A personalized reminder service aimed at ensuring patients never miss their medicine is being developed by a team of students at United Arab Emirates University (UAEU).

Currently being incubated within the Science and Innovation Park (SIP in the United Arab Emirates University, the Dwak innovation is a personalized medical assistant app that creates a link between pharmacies and the patients they serve, to help ensure that medication is taken correctly.

Dwak is designed to send automatic reminders to users every time they need to take a tablet or a dose of medicine.  Patients making mistakes in taking medicine leads to poor health, hospitalization and even death. 

Dwak was founded by a brother and sister team.  Yahya Iqelan is an MIS gradute of UAEU.  Fatima Iquelan is a pharmacy graduate of Al Ain University.  Fatima raised the problem of prescription drug non-adherence.  Yahya realized there had to be an IT solution. 

Dwak is a platform that partners with pharmacies.  It is currently being test marketed with two branches of Al Ain Pharmacies.  Yahya explains, “Imagine you take your prescription to the pharmacy, download the Dwak app and instantly you’ll receive reminders to take your medicine.”

Rounding out the team is Mansour AlKaabi, a supply chain graduate, Steve Kranz a management instructor and Shahd Abadlah, who has background in nutrition.  Dwak’s goal is for prescription drug users to “never miss a pill again”. They conducted research which identified incorrect use of prescription medication as a worldwide issue that, in the US alone, is estimated to lead to 125,000 premature deaths each year. It also places a greater strain on already-stretched healthcare budgets, with one out of every 10 hospital cases being due to the patient not following medication guidelines.

“Remembering to take prescription medication on time, and getting refills, has always been difficult,” explained Yahya. “There are applications that remind people to take their medication, but none that do it automatically.”

“Dwak offers automatic reminders once patients pick up their prescriptions and also offers a direct connection with healthcare professionals, so their questions can be answered. There is nothing like it currently on the market.”

Having been incubated at SIP, the team has now formed a partnership with Al Ain Pharmacy to test Dawak in a pilot scheme. “Our aim is to expand and offer the service to all pharmacies in the UAE by 2018,” said Yahya.

“As we believe this is a vital service with potential worldwide application, we are also applying for a US patent and we plan to extend Dwak to other countries in the future.”