Cognitant is a health technology company that creates “informational prescriptions,” which aim to educate patients about their health. These immersive, clinician-led experiences take the form of virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), and interactive mobile content. The company aims to provide health information at the point of care in a format that everyone can understand, with the motto “no medicine without education”.

Here, Cognitant Group Managing Director Dr. Tim Ringrose explains how the company’s platform makes it easier to digest patient information.

Chloe Kent: What is the experience of using Cognitant for a patient?

Tim Ringrose: After a patient has seen their doctor and discussed their treatment, they can choose if they want to go to a small room next to the consultation room and put on a VR headset like the Oculus Go to consult some information about his new treatment. The experience will explain a bit about their illness, why the doctor is prescribing this new treatment, how to administer it, and all sorts of practical tips and frequently asked questions.

If you want to watch everything, it will take around 20 minutes, but you can watch as little or as much as you want. Alternatively, you can choose not to watch it afterwards and go home and watch it on a smartphone or iPad. If a patient’s smartphone is VR-enabled, which many of them are these days, they can use Google Cardboard or Google Daydream to watch it in VR.

We replace information that would have been conveyed previously either through a consultation with a nurse at a later date, which sometimes takes place weeks or months in the future, or via printed leaflets or web search – the latter of which may lead find material that is actually not very accurate.

CK: So Cognitant is trying to get around the “WebMD effect”?

TR: Yes, patients often feel completely overwhelmed by the amount of conflicting information online. If you’re starting a new drug, especially a complicated drug like a biologic for rheumatoid arthritis, you’ll find all kinds of horror stories right next to helpful information if you type it into Google. What is pretty clear is that very few patients would choose to have information printed these days, but what they are looking for is always information that has been approved by a medical professional.

We believe in moving away from print and into digital, and using visual tactics such as virtual reality and immersive 2D content to empower people of virtually any background to understand their health. The average reading age in Britain is around 9, so everything we produce, we think, ‘Could this make sense to a 9-year-old?’ Then you have people with language problems or dyslexia, which can mean that it is difficult for them to read printed information.

Cognitant’s proposal is that of information prescriptions. Everyone is used to being prescribed a medication when going to see a healthcare professional, and often it would be even more useful to have an informative prescription. This way, you can learn about your health status in a way that’s relevant to you and answer the questions you have right now, helping you make your own decisions and manage your health more effectively.

CK: What form do these information requirements take?

TR: We have developed Healthinote, a mobile phone application that accepts these information prescriptions. You can use it as a player and it gets doctor recommendations as you see them. This means that the patient has something on their phone that is recommended to them and they can watch whenever they have the time and the inclination.

Mostly, doctors distribute pieces of paper with a QR code, which is scanned on the phone and recognizes the content to show the patient.

There’s also something about VR that’s very engaging, but we quickly realized that having great content wasn’t enough. We needed to provide tools to make things very, very easy for both parties: for doctors, nurses, and pharmacists to recommend information, to prescribe information, and for patients to view clearly and quickly. .

CK: What conditions is Cognitant VR currently able to explain?

TR: Our first program is for primary care and it’s a VR/smartphone content experience for women looking to make the right choice for their birth control. It’s currently in a pilot phase before rolling out to other UK GP practices in June and it’s a really exciting project.

GPs are often not able to fully explain the different options so that the patient can decide what is right for them due to time constraints, and Cognitant allows women to be able to examine the choices and rather than simply being satisfied with the prescription of the oral contraceptive pill that general practitioners systematically prescribe.

The benefit for patients is also a benefit for the general practitioner, as it helps them to better inform patients without wasting time.

CK: In addition to patients and physicians, how does Cognitant benefit the healthcare industry as a whole?

TR: The benefits for the industry are to improve its credibility, increase its visibility and gain a competitive advantage. Some industries, pharmaceuticals in the lead, still have a credibility problem. Companies are looking for ways to add value, rather than just producing pills and other forms of medicine. Moreover, with the arrival of biosimilar products on the market, they must look for ways to differentiate themselves and profile themselves above other producers of very similar chemicals.

We also believe that better patient education is a very important way to tackle the problem of medical non-adherence. Studies show that many failures to adhere to prescribed medications are intentional. People aren’t convinced they should take it or don’t understand how they should take it. This is especially the case with chronic conditions like diabetes, where patients are often on many different diets and sometimes may not know why they are taking all those pills. If you have five different pills to take a day, chances are you’re not taking them correctly or you’ve stopped taking one because you’re not really sure you need them.

Ultimately, it’s good for the patient experience, but it’s also good for the provider. If patients use their medications correctly, outcomes for those patients will be improved, which ultimately means commissioners and healthcare providers will be more confident that a product is effective.