Kali Care -IoT in Healthcare Case Study

Non-adherence to medication is a growing issue in the United States and around the world. According to a study by Annals of Internal Medicine, 20-30% of prescriptions in the US are never filled, and approximately half of chronic disease medications are not taken as prescribed by the doctor. This is estimated to cause at least 10% of hospitalizations and cost the American healthcare system almost $300 billion a year. The problem is not just that patients do not benefit from the treatment they need, but that medication data becomes unreliable. Without knowing how medications perform, doctors cannot properly prescribe the correct treatment, and pharmaceutical companies cannot develop more effective drugs. Kali Care provides connected medication and advanced data analytics to the health ecosystem, giving more reliable information to healthcare professionals, and giving patients the means to manage their own medication.

Using connected medication and the power of cloud computing, Kali’s solution serves every participant in the health ecosystem, transferring medication data in real-time from patients through to medical professionals and providing valuable analytical insight to clinical technicians. Patients receive reminders to take their medication, and can easily track their progress to encourage them to continue taking the full course of medication. This removes the problem of people forgetting to take their medication, and objectively measures patient behavior, eliminating the inconsistencies of self-reporting that doctors are subject to. This also eases the burden on caregivers, who can easily track and manage a patient’s progress. This is especially important with people who are not in charge of their own faculties, such as Alzheimer’s sufferers.  Doctors benefit from this transparency and can be entirely sure of the results of a treatment, allowing them to make more informed decisions. Kali Care makes it easy to share pertinent medication data with other healthcare providers. For the clinical trial environment, the combination of real-time data and cloud analytics is indispensable. Kali’s solutions automate the collection of medication adherence data, ensuring this data is timely and accurate.  The Kali Care algorithms process medication adherence data in real-time to give the most reliable results possible, presenting advanced analytical information in an easily understandable format in minutes. It would normally take trial investigators months to access and view this data in a usable format, Kali saves countless hours in clinical trials by giving researchers a deep insight into the trial patient population.

For an application that deals with millions of data points and catering to distinct users with different requirements, Kali Care needed a connectivity solution that would enable them to expand their business outside the US, without compromising the efficacy of their systems or the security of medication data. To scale effectively, and ensure that their customers remain satisfied at every stage of contact with the platform, Kali Care needed an IoT connectivity provider with operator agreements around the world, and multiple failovers to ensure data would reach its destination intact. With globalization pushing development in the healthcare sector further afield and opening clinical trials up to a much wider and more diverse patient population, reliable, real-time data transmission is more important than ever. Pod Group’s Multi-Network IoT SIM cards gave Kali Care the stable M2M communications base they needed to grow their business, and the expert IoT support necessary for their venture outside their home market. With over 600 networks in 185 countries around the world, Pod’s SIMs automatically connect to the strongest available signal on device start-up, and switch networks in case of outage for the best possible data continuity. This reliability is vital for Kali’s mission-critical data transfer throughout the health ecosystem.

By using robust IoT SIM cards from Pod Group, Kali Care were able to expand their business into new regions around the world, safe in the knowledge that the real-time transmission of patient data and communication with the cloud would not be affected with the growth of the company.  The company co-founder, Navid Afsarifard, said that Pod’s expertise in multi-network technology, ‘Has made it easy for us to deploy our systems globally as we continue to lead remote monitoring in clinical trials.’ This has allowed Kali Care to bring their systems to entirely new areas, and enhance their cloud analytics capabilities in the process. This easy expansion was critical for Kali Care, as their end-to-end system deals with a range of users that cannot accept errors, and that also need fast and consistent data transfer. As Navid continues, ‘Pod has been able to accommodate our needs in several remote locations where it was difficult to arrange for cellular data. This allows our fleet of devices to reliably communicate from wherever they are, with minimal effort on our end.’ This level of service can only come from experts in global connectivity. With 20 years of experience connecting businesses from Tucson to Timbuktu, Pod Group give Kali the care and attention they need to bring their connected medication and in-depth analytics to the world.