People have busy lives and to get the best from your medication you need to take it on time and as prescribed. We’ve created a tool that makes this easy and simple.
Another important reason is that medication safety should be a major source for concern for everyone. Medications can interact in unusual and sometimes really dangerous ways. We, as patients, often get prescriptions from different doctors for different conditions. In South Africa we don’t have a central repository for our health records, our doctors rely on us to tell them what medications we are using. They only know what they’ve prescribed for us. Sometimes we forget, sometimes they forget and prescribe medication that will clash. This should then be picked up by your pharmacy, but this doesn’t always happen. We don’t always use the same pharmacy and mistakes happen. Think of our Medication Interaction tool as a safety belt, you may never need it, but when you do, it can save you from serious harm.
It is important for all of us, as patients, to take responsibility for our own health. We’ve created a tool that helps you to do that by managing and monitoring your medications.
Annemarie started her career with a qualification in Psychology. She pursued entrepreneurial interests in various business sectors before deciding in 2012 that her curiosity about the processes that influence how medical decisions are made required further investigation. Hence, the pursuit of her studies in medical epistemology which will culminate with the completion of her PhD soon.
Epistemology is a term that means:- how we know what we know and what this knowledge means for our experience of medicine and by extension the patient. Her substantial experience in the manufacturing industry, coupled with the rigorous discipline taught by the study of philosophy of science, has allowed a fresh perspective on the functioning of health care to emerge. She views the role of the ‘patient as a person’ to be an often neglected part of medicine:- the interests of the patient are often subsumed by the interests of the pharmaceutical industry or the medical industry. As always for Annemarie, the ‘call to action’ to improve the patient experience has been answered by creating a practical solution rather than to focus on academic research.
Medizen App was conceived to improve patient safety, experience and outcome with the initial focus being on patients here at home. It is a South African solution for South African people.
