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ROCHESTER, N.Y. — PharmaSmart International and Microlife Corp. have formed a strategic partnership to develop what they call a "total cardiovascular risk factor solution."
PharmaSmart said Friday that under the alliance, the companies plan to create a network of solutions for "out of office" cardiovascular disease risk factor assessment. The partnership will align technologies for the management of blood pressure and obesity and the detection of atrial fibrillation — a leading cause of stroke — as well as expertise and market presence to offer health care providers, payers and pharmacists an integrated solution for patient diagnostic screening.
Screening venues will include community pharmacy, workplace, home, medical clinic, and ambulatory monitoring.
"Millions of Americans are walking around with hypertension, atrial fibrillation and other risk factors that are undetected or misdiagnosed," PharmaSmart president Fred Sarkis commented. "During our exploratory discussions, we found that Microlife and PharmaSmart are aligned in our commitment to improving the quality and quantity of diagnostic measurements globally. Working together, we can offer the health care system a multi-tiered solution for population screening that just doesn’t exist today."
Plans call for the Microlife Watch BP product line of home health care and ambulatory diagnostic solutions to be integrated into the PharmaSmart BPT Suite data network.
According to PharmaSmart, the BPT Suite network delivers patient-specific biometrics electronically to providers and patients through electronic health record (EHR) integration and to patients via mobile devices and web portals. The company said the BPT Suite data network now houses more than 13 million individual patient biometrics and is growing by 600,000 results per month.
"For many years, we have recognized that, in the U.S. market especially, the pharmacist is on the front lines of cardiovascular disease management. What they lack are validated screening tools that connect them to the care paradigm," stated Microlife chief executive officer K.Y. Lin. "Our strategic partnership with PharmaSmart will offer the pharmacist new tools to collaboratively detect and manage hypertension and screen for atrial fibrillation. By integrating our devices into PharmaSmart’s interoperable Health IT network, we can bring the patient, pharmacist and primary care physician together on the same page. Research shows that this improves outcomes and reduces total health care costs."
The companies also said the next-generation PharmaSmart health kiosk, which is currently in development, will be "Powered by Microlife," with the device combining PharmaSmart’s universal blood pressure cuff and Microlife’s cardiovascular screening technology.
"Working with Microlife and our retail partners, we will launch a national atrial fibrillation screening and education program that will put pharmacists on the front lines of stroke prevention," Sarkis added. "We believe such a program has the potential to significantly reduce the national incidence of stroke and reinforce community pharmacy as a key player in disease prevention."
PharmaSmart currently serves over 6,000 locations, including retail pharmacies such as Wal-Mart Canada, Nash Finch, Safeway Canada, Coborn’s, Loblaw’s, Roundy’s, Smart Med Rx, Leader, Good Neighbor Pharmacy, Jean Coutu, Shoppers Drug Mart, Rexall/Katz Group, Zellers, Sobey’s/Lawton’s, Astrup Drug, Winn-Dixie and Big Y Foods.
