MedAware Partners with Ballad Health's pharmacy team to bring personalized medication risk monitoring to rural healthcare

Thousands of patients per year will be kept safer from adverse drug events.

BOSTON, Oct. 31, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- Ballad Health, the leading healthcare provider in the Appalachian Highlands, has begun leveraging MedAware's AI-powered medication safety monitoring platform to enable real-time personalized risk monitoring for acute care patients. This significant milestone marks a major leap forward in the partnership between Ballad Health and MedAware, which was announced in July 2023. Ballad Health's acute care pharmacy team is the first to natively utilize MedAware within an Epic pharmacy workflow.

MedAware's monitoring platform, driven by data, is the first to offer a personalized, patient-specific analysis of real-time and evolving medication-related risk. This multi-dimensional safety layer allows organizations to fully utilize the robust dataset within their pharmacy and EHR systems. By combining proprietary and novel machine learning algorithms with statistical and clinical review, MedAware enables acute care pharmacists and clinical care teams to proactively intervene with medication dose changes, therapy changes, or continued monitoring before harm occurs.       

Ballad Health has embedded MedAware's clinical decision support logic as a 24-7 surveillance tool within their Epic workflow to identify evolving risks of medication-related harm during a patient's hospital stay. Acute care pharmacists at Ballad now have visibility to personalized, patient-specific medication-related risks. This time-sensitive view allows Ballad pharmacists to identify at-risk patients by acuity level quickly, better prioritize patient care, and drive efficiencies with clinical rounding.

As evidence of the patient safety benefits, Ballad Health's pharmacy care teams are taking action on over 70% of the patient risks surfaced by MedAware's platform. Thousands of patients will be safer from adverse drug events. These results exceed original expectations and are superior to Ballad's legacy systems.     

Trish Tanner, Chief Pharmacy Officer for Ballad Health, expressed her excitement about the project's results, stating, "We are proud to be at the forefront of innovation in medication safety by deploying MedAware's AI-driven solutions. This technology has the potential to make a profound impact on patient safety and outcomes while also driving real efficiencies in the way pharmacy delivers care. By leveraging MedAware's platform, we are taking a proactive approach towards delivering all our patients the highest standard of care."

David Franklin, CEO of MedAware, emphasized Ballad Health's commitment to rural healthcare and medication safety, saying, "We are delighted to partner with Ballad Health, an organization that shares our vision of elevating the practice of pharmacy.  Our work with monitoring innovation is set to dramatically improve outcomes and enable pharmacy teams to do more, more safely."

MedAware is excited to bring its platform to other healthcare providers by leveraging the market-leading EHR. "We are grateful for the work of Ballad Health in supporting MedAware's integration. Health systems are most apt to take advantage of innovation when they leverage their existing toolset, realizing incremental value from prior tech investments. We are excited about the power of clinician-enabled AI to pair alongside healthcare pharmacy teams, empowering them to do more and more safely," said Franklin.

About MedAware:

MedAware's medication safety monitoring platform integrates into existing technology systems, EHRs, and devices. It does not require any significant overhauls or additional hardware. By applying a personalized look at the appropriateness of a patient's medication therapy at each stage of their treatment journey, MedAware's technology can alert care teams to potential harm sooner than traditional tools—streamlining existing workflows, saving clinical time and enabling intervention before harm occurs.

About Ballad Health:

Ballad Health is an integrated community health improvement organization serving 29 counties of the Appalachian Highlands in Northeast Tennessee, Southwest Virginia, Northwest North Carolina and Southeast Kentucky. Our system of 20 hospitals, post-acute care and behavioral health services, and a large multi-specialty group physician practice works closely with an active independent medical community and community stakeholders to improve the health and well-being of close to one million people. By leading in the adoption of value-based payments, addressing health-related social needs, funding clinical and health systems research and committing to long-term investments in strong children and families in our region, Ballad Health is striving to become a national model for rural health and healthcare. Learn more at www.BalladHealth.org. 

For more information, please contact:
Diane Smith
Chief Commercial Officer, MedAware
Email: [email protected]  

SOURCE MedAware