IMPROVING GUIDELINE ADHERENCE & MANAGEMENT OF ADHD CARE

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): ADHD is a clinical problem for which multiple perspectives are needed in order to sufficiently make a diagnosis and provide optimal care. This process typically involves physicians, parents and teachers (or other school personnel). Traditional methods of gathering assessment and follow-up data are time consuming and happen inconsistently in clinical practice. Systems are critically needed that can facilitate a uniform and accurate procedure for gathering data from multiple sources. Virtually all professional guidelines, consensus statements, and recommendations from ADHD advocates, stress that the diagnosis and treatment of ADHD must involve the parents and teacher, and that the cornerstone of treatment should be the closely supervised use of psychostimulant medication. This proposal seeks to develop an Internet-based clinical tool that will permit faster, easier and more accurate collection of data from parents and teachers during the process of evaluation and will help physicians monitor medication effects as part of follow-up care. The system aims to reduce undesirable variations in care and improve the quality of care for children being evaluated and treated for ADHD. Phase I will develop a prototype system, which will be fully developed and tested in Phase II. PROPOSED COMMERCIAL APPLICATION: The commercial potential for the ADHD Online Coordination and Management System (OCMS) is outstanding. Inflexxion has been very successful in marketing our products through straytegic partnerships. We envision distributing the OCMS through a partnership with a large pharmaceutical company which sells medications used in the treatment of ADHD (e.g., Smith Kline Beecham - Dexedrine, Ciba-Geigy - Ritalin, Richwood - Adderall). Most large pharmaceutical companies are eager to offer their customers "value-added" benefits such as the OCMS. A current marketing partner of Inflexxion is Health Practice Enhancement Network, a consulting company with deep roots in the pharmaceutical industry. Inflexxion would license the OCMS, rather than sell it outright, and continue to obtain revenues for management and support of the service.