While watching his grandmother suffer through breast cancer in high school, Delian Asparouhov grew frustrated by her quality of care. He knew more could be done with technology, and enrolled in MIT with the goal of discovering what that “more” is.
After taking a class on medication adherence, the problem became all too clear. In the United States alone, half of the 3.5 billion prescriptions dispensed are not taken as prescribed, according to a study from MIT. What’s more, 10 percent of all hospitalizations and 125,000 deaths each year are attributed directly to medication non-adherence.
Spun from those startling statistics was Nightingale, a mobile app developed to help patients better manage their lifelong diseases. Created by Asparouhov and classmate Eric Bakan, the app became available in the iOS App Store and on Google Play Tuesday, launching with the help of an undisclosed amount of funding from Rough Draft Ventures.
Asparouhov was a founding member of the Rough Draft team, turning into an “alum” after being named a 2013 Thiel Fellow. With the fellowship came $100,000 in exchange for Asparouhov dropping out of school to move to California and pursue his passion. Bakan has since dropped out of MIT, as well.
“We always knew Delian was working on Nightingale, so it seemed natural to bring him in and support him as we would support other student entrepreneurs,” said Rough Draft co-founder Peter Boyce, reminiscing on the several times Asparouhov came to the team asking for advice. “It was just super clear and apparent to us how passionate he was about this in particular.”
Named after Florence Nightingale, the founder of modern nursing, the app provides a personalized system that reminds patients to take their medication around events instead of specific times. Nightingale achieves this by pulling sensor data from users’ phones, thereby capable of reminding patients to take their medication when they return home, whether that be at 6 p.m. or after a party at 2 a.m.
If users do not adhere to the alert, the app sends push notifications to their designated caregivers and healthcare providers.
“We saw a lot of people didn’t take medications for themselves, but more to quell the fears of their loved ones,” Asparouhov said. “We built this caregiver tracking software so you can track and see if [patients] have missed their medication three days in a row.”
The first round of testing was done with family and friends, including members of the Rough Draft team. The second round was completed in May with 30 patients, ranging in age from 22 to 93, according to Asparouhov.
Moving forward, Asparouhov estimates “a lot of iterations on the product will occur,” acknowledging the duo is striving “to figure out how to turn [Nightingale] into a tool that will help patients and doctors alike.”
“A successful end of the year,” Asparouhov said, “will have caregivers using the product.”
