Wagon: Mobile Clinical Care for Addiction Recovery

Wagon: Mobile Clinical Care for Addiction Recovery

November 12th through 18th is Digital Health Week in Canada! On this occasion, we are pleased to introduce Wagon: Canada’s first clinical care app that allows healthcare professionals to monitor and connect with their addiction recovery patients.

Wagon is an app that is designed to facilitate the tracking, monitoring, and support of addiction recovery. Patients set their own recovery goals and then track their progress in Wagon. Healthcare professionals can view patients’ Wagon activity in real time and can provide support to help them stay on track and work through challenges.

What Wagon Aims to Accomplish

Wagon aims to improve patient care and produce better outcomes in the following ways:

  • Strengthening the relationship between healthcare professionals and their patients.
  • Allowing patients to get personalized care based on real-time data.
  • Ensuring patients get daily support.
  • Providing access to care for patients living in remote areas.

Wagon is a cost-effective and low-maintenance way of gathering long-term data regarding addiction recovery support services—such data does not currently exist for the industry. As this data is gathered and analyzed it will yield insights that improve the quality of patient care.

Pilot Study by EHN Canada

EHN Canada conducted a pilot study to evaluate Wagon involving 65 patients between the ages of 26 and 59, with a roughly equal mix of males and females. The vast majority of study participants had either alcohol addiction, drug addiction, or both. Approximately half the participants had a concurrent behavioral addiction. The following are the results from the study:

  • 54% reported that Wagon helped them stay abstinent.
  • 86% reported that Wagon helped them follow their recovery plan.
  • 67% reported decreased effects of triggers while using Wagon.
  • 47% reported decreased feelings of isolation while using Wagon.
  • 64% reported increased levels of happiness while using Wagon.
  • Of the participants that relapsed during the study, 75% reported feeling that Wagon helped them get back on track

Perhaps the most important indicator of overall satisfaction was that 73% of participants reported that they would recommend Wagon to others.

Wagon’s Latest New Features

Wagon is always adding new features to improve patient outcomes. The following are some of the latest:

  • Secure video counselling for individuals or groups (HIPPA compliant)
    • Healthcare professionals can create groups for video counselling and assign patients to groups
    • Patients can join video counselling sessions
  • Detailed reports for healthcare providers to support harm-reduction strategies such as monthly reports for drinking days, triggers, etc.
  • In-app messaging, which allows healthcare providers to communicate with patients within the Wagon system
  • Self-guided cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), dialectical behavioral therapy (DBT), and other therapeutic exercises for patients
    • Wagon suggests exercises based on a patient’s responses in the daily review and on the patient’s other Wagon activity
    • Healthcare professionals can review patients’ completed exercises

Coming Soon to EHN Canada

EHN Canada currently uses Wagon with a small number of patients in its intensive outpatient programs. We plan to roll out more widespread adoption in early 2019. Learn more about Wagon at https://onthewagon.ca/.

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