UNC researchers hope to tackle medical non-adherence with app

UNC researchers in the Campus Y are creating an app that seeks to eliminate medical non-adherence, or not following prescribed medical treatments.

MedUcate is an educational app that will teach elementary to middle school-aged children about physical, mental, social and nutritional health through the use of a multiple choice competition game.

Soon the app will focus on educating patients and family members about how best to treat illnesses.

MedUcate is a CUBE venture, meaning it receives the resources, and financial and advising support of Campus Y’s CUBE, the social incubator.

Laura Fieselman, UNC social innovation initiative coordinator, said this app will be a valuable resource for caregivers of people with diseases.

“(MedUcate is a) fun and engaging platform to help people be good stewards of their health,” Fieselman said.

The team consists of two UNC pharmacy students, Patrick Kurunwune and Karthik Chandrasekar, biomedical engineering major Elliot Krause and a computer science student at NC State, Alex Melton. The team met at the Triangle Health Innovation Challenge one year ago.

Krause said the inspiration for tackling medical non-adherence came from seeing research that showed that the 50 percent of cystic fibrosis patients who did not adhere to their medical regimes were adding an additional $1,000 in medical costs for an affected family.

The team talked to doctors at UNC Hospitals, who said non-adherance was due to patients and families lacking knowledge about their general health and their health related to specific diseases.

“We think that we can really improve the current inequality of health education,” Krause said. “If we can make it easier for poorer people, or like people who don’t have the same access, to receive a health education, we can improve the quality of their day-to-day life.”

Kurunwune, who was in charge of the team’s logistical operations, said he brought a unique perspective to the team as a pharmacy student. He said the app is valuable to the education of the whole population.

The hope is that eventually the game will be able to provide disease specific education.

Currently the team is working on optimizing the app, and the prototype is expected to be done in a month. In two to three months they plan to test the app and get feedback from kids.

Krause, who has hearing loss, said he has personal reasons for wanting to create the app.

“I never really learned about my own personal health. I never really learned about my social health, mental health, physical health and nutrition,” he said.

“It wasn’t until I got to like high school and college that I really started to learn more about my own body.”

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