SOUTH SAN FRANCISCO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--FDB (First Databank, Inc.), the leading provider of drug and medical device knowledge that helps healthcare professionals make precise decisions, announced it has acquired Morrisville, North Carolina-based Polyglot Systems, Inc., creator of the Meducation® product line of simplified patient medication instructions. The acquisition culminates a successful two-year sales and marketing distribution agreement between the companies. Terms of the acquisition are private.
Meducation is a cloud-based solution that is accessible to healthcare providers within their clinical workflow through integration within their EMR or pharmacy system. Meducation delivers medication instructions for individuals considered to be “high risk” due to low health literacy, poor vision or language barriers. It enables providers to dynamically create fully personalized medication patient instructions, in any of 21 languages — written at a 5th to 8th grade reading level with large font sizes, pictograms and videos — to make understanding how to take medications intuitive and simple. Meducation integrates with a variety of major information system vendors and has been licensed to hospitals, health systems, clinics and pharmacies across the US and Canada.
Meducation has helped hospitals improve HCAHPS (Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems) scores and has been proven to help reduce 30-day readmissions through better medication adherence. Recently, Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center improved medication compliance among a population of complex patients. Twenty-six percent of patients receiving standard medication instructions and counseling at the time of discharge were readmitted to the hospital within 30 days, while those who received counseling from a pharmacist and used Meducation’s simple medication instructions in their native language, returned to the hospital only eight percent of the time, indicating a 70 percent improvement in readmission rate.
“Since one-in-three Americans are either low health literate or have limited English proficiency, offering simplified instructions in multiple languages and easy-to-understand formats has been demonstrated to help improve medication adherence and patient satisfaction,” said Chuck Tuchinda, MD, MBA, president, FDB. “We are focused on providing innovative solutions that improve health outcomes and reduce healthcare costs and our acquisition of Polyglot Systems significantly advances this mission.”
“Meducation is a natural complement to FDB’s mission and existing solutions portfolio,” said Lori McLean, Polyglot CEO. “Combining Meducation with FDB’s clinical solutions and drug information uniquely delivers a suite of solutions focused on improving patient safety, clinical care and health outcomes across the entire continuum of care.”
About FDB
FDB, part of the Hearst Health network, is the leading provider of drug and medical device knowledge that helps healthcare professionals make precise decisions. With thousands of customers worldwide, FDB enables our information system developer partners to deliver valuable, useful, and differentiated solutions. We offer more than three decades of experience in transforming medical knowledge into actionable, targeted, and effective solutions that help improve patient safety, operational efficiency, and healthcare outcomes. For a complete look at our solutions and services, please visit www.fdbhealth.com or follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn.
About Hearst Health
FDB is part of the Hearst Health network, which also includes Zynx Health, MCG, Homecare Homebase, MedHOK, Hearst Health International, Hearst Health Ventures and the Hearst Health Innovation Lab (www.hearsthealth.com). The mission of Hearst Health is to help guide the most important care moments by delivering vital information into the hands of everyone who touches a person's health journey. Each year in the U.S., care guidance from the Hearst Health network reaches 84 percent of discharged patients, 177 million insured individuals, 60 million home health visits, and 3.1 billion dispensed prescriptions.
©2017 First Databank, Inc. Part of the Hearst Health network. All trademarks mentioned herein are the properties of their respective owners.
