Digital marketing agency SF Interactive has partnered with
Action Point, a San Francisco Department of Health program serving
HIV-positive people, on a pro bono project.
SF Interactive has created an Internet-based pager reminder system called the
“Action Point Pager Log System — APPLS” for patients who need assistance
adhering to medication schedules.
Action Point is a walk-in, storefront clinic where homeless people with
mental health and substance abuse issues can walk in to get assistance with
HIV medication.
Action Point offers medications, on-site nurses, adherence tools and
counseling. To successfully take anti-HIV medications as prescribed, an
individual must take up to 15 pills at a time, two or three times a day,
sometimes with food and often on an empty stomach.
For people with a home and
a support system, successful adherence is a challenge. For homeless people,
the challenges are even greater.
To address this issue, SF Interactive has
developed the APPLS system that sends reminder messages to Action Point
patients.
Once patients have been enrolled in the program for a month, they are issued
an alpha-numeric pager that is capable of receiving and displaying text
messages.
Doctors and nurses working at Action Point’s offices create message
schedules for each patient using SF Interactive’s Web-based tool. The
messages remind patients that they need to take their medication, keep a
doctor’s appointment, etc.
“This partnership represents a dream pro bono project,” said Alejandro
Levins, founder and chief technology officer at SF Interactive.
“Not only do
we get to push Internet technology in new directions, we can have an
immediate, concrete and direct impact on the lives of real people in our
community. This is not about business or making money. This is about making
people’s lives better.”
