CeyHello comes with motivational icons called “moticons”, which are images with audio clips featuring politicians and celebrities such as Donald Trump and Clint Eastwood. They can also be personalized with an upgrade fee. 

CeyHello, a cloud-based social networking platform, launched its first mobile app.

The free app targets patients with chronic conditions and their caregivers. It connects them via a secure “care circle” that allows both parties to monitor and share information about medication adherence.

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The idea for the platform started a couple of years ago when co-founders Nihar Rout and Amit Kumar met at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management in Evanston, Illinois. In class, they discussed the issue of non-adherence, which is estimated to add $289 in direct costs each year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“We started with this concept of how to connect people who are living at a distance,” said Kumar. “That came to us because of our personal settings. I live in Chicago and my mom lives in Bombay. She’s 61 years old, diabetic, and has hypertension. Now that she’s far away, there’s no visibility of how she’s doing with her medication or if she’s falling between the cracks. It was the same for Nihar, whose family lives in India as well.”

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The goal was to make patients feel motivated to take their medications, despite often having to take multiple pills on a regular basis.

Similar to social media platforms like Facebook and Linkedin, users need to approve their connections in order to gain access to each other’s profiles. Currently, there are three levels of access, from basic viewability to editing control.

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If the patient is comfortable, their family member or caregiver can help them with their medication needs or updates using the app.

“I can sit here in Chicago and control my mom’s medication schedules, edit and change things, and look at her prescriptions,” explained Kumar. “She can upload prescriptions and update the medication schedule as well.”

   

CeyHello’s dashboard allows users to view their medication for the day or by hour. By clicking on the stars in 24-hour care view or boxes in calendar view, users can get more information about each medication and their dosage.

In addition, the duo developed motivational icons, which they call “moticons” and are images with audio clips featuring politicians and celebrities such as Donald Trump and Clint Eastwood that urge users to take their medications. For an upgrade fee, patients can personalize the moticons with their own photos and audio clips.

“As a grandparent, my mother loves seeing my daughter’s pictures,” said Kumar. “So we can connect medication reminders to something that is personal to the patient’s liking.”

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For now, Rout and Kumar said their goal is to become the leading human-centric medication platform. Their long-term vision is to go beyond the consumer model to a business-centric approach as well.

“We are discussing in the background with other stakeholders how we can create value in other industries,” said Kumar. “We’ll touch base again on how to further engage from a B2B perspective.”