Digital Health Community Pharmacy Innovation: HLTH 2024 Podcast Series Part Three

Transcript

You are listening to the Global Network of Podcasters dedicated to the pharmacy profession. Welcome to the Pharmacy Podcast Network.

Announcer 2 (00:24):

The pharmacy podcast network is excited to announce the release of a compelling three-part podcast series that covers the recent HLTH 2024 conference held in Las Vegas from October 22nd to the 24th. This premier event gathered thought leaders and innovators from across the healthcare landscape focused on addressing pressing challenges and exploring promising opportunities for the future of Health.

Kate Helf (00:48):

Hey, this is Kate Hell, vice president of IPC iCare plus brand and program manager. I am here with the pharmacy podcast.

Todd Eury (00:57):

I’m here with Kate Helf with IPC Digital Health. Kate, it’s been really fun to hang out with you here in Vegas at the HL TH 2024. This is my second time and it’s still overwhelming of how massive this conference is.

Kate Helf (01:12):

Oh, absolutely. We were pretty surprised at how big and just the different types of vendors that we were able to meet with and interact with and it was very encouraging.

Todd Eury (01:21):

Yeah, so representation of independent community pharmacy was here through IPCI was very proud of the conversations I watched your team members have Ashton and several organizations that had nothing to do with physicians and everything to do with patient engagement are now looking at Eyecare Plus as a plugin in order to get access to more and more patients that are being pulled through independent pharmacies and pharmacy care. So give these listeners that are tuned in right now, your overview of health and why it was important to be here.

Kate Helf (01:56):

I think it was incredibly important to be here because as you just stated, Todd, we really were the only voice, I believe for independent pharmacy at this conference and with the different vendors and partners that we talked with, they also reiterated the same thing. I had many that came and said, I don’t know of any solution for independent pharmacy that I’ve ever heard of that takes the approach that Eyecare Plus takes. And I think that it’s so important for us and for the industry to understand that independent pharmacy is here to stay. They’re a vital part of their community and they’re a very, very important part to how a community really grows and continues to thrive. And I think really Eyecare Plus gives them that ability to elaborate and bring that value back where it’s needed.

Todd Eury (02:40):

When I watched you talk with people that came into the booth, a couple of physicians, innovators, technology companies, ideo, which is an eight I developer, the expression on the face is when you said, oh no, this is already working. This isn’t future bake, this isn’t something that’s, it’s forward than innovation. It’s already working innovation. Once again, share that with our listeners that we are saying, no, this is a system that’s working right now in 50 community pharmacies throughout the country.

Kate Helf (03:11):

Yeah, as you just said, we have 50 live virtual healthcare centers. So for us and really being able to grow this brand, it is getting the folks and stakeholders that we want to be a part of this vision to understand that we are integrated, we are a plug and play program product that is something that’s very accessible for our pharmacy partners to ultimately adapt that. That was a huge, huge part in what we wanted to cultivate and create with this particular environment because we know that pharmacy is involved in so many different aspects. They’re being pulled in so many different directions and for us to be able to give them a fully integratable solution, but also not make them do all the leg work and incorporate all those bells and whistles to get there was really, really vital for our particular program and get paid. Oh, you mentioned getting paid. Is that important to a pharmacy? I didn’t know that. Absolutely get paid for their services and continue to get paid. We have the structure now in place that they’re getting paid for those particular visits, but we see a vision that’s a bit further than that and really just really kind of going after how that future model we’re continuing to integrate into their workflow. So it’s a continuous system and they continue to build upon those payment schedules.

Todd Eury (04:25):

Kate, this has been a great meeting for us as your press partner. Thanks for having the pharmacy podcast network as part of this coverage of HLTH 2024.

Kate Helf (04:35):

Thank you so much and I’m impressed by your network and everybody that I’ve seen at the booth as well. So thank you so much for being here with us

Todd Eury (04:46):

Hhl, TH 2024 bringing together healthcare organizations focused on innovation. This is what we’re doing here. So much fun to have a pharmacy organization like IPC concentrated on community pharmacy in 2022. I came to Health for the first time and one of the organizations that I met there was IX layer. And what I was so impressed with was their depth of knowledge of how point of care testing can really make a difference in preventative medicine as well as follow up to whatever disease state that they’re honed in on and the data that comes from that. Deborah Harris is the vice President of marketing. Okay. Deborah Harris is head of marketing at IX Laer, she’s here with me now in the IPC booth. Welcome to the HLTH post show. Thanks so much for having me. All right. Thank you so much for coming over and talking with me. I was fascinated by IX Laer when I originally learned about you. However, the things have changed and not only you as the head of marketing, but you’re actually now pivoting a bit in where you’re going and where with the partnerships that you’re building. Give our listeners an update on IX Layer.

Debra Harris (06:01):

Yeah, I mean I think that everyone that’s been listening to what’s happening at Health 2024 this year is seeing that the combination of tech and pharma is really being discussed even more so than AI at this convention this year. And so we’re right at the epicenter of this connectivity between biopharma companies and technology as these companies look to get closer to their patients.

Todd Eury (06:26):

So what I remember about IX layer is being able to execute a home-based test, receive the data back to a platform that shared that data with the physician and the patient through a mobile app, and then of course an interface to probably the electronic health record. Once again, talk to our listeners about what IX layer is doing and spell that out and give us more detail on it.

Debra Harris (06:51):

Yeah, I mean the basis of our product has not shifted the I and IX layer stands for the infrastructure, and that’s what you were referencing. All of the backend technology that allows for secure transfer of lab testing, information, communication with physicians, and the X stands for the experience. So that’s the front end patient experience that delivers the convenience that everyone is talking about, connecting their lab tests with their physicians, with prescriptions and the entire ecosystem. Now we’ve really developed the infrastructure to support a full end-to-end direct to patient solution that biopharma companies can offer to the patients that they’re looking to serve.

Todd Eury (07:33):

Now, Deborah, that’s the pivot that we were talking about because originally IX there was moving towards the physician, the pharmacy, possibly now the manufacturers involved where they know their disease state, they know what would best hone in on the condition based on executing a test and getting the data back. Talk to us about that new initiative and relationships.

Debra Harris (08:03):

Yeah, so we’re still supporting our two sort of initial industry verticals in the pharmacy space. We’re still providing kits to consumers and we’re still supporting payers. But this new area has been a focus in biopharma for about a year now, and it really is about understanding the patient journey. And you referenced that these pharmaceutical manufacturers have very, very deep knowledge about the pain points and the areas that these patients need extra support, extra convenience, and that’s where we come in. We partner to understand exactly what that patient journey looks like and where we can have the appropriate intervention, whether that’s lab testing to help people get diagnosis more quickly or speak to their physician so they can get diagnosed more quickly or telehealth to speak with a physician all the way through to prescription delivery.

Todd Eury (08:55):

Alright. Why did you choose to invest your time, the budgeting to come to HLTH? Because as this is an amazing innovation conference, it’s also, it’s an expensive investment to be here and to have the meetings that lead to business development, which is my favorite thing to talk about.

Debra Harris (09:14):

Yeah, well listen, this is my first time here, so I wasn’t really sure what to expect. I know IX layer has been here historically. So with this new pivot, I wanted to get a sense for how many biopharma companies are here, what’s being discussed in terms of direct to patient care. And what I’m seeing is that we are at the very forefront, the very beginnings of this evolution that we think is going to rapidly pick up. This is great.

Todd Eury (09:41):

I want to invite you back to dig into some of our subject matter experts, dig into pediatrics, dig into geriatrics, and caring for our fragile seniors long-term care community. I think there’s so much knowledge that you could help bring to our listeners and really digging into where pharma testing and community pharmacy kind of crossroads and then the specialty realm is a whole nother discussion that we could dig into specialty pharmacy disease states too.

Debra Harris (10:12)<:/p>
I would love that. Yeah, that sounds great.

Todd Eury (10:14):

Debbie Harris, how can people reach out to you To best find you,

Debra Harris (10:19):

You can go to our website, ix layer.com. I’m on LinkedIn as well, Deborah Harris, you can see me as the head of marketing. Those are the two best places. Excellent.

Todd Eury (10:28):

Thank you for being part of the show. Thank you. We are at HL TH 2024, and when I’m thinking of digital health and I’m thinking of fusion of healthcare, which is the entire environment, there’s a part of this group, this ecosystem, which is paying for things and it’s one of the most irritating parts of pharmacy for me, which is the PBM and the three big biggest PBMs are getting beat up finally by the FTC and starting to get dissected for really understanding what’s going on. It’s the PBMs that started making decisions 10 years ago that started putting time and effort in building the next gen pharmacy benefit manager. And one of those is capital rx. And I’ve been so proud of AJ and his team and what he’s done. And I have the honor of interviewing Kristen Begley. She is actually Dr. Kristen Begley, PharmD part of the Capital RX team. I want to welcome you to the show.

Kristin Begley (11:36):

Thank you so much, and please call me Kristen. Thrilled to be here.

Todd Eury (11:39):

Absolutely. Alright Kristen, so talk to us about digital health, being at health. Why did RX decide to come to this conference?

Kristin Begley (11:48):

Well, we’re very excited to be here. We think that we’re representing and obviously we are a very strong advocate for technology moving and advancing our industry, which has lagged severely and obviously obviously a lot of entrenched players that have been out in the marketplace too. So thrilled to be here. Excellent.

Todd Eury (12:07):

Alright, so setting the stage. We know that pharmacy care is in the plate, tectonics change from the role of the pharmacist to provider status and then now the disruption of the PBMs. Your team put things in place. How long ago was it that you guys started?

Kristin Begley (12:28):

Seven years ago?

Todd Eury (12:30):

Almost eight. I was going to say 10 years ago. But now you’ve put infrastructure in place to get ready for the next realm, the next level of the next generation PBM. Talk to us about how you’re making a difference.

Kristin Begley (12:42):

So I think first of all, first and foremost, it’s about financial alignment and that’s where the rest of the industry is missed. And I think you’re seeing the smoke signals from the FTC investigations where we thought drug cost is a function of both unit price and drug mix. And we thought that the industry did a pretty good job of nailing down unit price, which is complicated. What’s a brand? What’s a generic? We’ve got many, many pages to define that. And most procurement solutions have 300 questions about what is the price of the drug. The FTC started to uncover when a pharmacy benefit manager is vertically integrated that maybe the price isn’t so competitive anymore and you have 3000% increases on a WP. So that was one piece of it and we’re starting to see that. The other piece of it that everybody missed, it’s those thousand decisions that PBMs make.

(13:35):
It’s the management part of it that drives drug mix. What is the formulary? How aggressive or good or clinical or the clinical programs too many fills do they have? And I think we’ve all been bombarded by fill your prescription and you end up with 15 months of therapy in your medicine cabinet. All of that ballooned healthcare. Nobody cared when prescription drugs was 5% the healthcare spin, but with prescription drugs being 30% of spend, it’s really kind of shone a light on our industry, which most people didn’t even know what a pharmacy benefit manager was until recently.

Todd Eury (14:08):

Alright, so the pharmacist as part of this ecosystem, to me it should be the pharmacist, the physician, the patient, and then those three entities and the whole ecosystem should be surrounded by technology and the PBM and insurance, but that doesn’t feel like it’s that way with the traditional PBMs with you, you do come at this from a clinical perspective. Share with us that vision of this NextGen PBM.

Kristin Begley (14:38):

Well, I feel I am in complete agreement with you. I feel like the US healthcare system in general has been more of a sick care system instead of a healthcare system. And it circles back to that idea of financial misalignment. The partner that you select, do they make more money and does it benefit them? Not necessarily the patient that the more you spend or the more the patient spends, the more they make. We all know Dr. Google out there, you see a commercial, you ask your doctor for that medication on tv, it may not be the safest medication for you. Typically the drugs that have been used more often are safer. We understand more about them clinically. And so how does it help the patient? If the doctor says yes, the PBM says yes when they’re supposed to be the oversight. You may have several doctors in your repertoire that that doctor doesn’t know what the other doctor’s doing.

(15:29):

If the PBM just says rubber stamp, yes, yes, yes, fills more and more medication, that’s not looking out in your best interest because if you think about it, a topical cream is safer for you than an injection than less than 3% of the population has taken. Just the pharmacist and me knows, and we should all know, it takes many, many years, 10 years for us to really understand the side effects. So if we can get away with treating your disease with a topical cream, that’s what we want to do. So let me circle that back to capital rx. It’s safer because we’re more clinically aligned. We’re following those guidelines that when the drugs were approved, how they were supposed to be taken, and I’m going to give an example that everybody would understand. Stomach and ulcer medications, Prilosec, Nexium, all those medications. They were supposed to be taken for six weeks, maybe at a time we popped ’em like candy. And what did we learn later after 10 or 15 years of everybody taking too much of that medication? I think it lead to stomach cancer because you’ve shut down those things. So any patient, whether it be your parent, yourself, whoever, your child, you want them to start with the older generation product that maybe have, we understand more about it. When your PBM isn’t aligned, they’ll say, yes, take that latest drug you saw on tv. It’s not best for patient care.

Todd Eury (16:48):

Alright, let’s talk about business development and expansion. Are you able to partner with community pharmacies that are business savvy? Some of our independent community pharmacies are stuck in apothecary style days and they have to quickly understand the lunches being eaten by your PBMs. You better start getting a little bit more aggressive. So does Capital Rx tell us how you’re partnering with independent community pharmacies to go into their community and pitch a school district or pitch a small employer? How are you doing that?

Kristin Begley (17:21):

So first of all, we use a completely different pricing basis. We use naac, national average drug acquisition costs, which we are the first PBM to come to industry to use it. There’s a sprinkling of naac here and there, which that is a cost plus model for any pharmacy. We don’t want them to go underwater. We cannot have healthcare deserts. You cannot get everything from mail order or anywhere else that you’re going. So we want to give them a full and fair dispensing, not have them try to figure out MAC list, which have been abused by the PBM industry. And it’s a very volatile moment for a retailer and a lot of drugs are underwater and that just doesn’t seem like a fair thing to pay them for their knowledge base. And let’s be honest, pharmacists are frontline workers. They’re there to help us. And often people are more honest with their pharmacists and they are even their physician, they’re just more comfortable with them. So we can’t be pushing them out of business. And oftentimes we get asked to testify at state, it’s like, you’re the good guy, PBM, you’re making money. How are you working in partnership with pharmacies? And it’s a nadac based model that we work in model and give them a full and fair dispensing fee.

Todd Eury (18:33):

How does specialty pharmacy change the game in the realm of capital RX is involved?

Kristin Begley (18:39):

Well, so say two to 3% of drugs are specialty. They drive 50% of total healthcare spend. So it really is about what drugs do you approve for the patient and that’s driving the plan sponsors total costs. So we’re just more clinically rigorous when it comes to is this the right drug for the right person at the right times? It’s the severity of your disease truly warrant that this is the drug you should be on because I mean nothing else really matters. And I think my career started in a managed care residency after pharmacy school and then it went into consulting. And over those years in consulting and even working in a technology company, what I learned was it was less about the discounts and rebates that we negotiated. We kept negotiating what I call better contracts. And ultimately my client’s cost just kept going up and up and I’m talking Fortune 500 clients and I really started to understand it’s less about discounts and rebates and it’s much more about what drug was approved and how many units were approved, which who controls that?

(19:44):
The PBM. So you don’t want a PBM that has more than one customer and that’s a plague that is in our industry. All of their PBMs besides capital Rx, really have pharma as a customer where they’re making money off of rebates and there’s other access fee. Every penny that comes in through better negotiation of dispensing fees at the retail pharmacies that are, I would call full and fair per claim or anything that comes in on rebates gets passed back to our plan sponsors. Whether you’re 50 lives, 50,000 lives or 500,000 lives, think about that is a wild concept. Lipitor costs what Lipitor costs, and whether my client has 50 lives, a health plan that’s 500,000 lives when they access those contracts through us and they don’t have to. They could use us for adjudication and have other contracts, but those that access us, we think that there should be equity in drug pricing.

(20:38):
And from California to Ohio to Alabama, New York City, Lipitor should cost what Lipitor costs. And that’s about equity. It is the most access healthcare benefit. And if we’re making it unfair because you’re a small employer versus a large employer or you’re robbing Peter to pay Paul, that’s what happens in the standard PBM deals. Your deal gets old, I make more money off of you, and then I pull that out. That’s what the industry does. We are absolutely against that. It does not work in our model that way. We only make money on an admin fee, which keeps us aligned to our customers. They are our only customers and partnership with retailers at the same time keeping them in business because if you live in a rural area, you got to be able to fill an antibiotic. It can’t be airdropped to your house.

Todd Eury (21:24):

Right. It’s fun to hear you say things from your career progression because there are pharmacy students listening to these shows right now to let them know that your view of pharmacy and what you can do as a pharmacist may be completely different than what you thought. And you are a testimony to that as a business driven pharmacist who sees things clinically. But then you’re backing that up with all of your contracting and business creation and I think that’s special. So shout out to pharmacists out there and in our upcoming future pharmacists out there. There’s a lot you can do with a PharmD these days. It doesn’t necessarily have to put you behind a counter per se.

Kristin Begley (22:10):

That’s absolutely correct.

Todd Eury (22:11):

Well, we enjoyed having you on the show. Always been big fans of AJ and your team at Capital Rx website, capital rx.com. You got it. Alright, capital rx.com Make a change in your PBM, reach out to Kristen and team, thank you for being part of the show. Thanks for having me. Dr. Eric Abel here at HLTH. Eric, you and I connected through LinkedIn. We’re fellow Pittsburgh Steeler fans. We never get time to spend together and now we met each other here in Vegas.

Eric Abel (22:46):

Vegas. You got to come to Vegas to hang out, man. No better place. Right.

Todd Eury (22:50):

Alright, tell our listeners, who is Eric Abel? What do you do in the realm of healthcare? Why are you at HLTH?

Eric Abel (22:58):

So I’m at HLTH, I’m with a company. I’m actually with a startup name Caption Health that was acquired by GE Healthcare almost two years ago. I lead a lot of the clinical innovation work and strategy with caption care, which is an end-to-end turnkey service for cardiac diagnostics with echo echocardiograms. So AI enabled and really solving for some gaps in early proactive care in cardiology.

Todd Eury (23:27):

So aiq were just talking to me before we started recording about the silliness that happens in healthcare where people are in the hospital now all of a sudden they’re being transitioned out now they go home, they have medication regimens, things start to fall apart, now they become adherent. Talk to me about some of the ideas that you have to fill those gaps in and make the transitions better.

Eric Abel (23:51):

Yeah, I mean, I could talk all day about some of these things. I’m a pharmacist by background, so really kind of atypical to be in an imaging organization in general, but I’ve been on both payer provider and now really life sciences realm. I think the most important thing is connecting to the needs of the providers. Connecting really more so helping them solve the issues for the patients.

(24:14):
Some of that is how can we keep them out of the hospital? So you can’t treat what you don’t know about and you think about admissions that happen because somebody doesn’t have access to key diagnostics and there’s pharmacists within what five miles of every old statistic is within five miles of every resident of the country. Whether that’s still true or not with all the, yeah, with the pharmacy. Pharmacy, right. So what’s that look like today? But I still think of the transitions of care. I mean there’s the business models and the need for business models for pharmacists, nurses and others is what’s missing I think in some of the healthcare for their cognitive contributions. If you want things to change, you have to figure out how to actually work to get there. And so I think of older days of past lives in the academic medical center world, you have pharmacists involved in perioperative settings, getting the drug reviews, making sure we don’t have medication misadventures hoping that we can control the control before they come in. You think of the folks that are in eds, the pharmacists playing a role there with the nurses. You think of the discharges and, well, I’m holding on to the discharge because they don’t have key access to sonographers who are in shortage. There’s 13,000 cardiac dream sonographers in the us. Geez, not enough. There’s 74,000 sonographers in total. But if I can actually help democratize, that’s really where I’m at today is if I can help primary care use a specialty solution with really the change management tools needed,

(25:51):
I can, even if they need a full turnkey service or partial, I can help bring in folks in the clinic or into the patient’s home, do some cardiac diagnostics to help understand with an echocardiogram, do they have structural heart disease, can I get them on the foundational medications needed and hopefully avoid the hospitalization. Wait for if they’re, I think one of the statistics built, published a couple of years ago was with incident heart failure. There’s 38% of new diagnosed incident heart failure that is not diagnosed until in the walls of the hospital. 48% of those were actually had symptoms documented consistent with heart failure in the six months prior to their mission. So it begs the question of ambulatory sensitive conditions. And so is that echo, is that lab, is that just education and awareness of the general of providers? Is that a reluctance in patient engagement?

(26:47):
I think it just begs a lot of questions of how can we approach things differently. But if you want to be able to people to practice in different areas and start going there, I think a lot of it begins with what is the, I think I go back to the pharmacy business model and luckily in the outpatient world we’re starting to see changes. Pharmacists being paid for different types of services. The MTM was a beginning. It cannot be the end dispensing services really not the place where the independent pharmacies are really contributing value in that relationship in the communities. And so how can we think of other ways, whether that’s transitions of care de-prescribing, whether that’s because de-prescribing is like that’s the med that’s there that shouldn’t be right. And so for a lot of different reasons and whether it’s pharmacotherapeutic monitoring drug levels and things like that, there’s a lot of different areas where I think if we help support new ways and new reimbursement models for those types of clinicians, nurses do a lot in the community too, and we’re reaching a critical shortage. We’ve got to be able to build a business model to build demand, to have people come in and practice in those areas or else we’re faced with other problems.

Todd Eury (28:01):

Eric, the reason why we have so much breaks is there’s no one entity that’s controlling that flowing process. So when I think of community pharmacies that are empowered by eyecare plus, for example, we’re here at independent pharmacy cooperatives booth. So they’re teaching their member and their pharmacist to dial into the treatment plan and drive it regardless of where it comes from. So if it comes from the hospital physician or it comes from the general practice or it comes from some specialist IPC saying, we don’t care. We want to pick up the football and we want to run with it and then report back to the EHR and there, this is why I am at HLTH is I want to connect people like you with this kind of organization and saying, okay, pharmacists, we’re going to have to control this because there is no one entity that’s driving it.

Eric Abel (28:57):

Well think of, this is where I think of utopia and I think of the echocardiogram being one of those modalities because I’m a cardiac treating specialty pharmacist. But think of the time in the future, if I could have a point of care, handheld echocardiogram probe that a phlebotomist, a nurse assistant, a medical assistant, a pharmacy technician, could be in that local pharmacy. The practice of medicine doesn’t occur where you’re acquiring images. So I have an AI guidance that tell them turn by turn of how to capture the images. And then those are routed to a cloud-based PACS imaging system where a network of cardiologists are available there to actually interpret those and make them available. Then you have the pharmacist there, which this is utopia for me is like, how can I act on this? They have validated stage B heart failure, so structural heart disease, no symptoms yet.

(29:59):
Are they on the right antihypertensive regimen to control their left ventricular hypertrophy? Are they on those other things? And so that begs other questions, collaborative practice agreements between the pharmacist or provider status of what they can do. But it’s really doing the right thing, keeping it at the middle. What are we doing for the patient and helping drive affordable, accessible, equitable care across the us. And I think that partly is the providers and the organizations. It’s the technology and it’s also the regulatory bodies at the given state boards of nursing, pharmacy, medicine to align on. Let’s actually, can we just understand what the demands are. We got growing obesity, growing CKD, growing hypertension. We’re begging for problems. It is like chum chumming for the great white shark in the ocean. We’ve loaded it. We’re just waiting for something really bad to happen.

Todd Eury (30:55):

Eric, this is special. Finally getting you on the show. Thanks for participating on the HLTH 2024 post show Promise that you’re going to come down to the HQ studios. I promise. I promise we’re going to be there, man. Thank you sir. Great to see you

Dr. Mac Slaughter (31:14):

Heard you had a long shift.

Todd Eury (31:18):

This is the Dr. JMac Slaughter MD show here, live at Hhl, TH 2024.

Dr. Mac Slaughter (31:26):

Kick off those feet. Just listen for a little while and relax. Just drift away.

Todd Eury (31:33):

Are there any emergency room pharmacists listening right now? Because you have to follow Dr. J Max Slaughter md And you like Instagram?

Dr. Mac Slaughter (31:43):

Yeah, Instagram is, I would say my primary right now. You can find me pretty, hopefully easily. There aren’t too many Dr. J Max out there. But you know what, my last name that I go by in the ERs is Dr. Slaughter. Dr. Slaughter. Which it’s the truth. You’re the knife. Yeah. My patients always, I come into the room, I’m like, I’m Dr. Slaughter, nice to meet you. And they kind of don’t really hear my name. And then they look at my white coat and they’re like, oh my. You are actually Dr. Slaughter. Really? Dr. Slaughter. Yeah. And then I make sure they know

Todd Eury (32:14):

It’s, you’re like, it’s just a pun.

Dr. Mac Slaughter (32:16):

Don’t worry. Yeah, don’t worry,

Todd Eury (32:16):

Don’t worry. Just put this mask on and breathe in. Yeah, shit. Everything’s fine. Everything’s going to be fine. Well, I followed you for a while. I’ve been a fan. It’s so cool to meet up with you at HLTH. Why are you here? What is it about digital health in the ER and the fusion of what you do? Talk to us about what that’s all about.

Dr. Mac Slaughter (32:35):

Man, I’m just so excited about where healthcare is going. Obviously there’s a lot of hype now with AI and the ability for AI to improve the lives of healthcare workers all around the world. But at the same time, AI is kind of terrifying. Just like I think everybody has in the back of your minds, how is it going to improve our lives or how is it going to take our jobs away?

Todd Eury (32:59):

Or parts of

Dr. Mac Slaughter (32:59):

Them or parts of them. And there’s some parts of them that we are just very, very willing, I think, to give away. But others that, I mean give us our sense of purpose in life. And obviously there’s the financials behind that too. So it’s a heavy topic and I want to understand more about what’s coming.

Todd Eury (33:18):

Are you speaking here? Are you on a panel or anything like that?

Dr. Mac Slaughter (33:21):

I’m here with a group of medical creators called Med Flus and basically it’s people, mostly physicians, but we also are working with pharmacists and nurses in the social media space to help them navigate the really difficult territories because people are coming to us and they’re offering us X number of dollars to promote their brand, whatever that is. And some brands don’t have any regulation behind it. Some of ’em, if you’re taking on that deal, you’re actually taking on an enormous amount of liability and your credentials may be at risk and you don’t realize that. And so we’re kind of the first ones in the space to be like, Hey, if you’re going to do these things, and it’s only inevitable that more and more marketing dollars go to social media where people are, people aren’t watching tv, people aren’t listening to the radio, they’re listening to podcasts and they’re on social media. And so it is an inevitable move for all these big worldwide companies to move to market on social media and with certain things you need to have your credentials protected. And so that’s one of the things that med flus kind of focuses

Todd Eury (34:36):

On. Med influencers, med flus. Yes,

Dr. Mac Slaughter (34:40):

Exactly. Yep.

Todd Eury (34:40):

How do the pharmacists listening right now? How do they connect with you?

Dr. Mac Slaughter (34:45):

You can follow us on Instagram or TikTok at We are med flus or just go to, I think it’s just med flus.com. I should know that. Yeah, it’s just med flus.com. And you can just send us a little message and we can get you into the system. Because ultimately what we’re doing is we’re creating a very large database. We already have over 400 what we call dls KOLs is something that’s been around for a long time, but now there are digital opinion leaders and you’re one of ’em.

Todd Eury (35:15):

Yes. I try to be, I’m going to have to join should I’ll be the nonclinical answer there. There you go. Well, I’m excited to have you part of the show. This goes out to thousands of listeners every month. They’re all pretty much pharmacists. I want to say that we’re going to have Dr. Mack back on to fuse up a discussion with a couple er pharmacists to just talk shop with you. And I would love to have you

Dr. Mac Slaughter (35:38):

That trk that be great. Yeah, I heard there was twerking involved. Twerking. And that’s how you got my attention. You’re like, Hey, do you like twerking, sir? And you were like, come on my podcast. I’m like, okay, I’m in. As long as there’s twerking

Todd Eury (35:48):

Involved. That’s right. Alright, stay tuned for more Dr. Mac coming up on this week in pharmacy. Hey, hell, Matthew, what a great opportunity to meet someone who is focused on digital health, but you slowed me down. I’m too excited over here. And you’re like, but what about the patient? What about the 65 expansion of our seniors in the United States? For example? It’s going to be a major issue over the next 20 years when they multiply, multiply, multiply that are going to need special services. And now we’re relying on technology that adoption is sometimes a struggle. So talk to me about your experience here at HLTH and I want to talk about ideo.

Matthew (36:42):

Fantastic. Well, thanks for having me, Todd, and very good to be here. It’s been an awesome few days and this is a good way for me to wrap up some of the great conversations that I’ve been having. So as I believe, and some of your listeners might be aware, IDO is a global design and innovation firm. We specialize in putting humans at the center of the experiences and strategies and organizations that we design in service of healthier human-centered futures. And to your point around the expanding patients that are requiring elder care, it’s a growing and well foreseen area of the population that needs to be designed for. And it’s not just the care recipients, it’s the caregivers, it’s the communities that they sit in, all of which needs consideration. When we’re thinking about designing for those digital and non-digital experiences,

Todd Eury (37:46):

You and I have an advantage just in the generation that we live within. Im Gen X and I remember my corded phone against the wall and the high tech in our house was a 20 foot cord that I could get away from my mother listening to my conversations. And then that evolved. We finally got our remote phone, mobile phone, then it kept evolving. So the reason why I mentioned that is who you’re saying might be struggling with technology. I know those people, my dad, my mom are way ahead now. They’ve been saturating in it for as long as all of us. But I remember when the first non-key phone came out, it was just a flat screen. It was just a glass screen. And I have to admit, I was like, this is stupid. How am I going to interact? And now we don’t even think of that way. Now, the next generation, my children, my grandchildren, can’t believe I’m saying that, but got three and they’re never going to experience what you and I experienced in the evolution of using tech like that usable tech. IDEO is bringing something special to this game because you’re slowing it down a little bit. People like me, software designers, sometimes they’re designing for the end game without thinking about the journey from the patient’s perspective.

Matthew (39:22):

Yeah, right. Yeah, right on. And isn’t it interesting that the next generation, your grandchildren that are coming through are going to have experiences that we will never have? That’s a cyclical kind of wonderful nature of development. But from a needs standpoint, I guess the work that we are doing in digital health and across emerging technologies, there’s always been technologies have come to the fore and need to be designed for leads with desirability. There’s a lot of people that are running around with solutions, with hammers, and when you’re running around with a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

(39:58):
But if you can take a beat and design, well understand the needs of the patients, the caregivers, the providers that are the critical interface for administrating this care, the doctors, the nurses, the administrative staff. If we are actually well understanding the needs of each of these humans in there, we can design far more engaging, sustainable, compelling experiences that will stand the test of time and actually will achieve the things that we’re out there trying to achieve. That they’re going to have the impact with the elderly, the elder community, in the same way as the younger individuals that are coming through that have very different needs. At ideo, we’ve recently designed for both ends of those scales, working with together senior health to design their next generation dementia platform. And at the other end of the scale, working with kth to launch a brand new mental health experience for young people in California. So we’re very used to designing for both ends of the scale and leading with desirability. What’s the thing that these people need in order to address the problems that they’re experiencing today and tomorrow?

Todd Eury (41:21):

Matthew, give us an example of an IDO project that you’re proud of that touches the world of medication management in some way.

Matthew (41:31):

Happy to. We’ve recently worked on a vaccine, a vaccine that launched last year. And the work that we were doing was bridging the knowledge that caregivers, in this case, the knowledge gap that caregivers had around the importance of this vaccine and why it should be administered to their vulnerable weeks old baby. And so the work that we were doing was understanding the modes that those caregivers, those parents and caregivers would be in, the modes that the physicians and the doctors are in and designing conversation tools to bridge that gap to help with the understanding that both caregivers need and that doctors need to provide. We did that globally, and it’s amazing to be designing for all of the different health systems in the states, in France, out in China, to understand what are the tools that they need to have the human conversation about the importance of these vaccines.

Todd Eury (42:46):

I’ve been at HLTH, this is only the second time that the pharmacy podcast network has been here. And every time I open the app, I see noom and I’m like, what is this? So you’re in my booth now and Noom is here and I want to introduce Yalda, Alcott, PharmD, Dr. Alcott, you’re the right D, it’s the pharm D and it’s the right person to be here. My favorite people, you had me at PharmD, if I were Jerry McGuire instead of you had me at Hello you had me at PharmD.

Yalda Alcott (43:17):

Well, thank you. Thank you for having me on your podcast. I’m really excited to be here.

Todd Eury (43:21):

Alright, so how does a pharm D go to a tech company and revolutionize what’s happening in healthcare and leveraging digital health? And talk to us about noom and the fusion of a PharmD.

Yalda Alcott (43:32):

Absolutely. Great question. So when I went to pharmacy school, I went there to help people feel better. I joined the traditional path of being a community pharmacist, working in retail pharmacies for a number of years. And what I loved most in that was being able to help people. However, through that I’ve also am passionate about growth and trying different things. So I’ve ventured out in my career and what’s always stood true is that desire to help people. So when this opportunity came to join noom, I had heard success stories from many people that I know personally as well as throughout my career that have had really great success stories at noom. And they’re known for being innovative. They’re known for being an award-winning program that helps people live better lives. And so when I had the chance to get back to doing that as a pharmacist, that was exactly where I wanted to be. And so I joined and thus far it’s been an amazing path.

Todd Eury (44:33):

Congratulations.

Yalda Alcott (44:34):

Thank you.

Todd Eury (44:35):

Alright, so there’s a bunch of pharmacists listening to you right now. So now turn on the pharmacist language and describe to another pharmacist listening what is new?

Yalda Alcott (44:45):

Sure. So new is a company that is in digital health. We help people feel better and live better lives through behavioral change program. So we have paired this behavioral change program and proven to help. Traditionally we started out in the weight loss space and we are transforming that, but pairing that with medications helps people have better outcomes, and our focus is helping people utilize those medications, but also adapt behavioral changes that helps them with long-term sustainability of those results. So when you pair a behavioral change program that rewires how you’re thinking about your health and wellness with the medications to help you kickstart that wellness journey, we’re putting those two things together and helping people live better longer.

Todd Eury (45:38):

That’s cool. HLTH is a special conference. This is my second time. It’s a lightning ship of activity and things happening and the lighting and it’s just wonderful. I just think it’s so cool. So you made decisions to be here, invest in here, but you also made some special announcements. Can you give our listeners a little insight into that?

Yalda Alcott (45:59):

Yeah, absolutely. So we made a really big announcement yesterday. We have entered a partnership that allows us to help clients to determine different paths. So what we know is that 81% of employers acknowledge that their employees want GLP one coverage, but the cost of these medications are so high, so only 41% are covering it today. So what we announced yesterday was that we have two solutions, one for the group of employers that wants to cover that medication, but making it more affordable for those employers to do so, and then pairing it with our behavior change program so that we see that long-term sustainability with a minimum fourex, ROI, which is pretty incredible. And then there’s the other group of employers that want to be able to help their members feel better and have weight loss options without directly covering the cost of GLP ones. So we have solutions for both.

Todd Eury (46:54):

That’s incredible. So why are those two solutions important to the market? What’s the difference?

Yalda Alcott (47:02):

Yeah, so they’re really important because right now this space is requiring us to think differently. Every employer has had rising healthcare costs as well as interest in GLP one coverage for their employees. And so it’s really important that we address that gap. Right now, these medications aren’t as accessible as they should be and they’re not as affordable as they should be. Additionally, if people go on these medications without some behavior change program and lifestyles, they’re at risk of gaining that weight back too. So we want to ensure that when they’re taking these medications, it helps them in the long term.

Todd Eury (47:39):

So I can’t help but to think of a special subject that we paying once every two or three months, which is digital therapeutics and how a piece of software will become the prescription and the interaction with the patient, answering questions, filling out puzzles, watching dynamic things happen on your screen, that mental health addiction, things that are being focused on are going to be impacted by this digital system that is a prescription, which I think is really cool. You actually sound like you’re at the knife’s edge of being a digital therapeutic.

Yalda Alcott (48:19):

Yeah, absolutely. Because we’re helping patients through cognitive behavior change and whatnot. So we have various programs that help them help our members adopt their lifestyle. This new lifestyle we have rewards, incentives, things of that nature. We call it new coin that really helps make these things happen and helps people learn how to live live better. And so I agree with you. I think that we are on that verge and that’s where we’re headed.

Todd Eury (48:47):

So I’m biased, but I think it’s the pharmacist that is best positioned to use tech like this to marry it with this pharmacological side of things. Who do you, I mean that’s kind of a stupid question to set you up like that, but you’ve worked with a lot of HCPs. So where do you see the difference between our physicians that are really stressed out with how many patients they have to see per day and then they kick off the treatment program to the pharmacist? Is Noom working between the physician and the pharmacist and kind of giving the ball to the pharmacist to run with it?

Yalda Alcott (49:30):

A little bit of both. So you’re absolutely right. So right now physicians in the United States are extremely overworked and they can’t meet everyone that needs their attention. So at NOM, we’re helping solve that too by being able to see patients right away and being able to get them the medication and the programs that they need right off the bat instead of that waiting period. Right now, if you were to call a in-person physician and make an appointment, you’d have to wait weeks or months to get the care that you need, but we’re solving that as well. It’s really impactful and it’s really inspiring to be a part of that.

Todd Eury (50:04):

Why’d you come to health? What do you think of this conference in the center of Innovation and healthcare?

Yalda Alcott (50:09):

Yeah, so this is my first time at Health. This is an amazing conference. There are just so many different opportunities in partnerships and different companies that are here all working towards the same mission and helping people live better. So it’s really exciting to be here and see all that there is that we can do together.

Todd Eury (50:27):

We hope that you’ll come back to the Pharmacy podcast network and let’s dig into some other things and talk PharmD. That sounds great.

Yalda Alcott (50:35):

Okay. Yeah, thanks for having me.

Todd Eury (50:36):

Thank you.