DISEASE MANAGEMENT & PRESCRIPTION COMPLIANCE

Numerous studies have shown that forgetfulness is a major cause of non-compliance with prescription medications, affecting up to 50% of all patients. One of the important services that care providers can offer is assistance with the administration of medication, such as phoning or visiting patients to remind them to take their medications in the prescribed dosage at the required time. More than 20,000 providers deliver home care services to some 7.6 million individuals who require services because of acute illness, long-term health conditions, permanent disability or terminal illness.

The benefits of an affordable automate medication reminder program extend beyond insured and paid providers to also assisting volunteer caregivers. A rough estimate by the 1996 Bureau of he Census telephone survey estimated that 9.3 million people reported providing unpaid care to a family member or friend. Nearly one in four (22.4 million) households in the United States is reportedly involved in helping care for a spouse, relative or other persons who are over the age of 50.

With the average home-care patient taking medications at least twice a day, the number of instances where a medication reminder would be helpful could reasonably be estimated at something like 7.6 million times per day. With the cost of a visit by a professional home care worker in the United States at $100 and the cost for a phone call placed by a live operator at $2.00, it becomes apparent that as much as 30% of the entire cost of the $40 billion annually spent on home health care may be just for the administration of medications alone.

According to Richard Fiddleman, senior principal with Mitretek Systems, Inc., a not-for-profit, public interest technology consulting firm based in McLean, Va., disease management represents one area in the health care industry where innovative call center/patient communications use can be expected to grow rapidly. Utilizing outbound call center technologies to communicate with patients, disease management programs take a proactive approach to supporting chronic care patients by frequently, sometimes daily, contacting patients to ensure they are following their treatment protocol or to detect changes in their conditions. Use of disease management programs is growing rapidly because they reduce the cost of managing chronic care patients, such as asthmatics and diabetics.

The Company has established a strategic partnership with MedReminder, a company with over three years' experience on providing disease management reminders. Until recently, MedReminder's messages were delivered solely via text messaging pagers. MedReminder has built its clientele to approximately 500 users. Having spent some US $250,000 on the necessary technology, MedReminder recently included text messaging to cellular telephones and to PDAs and voice messaging to its service offerings. It is currently negotiating with large care providers and pharmacy chains in the United States to incorporate MedReminder into those organizations' service offerings.

Caliente brings all these benefits with the addition of complementary technology in its suite of innovative offerings for a unique and exciting blend of solutions that not only perfectly address specific needs, but have also become potent solutions to other problems.

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