AMAG Pharmaceuticals, Inc. has launched an online calculator created by Medicom Digital to determine a patient’s kidney function on its Feraheme® website (www.feraheme.com/resources/calculator.html).

AMAG Pharmaceuticals, Inc. is a biopharmaceutical company that has developed a therapeutic iron compound, Feraheme, to treat iron-deficiency anemia (IDA) in adult patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD).

Many healthcare professionals do not see CKD patients on a regular basis and so do not have a high level of familiarity with the definitions and descriptions of this disease. AMAG Pharmaceuticals, Inc. needed a means of enabling busy healthcare professionals to rapidly determine the CKD stage of a patient diagnosed with chronic kidney disease or chronic renal insufficiency.

Since glomerular filtration rate (GFR) is considered the best overall index of a patient’s kidney function, AMAG Pharmaceuticals, Inc. decided the most successful approach would be to develop an easy-to-use, visually attractive and readily accessible application that quickly determines the GFR of a patient. It is simple to use, with just five questions that can be answered in seconds to immediately generate a validated and scientifically-accurate GFR level for a patient.

This Calculator also:

• Provides explanations of how the GFR values are calculated
• Is visually appealing and well-integrated with the Feraheme website
• Contains information about kidney damage indicators from the National Kidney Foundation’s KDOQI™ Clinical Practice Guidelines
• Shows ICD-9 codes for the stages of chronic kidney disease
• Lists the References required for medical, regulatory, and legal approval of the Calculator

For more information visit the websites www.feraheme.com and www.medicomdigital.com.

Main Screen from the AMAG Calculator

On Wednesday, January 20, 2010, the American Heart Association announced its new national goal: By 2020, improve the cardiovascular health of all Americans by 20 percent while reducing deaths from cardiovascular diseases and stroke by 20 percent. This is the first time the American Heart Association has adopted better health as a principal goal.

As a cornerstone of this initiative to help people improve their heart health, the American Heart Association has developed a new online resource – My Life Check™ (www.heart.org/MyLifeCheck). Medicom Digital staff worked with scientists from the American Heart Association to create this interactive assessment that easily identifies the seven goals for ideal heart health and notes where a person is on the spectrum of heart health.

If you need help describing the science behind your product or service, contact us @ 800-971-0785.

It’s that time of the year where people typically resolve to make a change for the coming year.

Medicom Digital is beginning to wind down for the holidays here and we wanted to be sure to share our latest holiday card with all of you.

A challenge for any pharmaceutical or device company with a new product is getting favorable reimbursement and formulary status from managed care organizations. For a firm providing a new Beta Blocker, the solution from Medicom Digital is an economic analysis model that compares this drug with its competitors in terms of both the direct costs of the medications and treating side effects.

The model uses national average figures for Beta Blocker usage from claims data and calculates the following for any size organization:

· Percentage of existing and newly treated people receiving Beta Blockers for high blood pressure (candidates for therapy)

· Medication usage persistence percentages and time periods for each of the drugs

· Drug switching percentages and costs for each of the medications

· Percentages and costs for the six most common side effects for each of the medications

In addition, the model recognizes that shifting patients from one medication to another does not happen immediately, and that the most likely recipients of the new Beta Blocker are people starting to receive treatment for high blood pressure. The model thus examines the impact of placing this new medication on a formulary for both existing recipients of Beta Blockers and newly diagnosed patients, as well as the combined effect for both populations.

As an example of the model’s results, for a managed care plan with one million members and where 10% of existing patients and 5% of new patients currently receive the most expensive name brand Beta Blocker, placing one quarter of the existing patients and half of the newly diagnosed ones on the new Beta Blocker could save the plan an estimated $1,000,000 per year.

Demo Page: Treating Hypertension with Drug X

Learn more about our Health Economic Tools

As part of our on-going outreach to the local community of developers, Medicom Digital often sponsors Twin Cities Google Technology Users Group (TC-GTUG) meetings by providing food and meeting space.

One of the big advantages that our solutions have is the ability to take your tool and easily (and cheaply) translate it into other languages or create otherwise localized versions.

As some of you might have noticed, we’ve made some significant changes to our website.