2) individuals with SMI have poorer clinical outcomes and experience high rates of hospitalizations, and (3) individuals with SMI experience worse care. Challenges in the management of these complex chronic health and mental health conditions have led to the development of intensive community-based service delivery programs. However, as currently structured these intensive in-person interventions have only had limited impact optimizing service delivery, and consequently on adherence to treatment and health outcomes. While in-person clinical contact in select situations is important, telehealth may serve as an effective and nimble intervention to help meet the high need for clinical intervention for SMI populations and particularly those with geographically limited-service access. Although research exists regarding the efficacy of telehealth with SMI populations, most of the existing interventions with this population have been designed for institutional settings, not community settings, because of barriers to adoption of telehealth such as limited access to digital technology, technical support difficulties and cost of necessary technology. The COVID-19 pandemic has underscored the need for developing effective telemedicine and telemonitoring technologies to serve the unique needs of this vulnerable population in community settings. This project builds on a successful Phase I SBIR project and ongoing Phase II clinical trial of the Medherent medication management platform. This study will test an expanded set of telehealth care-coordination services that can be used to address the broad health needs of individuals diagnosed with SMI living in community settings and supported by community mental health agencies. The study team will recruit 300 individuals, including 200 individuals currently using the device and 100 new users of the device. The study will test the existing Medherent platform and a set of extended services. Our key outcomes include acute service use, receipt of preventive and other health screenings, health outcomes and costs of services. The study will use a Stepped Wedge Design approach with a matched comparison group to identify potential benefits of the intervention.

Conditions

• Mental Disorders, Severe

Interventions

OTHER

Medherent

Medherent is a telehealth adherence intervention platform designed for individuals with Serious Mental Illness living in the community. It is currently being used to dispense medication and monitor consumer adherence. It is a fully supported digital hub that is always on network connection and provides a cost- effective mechanism for increased care coordination through the Electronic Medication Record (EMR). The enhanced intervention will add collection of health data though Bluetooth connected devices, Telehealth medical visits and integrated algorithms that provide feed back to providers and consumers about health status.

Sponsors & Collaborators

• University of Maryland, Baltimore

  lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

• George Unick · University of Maryland

Study Design

Allocation

NON_RANDOMIZED

Purpose

HEALTH_SERVICES_RESEARCH

Masking

NONE

Model

CROSSOVER

Eligibility

Min Age

18 Years

Max Age

88 Years

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

No

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2022-05-09

Primary Completion

2025-08-15

Completion

2026-09-30

Countries

• United States

Study Locations