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Mango Health: A Mobile App For Rewarding People Who Stay On Track With Prescription Drugs | TechCrunch

Adherence to prescription drugs and supplements is a problem that not only puts the long-term health of millions of patients at risk. It’s a problem that may add an extra $100 to 300 billion in health care costs in the U.S. alone.

Enter Mango Health, a startup that’s adapting some of the triggers and rewards from the social gaming industry to the complex world of health care. The startup is bringing an app into beta today that helps patients stay on track with their prescription medications and supplements. Mango Health has raised nearly $1.5 million from a stellar cast of investors including First Round Capital, Baseline’s Steve Anderson, Floodgate’s Mike Maples, Zynga CEO Mark Pincus and Square’s chief operating officer Keith Rabois.

“People have a really hard time staying true to their treatment programs,” said co-founder Jason Oberfest, who is a former vice president at Ngmoco, the mobile gaming network that Japan’s DeNA acquired for up to $403 million in 2010. “The more we looked into it, we realized that many of the most common diseases that people have are ones where the consequences of the diseases are the most deferred. So can we use what we’ve learned about gaming to actually change behavior?”

The app includes daily reminders to take drugs at different points. Patients can self-report that they’ve stayed on schedule by taking photos of their drug containers. The more they stay on track, the more rewards they get. Mango Health is working with a number of unnamed brands right now to offer users rewards like magazine subscriptions, discounts on groceries and gift cards.