Medication management and adherence app maker Medisafe has announced a partnership with Boehringer Ingelheim following a successful pilot. 

Medisafe will offer a wraparound app experience that incorporates Pradaxa-specific educational information into a special version of its app, which patients will be directed to when they're prescribed the drug.

"Pradaxa is not different than any other medications," Medisafe CEO Omri Shor told MobiHealthNews. "All medications have an adherence issue. However, Pradaxa came to us and said we are in need of a solution that will essentially be a companion to the drug and improve adherence. And over the last few months we’ve worked with them and we were able to see that our patients on Medisafe were indeed taking their medications correctly, adhering to their medications, and what you see here is the announcement of a partnership post-pilot."

Pradaxa patients will have access to all the normal Medisafe features, including adherence tracking, alerts, biometric tracking, and MedFriend, a service that notifies friends and family when the user is nonadherent. Prescribing physicians will have access to Medisafe's physician portal, which allows them to see the patients' adherence information.

The deal is one of Medisafe's first partnerships with a pharmaceutical company.

"About three or four months ago we had a press release with Merck," Shor said. "And what they are doing with Medisafe, they’re doing similar things, however Merck’s first rollout will be in Brazil, Mexico, and Russia. This one will be in the US. I would say that essentially over the next few months you will see a few more of these partnerships coming from Medisafe. ... We see Medisafe as a great beyond-the-pill solution for pharma companies. And the partnership with Boehringer Ingelheim is a great illustration of that."

As for Boehringer Ingelheim, the company is no stranger to digital health innovation — it worked with both Propeller Health and Qualcomm on connected inhaler technologies and has also worked with the adherence incentive company HealthPrize.

"At Boehringer Ingelheim, we are committed to advancing patient care, not only through our medicines, but also by providing services and solutions that can help patients on their treatment journey," Christine Marsh, vice president of market access at Boehringer Ingelheim, said in a statement. "We look forward to working together with Medisafe to provide valuable resources to patients, caregivers, and healthcare professionals and positively impact the lives of Pradaxa patients across the country."

Medisafe has had a busy month. It was announced as the first developer partner to make use of Apple's HealthKit API. It also published some impressive efficacy data around improving adherence rates for oral HIV medication.