VDEX Announces VIA Program to Aid Physicians in Adding Afrezza to Their Practices
LOS ANGELES (PRWEB) November 07, 2017 -- VDEX Diabetes, an operator of specialized diabetes treatment centers, announced today its VIA Program (Vdex Initiation of Afrezza). This program is designed to help physicians begin use of Afrezza, in conjunction with the Vdex protocols, to integrate the product into their practices. Vdex has extensive experience with the use of Afrezza in the clinical setting. It also is quite cognizant of the slow uptake of Afrezza despite the product’s impressive attributes.
“In the almost three years since Afrezza was launched, scripts remain incomprehensibly low. This certainly isn’t due to the attributes of the product. Afrezza is a very significant advance in the control of blood sugar. In our assessment, the major obstacle now is the time-intensive nature of the process of starting a patient on Afrezza,” commented William McCullough, Founder of Vdex. “We’ve spoken with physicians who understand the product, who believe in the product, who have patients that would benefit from the product, and the physician still hasn’t prescribed it. Why? Because it’s too time-consuming,” added McCullough.
Through the VIA Program, physicians get critical assistance with the process of successfully starting a patient on Afrezza which includes use of the product in accordance with Vdex’ protocols. “It’s much more than writing a script for a patient,” remarked Stephen Brown, VP of Operations for Vdex. “We say starting a patient on Afrezza is kind of like teaching a child to ride a bike. You don’t just hand the kid a bike and say ‘go ride.’ There’s a whole lot of involvement in helping the kid learn to balance and steer, etc. But, there comes a point where the kid can do all that and he rides off never needing help again. That’s Afrezza!
Recently, the maker of Afrezza, MannKind Corporation, obtained a more expanded label from the FDA for the product. It is widely believed that this will result in a substantial uptick in prescriptions since physicians will now better appreciate some of the positive attributes of the product. Vdex is concerned that, regardless of the positive developments about the labeling, if a physician does not have time to properly instruct the patient in its use, Afrezza will continue to be an under-utilized product. Further, there is still a high drop-out rate among patients, suggesting that patients are not seeing the benefits of the product. Estimates put the retention rate generally at less than 50%. In contrast, Vdex’ retention rate is above 90%.
The VIA Program is specifically aimed at making Afrezza easier to successfully prescribe.
“We at Vdex believe the high drop rate is directly related to the amount of time physicians are spending with patients. It takes time to get patients using Afrezza properly, but when a patient gets proper instruction, the results are excellent. We’ve seen that exact thing with our patients,” added McCullough. “That’s why we created this program.”
MannKind Corporation and Vdex Diabetes are unrelated companies. MannKind is the manufacturer of Afrezza along with other therapeutic products. Vdex focuses on blood sugar control in people with diabetes. It uses Afrezza as but one medication among many to treat the disease.
Contact: Stephen Brown
818-661-6367
info(at)vdexdiabetes(dot)com
William McCullough, VDex Diabetes, +1 (818) 383-9496, [email protected]
Share this article