Latest / Pharmacy Podcast Network / inSPire 2026 Rewind; The Hub of Specialty Pharmacy | Part Five

Transcript

inSPire 2026 Rewind; The Hub of Specialty Pharmacy | Part Five · Pharmacy Podcast Network

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: A special thank you to our sponsors for this year's
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: coverage of Inspire 2026. Your support makes our coverage possible.
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: And now, a quick message before this episode begins.
• 0:14
  Speaker 2: Clearway Health is transforming specialty pharmacy for hospitals, health systems,
• 0:19
  Speaker 2: and the patients they serve. More than a specialty pharmacy partner,
• 0:23
  Speaker 2: Clearway Health is an extension of the care team. Working
• 0:26
  Speaker 2: directly with hospitals and health systems across the country, Clearway
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: Health helps plan, design, build, and optimize specialty pharmacy programs
• 0:34
  Speaker 2: that improve access, reduce barriers, and deliver better outcomes for
• 0:38
  Speaker 2: patients with complex medical conditions. Through their embedded care model,
• 0:42
  Speaker 2: Clearway Health places pharmacists and patient liaisons directly into clinical workflows,
• 0:48
  Speaker 2: supporting providers with prior authorizations, financial assistance coordination, and patient education,
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: freeing up care teams to focus on what matters most,
• 0:56
  Speaker 2: the patient. Powered by advanced technology and real-time data insights,
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: Clearway Health streamlines the entire medication journey, ensuring patients receive
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: the right medications at the right time. Clearway Health brings
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: real-world experience and proven results, helping health systems unlock new
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: revenue streams while expanding access to life-changing specialty medications. Clearway
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: Health is leading the way in transforming specialty pharmacy. Learn
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: more at clearwayhealth.com. You are listening to the global network
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: of podcasters dedicated to the pharmacy profession.
• 1:39
  Speaker 3: Welcome to the Pharmacy Podcast Network.
• 1:55
  Speaker 4: It's that time of year where the Pharmacy Podcast Network's
• 1:58
  Speaker 4: founder and CEO, Todd Ury, lands where the hub of
• 2:02
  Speaker 4: specialty pharmacy hosts.
• 2:03
  Speaker 5: Their annual meeting.
• 2:06
  Speaker 4: Introducing the Inspire 2026 Annual Expo.
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: That's right.
• 2:11
  Speaker 4: Specialty pharmacy is evolving, and so is the name of
• 2:14
  Speaker 4: its largest annual meeting. The NASP Annual Meeting and Expo
• 2:18
  Speaker 4: got an upgrade. Innovation, networking, specialty pharmacy expertise. insights, research,
• 2:25
  Speaker 4: and education come together to empower, educate, and connect our community.
• 2:30
  Speaker 4: Live in National Harbor, Maryland, tune in as Todd roams
• 2:34
  Speaker 4: the showroom floor, bringing you the inside coverage of this
• 2:37
  Speaker 4: year's event.
• 2:41
  Speaker 5: Richard Brook, back on the pods, NASP podcast. Richard, this
• 2:45
  Speaker 5: is becoming a tradition for us.
• 2:48
  Speaker 6: One of the better traditions in my life, Todd. You
• 2:51
  Speaker 6: and the podcast, great. information dissemination vehicle and number one
• 2:58
  Speaker 6: in the industry supporting a really growing industry and a
• 3:02
  Speaker 6: growing meeting. We were just talking earlier about how this
• 3:06
  Speaker 6: is the NAS meeting and we started in 2013. Yeah,
• 3:10
  Speaker 6: this is nuts. Number 14. And, you know, I know
• 3:15
  Speaker 6: you weren't at some of the early meetings, but some
• 3:18
  Speaker 6: of the early meetings were a bunch of us in
• 3:20
  Speaker 6: a small room.
• 3:21
  Speaker 7: Right.
• 3:22
  Speaker 6: And I remember one of the early meetings, we had
• 3:26
  Speaker 6: three posters. And I kind of took it on myself
• 3:29
  Speaker 6: to work with the NASP Education Committee to see how
• 3:32
  Speaker 6: we can grow this program. And if you look at
• 3:35
  Speaker 6: the poster hall today, and I know the audience can't
• 3:37
  Speaker 6: see it, but if you have access to the NASP website,
• 3:40
  Speaker 6: most of the posters are published. And in fact, we
• 3:43
  Speaker 6: actually publish them in a supplement to CMRO. So that
• 3:47
  Speaker 6: is open access that just about anybody can get to.
• 3:49
  Speaker 6: And We have about 140 posters today, which just the
• 3:55
  Speaker 6: growth has been incredible. And walking through the posters today,
• 4:00
  Speaker 6: I'm just amazed at how we showcase what specialty pharmacy
• 4:05
  Speaker 6: is doing for the world. People don't think about it,
• 4:09
  Speaker 6: but we know these drugs are high touch. They require
• 4:12
  Speaker 6: special handling prior auth and a whole process. And the
• 4:17
  Speaker 6: various vendors here at the meeting have been showcasing Their
• 4:21
  Speaker 6: SPs get it done. And I was reviewing posters earlier
• 4:25
  Speaker 6: today as part of the judging process, and I was
• 4:28
  Speaker 6: amazed at some of.
• 4:29
  Speaker 8: The techniques I've seen.
• 4:31
  Speaker 6: Because, you know, if you're a cardiovascular company or a
• 4:35
  Speaker 6: hepatitis company, you go to the clinical meetings on those.
• 4:38
  Speaker 6: But if you're a specialty pharmacy, and let's say you
• 4:41
  Speaker 6: handle different drugs and different therapeutic areas, there really is
• 4:45
  Speaker 6: no forum to showcase what you do.
• 4:49
  Speaker 8: That's where NASP kind.
• 4:50
  Speaker 6: Of really is strong because, you know, Sheila and the
• 4:53
  Speaker 6: whole NASP education committee have been really good at building
• 4:56
  Speaker 6: out the educational component of this meeting.
• 4:59
  Speaker 8: We teach, we learn, we grow together.
• 5:03
  Speaker 6: And so the growth of the abstract program kind of
• 5:06
  Speaker 6: exemplifies that.
• 5:08
  Speaker 5: That's incredible. So, Richard, has there been any posters, without
• 5:12
  Speaker 5: being specific to the developer, that have stuck out to
• 5:16
  Speaker 5: you based on innovation of specialty pharmacy?
• 5:20
  Speaker 6: You know, I've seen a lot of posters talking about
• 5:23
  Speaker 6: how they're integrating AI into their business models, how they're
• 5:27
  Speaker 6: shortening time to approval. You know, you can have the
• 5:31
  Speaker 6: best drug in the world, but if it can't get
• 5:33
  Speaker 6: to your patient, it's never going to treat them.
• 5:36
  Speaker 8: And then we also see a lot of things.
• 5:38
  Speaker 6: Talking about how they provide copay assistance and they help
• 5:42
  Speaker 6: get the patient through the hurdle of onboarding and they
• 5:46
  Speaker 6: manage side effects, and they reduce problems, hospitalizations. So a
• 5:52
  Speaker 6: lot of things that happen behind the scenes that you
• 5:56
  Speaker 6: never really understand until you're a patient, or perhaps you
• 6:00
  Speaker 6: see it being presented at a meeting like this.
• 6:03
  Speaker 5: I appreciate that. So if I'm listening to the show,
• 6:06
  Speaker 5: and I didn't get a chance to come to the
• 6:09
  Speaker 5: Inspire 2026 event, And I thought, hey, I have some research.
• 6:15
  Speaker 5: I have something that I've worked on. How do I
• 6:17
  Speaker 5: get involved in submission of a poster? Oh, great question, Todd.
• 6:21
  Speaker 6: So we have a very active education committee and a
• 6:24
  Speaker 6: poster and abstract committee through Inspire.
• 6:26
  Speaker 8: Now, Inspire is the name of the meeting.
• 6:28
  Speaker 9: Yep.
• 6:28
  Speaker 8: But NASP is the name of the organization.
• 6:30
  Speaker 10: Right.
• 6:31
  Speaker 6: And it's NASP, specialty pharmacy, because there's a couple of
• 6:33
  Speaker 6: other NASPs out there in the world. So if you
• 6:36
  Speaker 6: go onto the website, you'll generally see around January of
• 6:39
  Speaker 6: the year, that we put out our call for abstracts.
• 6:43
  Speaker 6: You don't have to be a NASP member to submit
• 6:45
  Speaker 6: an abstract. And we've got a great review team. You
• 6:49
  Speaker 6: go through it. If your abstract needs a little fine tuning,
• 6:52
  Speaker 6: we'll actually tell you, you know, we think your abstract
• 6:55
  Speaker 6: could be strengthened by this. And unlike a lot of
• 6:58
  Speaker 6: other meetings, NASP actually provides continuing education credit for reviewing
• 7:03
  Speaker 6: the posters.
• 7:04
  Speaker 8: So it's a great thing.
• 7:06
  Speaker 6: When I got involved with this, I searched out all
• 7:09
  Speaker 6: the different journals to see who would be willing to
• 7:12
  Speaker 6: work with us. And we were very lucky to form
• 7:14
  Speaker 6: a relationship with the people.
• 7:16
  Speaker 8: At Taylor and Francis.
• 7:17
  Speaker 6: And they shifted from the original journal we were in
• 7:22
  Speaker 6: to current medical research and opinion about five years ago.
• 7:26
  Speaker 6: And all the posters are available, the abstracts there, the
• 7:31
  Speaker 6: I'm not sure if CMRO is publishing the poster, but
• 7:34
  Speaker 6: the NASP website actually presents and publishes the poster as well.
• 7:39
  Speaker 5: Richard, you've been a special part of the NASP for years.
• 7:43
  Speaker 5: I just want to say thank you for your work.
• 7:46
  Speaker 5: I also want to say thank you for being on
• 7:47
  Speaker 5: the show and being a consistent beacon of what's happening
• 7:51
  Speaker 5: in our profession, especially from the poster perspective. But thank you.
• 7:55
  Speaker 6: And thank you for everything that you do in terms
• 7:57
  Speaker 6: about being a beacon and a point of light and
• 8:00
  Speaker 6: a source of information. You know, I think I wouldn't
• 8:03
  Speaker 6: be doing my company, I'd be doing a disservice if
• 8:07
  Speaker 6: I didn't mention what we were talking about in our
• 8:09
  Speaker 6: poster today. Because, you know, we take a look at
• 8:12
  Speaker 6: it from a different perspective than a lot of the
• 8:14
  Speaker 6: other companies. We're not a specialty pharmacy. Better Health Worldwide
• 8:18
  Speaker 6: is a research organization. And what we actually are presenting
• 8:22
  Speaker 6: is a poster looking at women who have infertility issues.
• 8:28
  Speaker 6: And we looked at all of our employers that were
• 8:30
  Speaker 6: covering it to see how rich the fertility benefit is. Now,
• 8:35
  Speaker 6: the government right now is talking about wanting to increase
• 8:39
  Speaker 6: the fertility benefit for all.
• 8:41
  Speaker 9: The U.S.
• 8:42
  Speaker 6: Is falling behind on a world level. We don't have
• 8:45
  Speaker 6: the population growth that some people would like to see.
• 8:48
  Speaker 9: Right.
• 8:49
  Speaker 8: And that's for a variety of reasons. And I don't
• 8:51
  Speaker 8: want to get into the politics of it.
• 8:53
  Speaker 6: However, every company that says they have benefit information generally
• 8:58
  Speaker 6: just has you have medical.
• 9:00
  Speaker 8: Coverage or you have prescription coverage. We actually worked.
• 9:03
  Speaker 6: With our account managers to go back, look at the
• 9:06
  Speaker 6: individual employers, and they're all self-insured, so they're paying for everything,
• 9:11
  Speaker 6: and see how rich the fertility benefit is. Some companies
• 9:14
  Speaker 6: had annual benefits. Some had maximum benefits for a lifetime.
• 9:18
  Speaker 6: Some had three rounds of IVF lifetime. And when we
• 9:22
  Speaker 6: look at that and we look at some of the
• 9:23
  Speaker 6: proposed policies, most of our employer benefits today are below
• 9:29
  Speaker 6: the proposed threshold.
• 9:30
  Speaker 8: So it'll be very interesting to see what happens.
• 9:33
  Speaker 6: Government speak to become government action are two different things,
• 9:36
  Speaker 6: but it'd be very interesting to see over time how
• 9:39
  Speaker 6: rich that benefit is, if it ever is enhanced. And,
• 9:43
  Speaker 6: you know, we have a lot of things going on
• 9:44
  Speaker 6: in our country, a lot of things in our healthcare system.
• 9:47
  Speaker 6: The goal in life, it really is to make it
• 9:50
  Speaker 6: a better place right now and to have better health
• 9:53
  Speaker 6: for everybody. And that's why we named our company Better
• 9:56
  Speaker 6: Health Worldwide.
• 9:57
  Speaker 5: I love it. Thank you, Richard, and Brooke, for being
• 10:00
  Speaker 5: on the show. We look forward to talking to you again.
• 10:03
  Speaker 5: NASP 2027.
• 10:04
  Speaker 9: Thanks, Todd. See you.
• 10:12
  Speaker 5: Robert, welcome to the show. Thanks for being on the
• 10:14
  Speaker 5: NASP podcast here at Inspire 2026. Thank you, Todd.
• 10:18
  Speaker 9: Appreciate it.
• 10:19
  Speaker 5: So First Data Bank has been a big supporter of
• 10:22
  Speaker 5: the Pharmacy Podcast Network. We worked with you at the
• 10:24
  Speaker 5: NACDS Total Store Expo. It was wonderful. And that was
• 10:28
  Speaker 5: a very different tempo. It was a different environment. than
• 10:34
  Speaker 5: the intensity of specialty pharmacy in comparison. I want to
• 10:38
  Speaker 5: talk to you today about a special sector of specialty
• 10:41
  Speaker 5: pharmacy that we're very concerned with on our publication. We
• 10:45
  Speaker 5: have a series coming out called Specialty Care Close to Home,
• 10:48
  Speaker 5: and it's focusing on the build-out, the improvement, and the
• 10:53
  Speaker 5: running of health system pharmacies that have specialty pharmacies implanted
• 10:58
  Speaker 5: into them. FDB has a special service that focuses on
• 11:03
  Speaker 5: the support of our hospital system specialty pharmacies. Talk to
• 11:07
  Speaker 5: our listeners about that.
• 11:09
  Speaker 3: Yeah, with FDB, we work with.
• 11:11
  Speaker 11: Compass Rose, so integrating with Epic and with Compass Rose
• 11:15
  Speaker 11: and just helping them with the content and with the
• 11:17
  Speaker 11: flow sheets, the monographs there, and the referential guides to
• 11:22
  Speaker 11: make sure that they're able to assess with their patients
• 11:25
  Speaker 11: as they're coming through this hard hardship of oncology or
• 11:29
  Speaker 11: any type of cancer or there are high cost medications
• 11:32
  Speaker 11: of these difficult with the specialty pharmacy.
• 11:34
  Speaker 5: What kind of education is ongoing and explaining to the
• 11:39
  Speaker 5: hospital system pharmacy of what opportunities they have to engage
• 11:44
  Speaker 5: FDB and use FDB as a conduit and as a partner?
• 11:49
  Speaker 8: It comes to the buy versus build.
• 11:51
  Speaker 11: So if you want to build it yourself within Compass
• 11:54
  Speaker 11: Rose or within your own specialty pharmacy, you can go
• 11:58
  Speaker 11: ahead and do that. But with FDB, we help you,
• 12:01
  Speaker 11: guide you through this, give you the content, able to
• 12:04
  Speaker 11: work with our team and.
• 12:08
  Speaker 5: I guess work with our team to educate.
• 12:10
  Speaker 11: You and help make sure that your assessments, customize your
• 12:12
  Speaker 11: assessments so you're not always doing redundant things or repeating
• 12:16
  Speaker 11: things when you get those monthly loads or the monthly
• 12:20
  Speaker 11: things that come through Compass Rose or even come through
• 12:22
  Speaker 11: your own content yourself.
• 12:25
  Speaker 5: Okay. And then FDB has to be working with an
• 12:29
  Speaker 5: API or some mechanism to communicate with the health record
• 12:34
  Speaker 5: or the health electronic record. It might be Epic or
• 12:37
  Speaker 5: something else. Talk to me about that component of working
• 12:40
  Speaker 5: with health system pharmacies.
• 12:42
  Speaker 11: Yeah, so we came up with a lot of when
• 12:44
  Speaker 11: it comes to redundancy of like, hey, we are doing
• 12:49
  Speaker 11: this over and over again. And your content is not
• 12:52
  Speaker 11: really working for us or we have to feel that
• 12:55
  Speaker 11: we are building it ourselves. So we came up with
• 12:58
  Speaker 11: our new component called Specialties Space.
• 13:02
  Speaker 8: And specialty space.
• 13:03
  Speaker 11: Is a UL component that we are able to customize
• 13:07
  Speaker 11: before you get those loads from us or before you
• 13:11
  Speaker 11: load it into your Epic Compass Rose. So you're able
• 13:14
  Speaker 11: to customize governance, go over your disease states, go over
• 13:17
  Speaker 11: all your medications, and specialize in. And we also have
• 13:21
  Speaker 11: the URAC, who's here today. So yeah, so you have
• 13:24
  Speaker 11: all those accreditations.
• 13:27
  Speaker 9: For the URAC there.
• 13:28
  Speaker 5: That's incredible. We appreciate not only FDB support, but the
• 13:32
  Speaker 5: intelligence that you're bringing to different facets of pharmacy. Here
• 13:36
  Speaker 5: in specialty, it's so needed because of the complexity of
• 13:39
  Speaker 5: disease state management. I want to thank you for being
• 13:42
  Speaker 5: on the NASP podcast.
• 13:43
  Speaker 3: Thank you.
• 13:44
  Speaker 9: I appreciate it, Todd.
• 13:44
  Speaker 3: Thank you.
• 13:47
  Speaker 10: Healthcare innovation moves quickly, but innovation is only valuable when
• 13:52
  Speaker 10: clinicians can trust the information behind it. That is where FDB,
• 13:56
  Speaker 10: or First Data Bank, makes the difference. FDB provides trusted,
• 14:00
  Speaker 10: clinically validated medication knowledge and clinical decision support designed for
• 14:04
  Speaker 10: integration into modern healthcare technology. From electronic health records and
• 14:08
  Speaker 10: pharmacy systems to e-prescribing networks, artificial intelligence, payer platforms, and
• 14:13
  Speaker 10: patient-facing solutions, FDB helps turn complex drug data into actionable guidance.
• 14:19
  Speaker 10: FDB is also advancing the future of medication intelligence by
• 14:23
  Speaker 10: enabling AI-powered workflows to draw from reliable, expert-curated clinical content,
• 14:28
  Speaker 10: helping technology move beyond information towards safer, more useful action.
• 14:33
  Speaker 10: For pharmacists and clinicians, that means more relevant medication alerts,
• 14:37
  Speaker 10: stronger clinical decision support, improved reconciliation, clearer patient instructions, and
• 14:42
  Speaker 10: information that fits naturally into the workflow. For healthcare technology companies,
• 14:47
  Speaker 10: it means access to proven drug knowledge that can strengthen products,
• 14:50
  Speaker 10: support responsible innovation, and improve the decisions made at every
• 14:54
  Speaker 10: point of care. Learn how FDB is connecting trusted drug knowledge,
• 14:58
  Speaker 10: intelligent technology, and patient-centered care. Visit fdbhealth.com. First Data Bank,
• 15:04
  Speaker 10: powering the medication decisions that move healthcare forward every single day, worldwide.
• 15:22
  Speaker 5: The aspect of specialty pharmacy and what it means from
• 15:27
  Speaker 5: a technological perspective is all about workflow. It's all about
• 15:31
  Speaker 5: being able to do things in the process. of getting
• 15:35
  Speaker 5: the prior authorization handled ahead of time and getting obstacles
• 15:39
  Speaker 5: out of the way for the prescriber and handing it
• 15:42
  Speaker 5: off to the right pharmacy for the right reasons. I'm
• 15:46
  Speaker 5: here with Sam Bajor with Inovalon to talk more about workflow. Sam,
• 15:51
  Speaker 5: welcome to the show.
• 15:53
  Speaker 3: Thank you, Todd.
• 15:54
  Speaker 5: So the NASB podcast has been part of the Pharmacy
• 15:56
  Speaker 5: Podcast Network for about six or seven years. This is
• 16:00
  Speaker 5: our first time that we get to celebrate and inspire
• 16:02
  Speaker 5: here at 2026. We've been watching Inovalon grow over the years.
• 16:07
  Speaker 5: You guys are doing some exceptional work. Talk to me
• 16:10
  Speaker 5: about how Inovalon removes those kinds of barriers that we
• 16:13
  Speaker 5: just discussed and how workflow flows better based on Inovalon's infrastructure.
• 16:19
  Speaker 12: Sure.
• 16:19
  Speaker 5: Thank you, Todd.
• 16:21
  Speaker 13: When I think of what Inovalon has done to make
• 16:23
  Speaker 13: the workflow better in a specialty pharmacy, I think of
• 16:27
  Speaker 13: two things. I think of skilling and driving the right
• 16:31
  Speaker 13: work to the right users from a skill perspective.
• 16:35
  Speaker 3: It's not just one workflow where.
• 16:38
  Speaker 13: Mary has to do the same thing that Todd does,
• 16:42
  Speaker 13: but Mary may not have the skill to.
• 16:44
  Speaker 3: Do the same thing that Todd does.
• 16:46
  Speaker 13: We can drive the right work based on that person's
• 16:52
  Speaker 13: skill to get the job done much smoother and easier.
• 16:56
  Speaker 13: And two, we have a considerable amount of configurability. There
• 17:03
  Speaker 13: are differences based on drugs, based on disease state, what
• 17:08
  Speaker 13: is required to complete the workflow based on a drug
• 17:13
  Speaker 13: or a disease state. What we have done is provide
• 17:17
  Speaker 13: our businesses the capability to own that themselves and not
• 17:23
  Speaker 13: require opening a ticket with a vendor to create a
• 17:26
  Speaker 13: whole new workflow that takes three months to implement. We've
• 17:30
  Speaker 13: given them the tools to do that themselves. So when
• 17:34
  Speaker 13: a new product comes out and it requires some special
• 17:38
  Speaker 13: data collect or a new assessment to be completed, they
• 17:42
  Speaker 13: can do that in a much shorter period of time.
• 17:46
  Speaker 5: Sam, talk to me about how you're making it easier
• 17:49
  Speaker 5: for the manufacturer to do business with my specialty pharmacy
• 17:54
  Speaker 5: from an API perspective, from gathering REMS information. Talk to
• 17:59
  Speaker 5: me about that side of it.
• 18:00
  Speaker 3: Sure.
• 18:02
  Speaker 13: We'll talk about structured data, whether that's where a referral
• 18:08
  Speaker 13: or an order is within the workflow. Look, pharma wants
• 18:13
  Speaker 13: to know where those orders are, right? We want to
• 18:17
  Speaker 13: get patients on medication faster. Everybody wins when we do that.
• 18:23
  Speaker 13: So what we've done at Inovalon is make sure that
• 18:26
  Speaker 13: those orders Even the statuses. I mean, everybody, I think,
• 18:30
  Speaker 13: can take and report on things that have shipped.
• 18:35
  Speaker 9: Yeah.
• 18:35
  Speaker 7: Right?
• 18:36
  Speaker 13: But when you talk about where an order or a
• 18:39
  Speaker 13: referral is within the workspace and within the workflow, you're
• 18:43
  Speaker 13: talking about having structured statuses and even substatuses in some
• 18:47
  Speaker 13: cases to determine and report where something is.
• 18:53
  Speaker 8: That's where Novolon.
• 18:54
  Speaker 3: Has taken it to the next level. I love it.
• 18:57
  Speaker 7: All right.
• 18:58
  Speaker 5: I'm a specialty pharmacy. I'm focused on blood disorders, hyperlipidemia
• 19:04
  Speaker 5: or something. I have a bucket of patients. How am
• 19:07
  Speaker 5: I communicating with my patient through Inovalon? How am I
• 19:10
  Speaker 5: engaging and keeping them tied into us?
• 19:13
  Speaker 3: Variety of different ways.
• 19:15
  Speaker 13: Obviously, everybody wants to have some sort of digital capability.
• 19:18
  Speaker 12: Yeah.
• 19:19
  Speaker 13: Whether that means you're texting patients, everybody's calling them, but
• 19:24
  Speaker 13: we've extended our product through a patient portal as well.
• 19:29
  Speaker 13: And I always like to use an example of a
• 19:32
  Speaker 13: product that Has a significant side effect. Look, a lot
• 19:37
  Speaker 13: of the specialty drugs, while they're treating unique diseases, but
• 19:41
  Speaker 13: they all oftentimes come with special side effects that specialty
• 19:45
  Speaker 13: pharmacies and pharmacists have to help manage those patients through.
• 19:50
  Speaker 9: That.
• 19:51
  Speaker 3: Once they get.
• 19:51
  Speaker 13: Past that, they can stay on therapy. A good example
• 19:55
  Speaker 13: of this is you dispense a product. It causes a
• 20:00
  Speaker 13: significant amount of diarrhea in a significant percentage of patients.
• 20:05
  Speaker 5: Ten days later, it's very important.
• 20:07
  Speaker 13: That you follow up with that patient to make sure
• 20:09
  Speaker 13: they're getting past that.
• 20:11
  Speaker 5: Yeah, because they went off the med. They're like, get
• 20:13
  Speaker 5: me off this med. I have diarrhea every damn day.
• 20:15
  Speaker 3: Every day.
• 20:16
  Speaker 7: Yep.
• 20:16
  Speaker 13: So one of the nice things about our product is
• 20:19
  Speaker 13: you can extend that assessment to the patient portal, and
• 20:23
  Speaker 13: they can complete that process.
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: From a text message that we've.
• 20:26
  Speaker 13: Sent to them, they can go online and complete that
• 20:30
  Speaker 13: assessment to help them through these things. Or, obviously, they
• 20:35
  Speaker 13: can connect to a pharmacist to talk them through that.
• 20:38
  Speaker 13: And we create a workflow so that it doesn't get lost.
• 20:42
  Speaker 13: It's not just, oh, I sent a text message, and
• 20:44
  Speaker 13: I don't know if Mary Jones answered it.
• 20:46
  Speaker 9: Right.
• 20:47
  Speaker 13: It's traceable and trackable. So I think that's one of
• 20:52
  Speaker 13: the ways we connect with our specialty patients.
• 20:56
  Speaker 14: All right.
• 20:56
  Speaker 5: Last question. Let's talk about financial reporting. I'm a specialty pharmacy.
• 21:02
  Speaker 5: I have hub relationships with my manufacturers. I have reporting
• 21:06
  Speaker 5: I need to do. But comes down to that bottom
• 21:10
  Speaker 5: line and me getting paid to keep my operations going.
• 21:13
  Speaker 5: Talk to me about the reports that are available through
• 21:16
  Speaker 5: Novolon for finances.
• 21:18
  Speaker 13: For Novolon, the ScriptMed product itself comes with a suite
• 21:22
  Speaker 13: of about 40, I'm rounding, I think it's 39 exactly,
• 21:28
  Speaker 13: but out-of-the-box dashboards. And that goes from referral side through RCM.
• 21:36
  Speaker 7: Okay.
• 21:37
  Speaker 13: So you have a visual of where things are, what's
• 21:42
  Speaker 13: been dispensed, the margin associated with those dispenses. And then
• 21:48
  Speaker 13: when it comes to reporting those things, again, it's structured data.
• 21:53
  Speaker 5: You can export any of those reports.
• 21:56
  Speaker 13: We even have a product where we'll take that data
• 22:01
  Speaker 13: and you can– send that into your sort of database,
• 22:06
  Speaker 13: whether that's a version of Snowflake or something similar, where
• 22:10
  Speaker 13: you can do your own queries.
• 22:12
  Speaker 3: Off of that.
• 22:13
  Speaker 13: So that's a product that we feel very strongly about,
• 22:17
  Speaker 13: where we give people all access to all their data
• 22:22
  Speaker 13: so they can do what they want with it.
• 22:24
  Speaker 5: Yeah, and the interpretation of the data is just as
• 22:27
  Speaker 5: important as the data itself. Because if you just give
• 22:29
  Speaker 5: me a bunch of data, I'm not going to know
• 22:31
  Speaker 5: what to do with it.
• 22:32
  Speaker 9: Right.
• 22:32
  Speaker 13: Obviously, it comes with a suite of data dictionaries to
• 22:36
  Speaker 13: tell you what each of them mean.
• 22:38
  Speaker 5: That's excellent. Sam, this has been great. I appreciate you
• 22:41
  Speaker 5: jumping on the NASP podcast here at Inspire 2026. We
• 22:46
  Speaker 5: look forward to seeing you in Orlando in 2027. Thank
• 22:48
  Speaker 5: you for having me, Todd.
• 22:49
  Speaker 3: Thank you.
• 22:54
  Speaker 5: JB Consulting, Sean Jensen. It's Inspire 2026 in Washington, D.C.
• 23:02
  Speaker 5: Welcome to the NASP podcast.
• 23:04
  Speaker 3: Thanks for having me, Todd. Great to see you as always.
• 23:06
  Speaker 5: How many NASP podcasts is this for you?
• 23:09
  Speaker 3: I don't know. I think four, something like that. Four, five, six.
• 23:12
  Speaker 3: I always try to come by.
• 23:13
  Speaker 5: I'm not sure.
• 23:14
  Speaker 3: No, I love it.
• 23:16
  Speaker 5: I have become a friend of yours. The friendship means
• 23:19
  Speaker 5: a lot to me. I love watching your career. I
• 23:23
  Speaker 5: love thinking of the impact that you've had on the profession,
• 23:27
  Speaker 5: specifically specialty. You've had influence on other people in development
• 23:33
  Speaker 5: of programs and the use of AI. I've watched your
• 23:37
  Speaker 5: interaction on LinkedIn. You're very professional. you're a giver. You're
• 23:42
  Speaker 5: not someone that constantly takes, and we need more of that,
• 23:45
  Speaker 5: especially in specialty. We need that guidance. Give us an update.
• 23:50
  Speaker 5: Give our listeners an update. What is JB Consulting? Why
• 23:53
  Speaker 5: are you involved with NASP? Why is it important to
• 23:56
  Speaker 5: be here as a technologist?
• 23:59
  Speaker 15: I mean, if you're in specialty pharmacy in any capacity,
• 24:01
  Speaker 15: I mean, this is certainly the place to be. This
• 24:03
  Speaker 15: is the world headquarters, I like to think, of the
• 24:06
  Speaker 15: specialty pharmacy industry. Um, This is one of my favorite
• 24:09
  Speaker 15: events of the year, too, and I love this group.
• 24:12
  Speaker 15: It holds a close place to my heart. I mean,
• 24:15
  Speaker 15: they've changed the name to Inspire this year, you know,
• 24:17
  Speaker 15: partly to show it's not just a meeting every year.
• 24:20
  Speaker 3: It's not just a networking event.
• 24:21
  Speaker 15: It's, like, all the things NASP does throughout the year
• 24:23
  Speaker 15: that are so important. And, you know, there's a lot
• 24:25
  Speaker 15: of education, obviously. There's inspiration. That's where the name's coming from.
• 24:29
  Speaker 15: And within our tech committee, which I invite anybody listening
• 24:32
  Speaker 15: to join, reach out to me if you want to
• 24:34
  Speaker 15: join it. It's just such a great knowledge share of
• 24:37
  Speaker 15: professionals and information. Like you said, I try to be
• 24:41
  Speaker 15: a giver.
• 24:41
  Speaker 3: I appreciate you saying that.
• 24:43
  Speaker 15: I feel like the membership here, too, everyone.
• 24:45
  Speaker 3: Wants to help each other out.
• 24:47
  Speaker 15: If you come from a deep profession where you have
• 24:50
  Speaker 15: a lot of experience to share, great. If you just
• 24:52
  Speaker 15: want to learn, it's just as welcome. We really take
• 24:55
  Speaker 15: anybody over there. I feel like that represents the industry
• 24:58
  Speaker 15: as a whole, too.
• 25:00
  Speaker 5: I remember, I'm old enough to say this, but the
• 25:02
  Speaker 5: buzzword Between 99 and 2003 was internet, e-commerce, website development.
• 25:12
  Speaker 5: That was like the trend back then. And people were confused.
• 25:16
  Speaker 5: How am I going to use this thing called the
• 25:19
  Speaker 5: magic interweb to do things in my business? Well, we
• 25:24
  Speaker 5: jettison ahead. Today's key word is AI, artificial intelligence. And
• 25:30
  Speaker 5: it's interesting. I see contrasts. in overshooting, overusage, misusage, hallucination,
• 25:39
  Speaker 5: things that are happening that I remember back in 99
• 25:41
  Speaker 5: to 2003 in the use of the internet into business.
• 25:46
  Speaker 5: and now it's even more complex in the use of
• 25:49
  Speaker 5: healthcare and, of course, in our space in specialty pharmacy.
• 25:53
  Speaker 5: Give us kind of like, I mean, this could be
• 25:55
  Speaker 5: a whole podcast in itself that would be a Joe
• 25:57
  Speaker 5: Rogan-style two-hour show, but give us your high level of
• 26:02
  Speaker 5: where are we with the command of AI in specialty pharmacy.
• 26:07
  Speaker 15: I mean, AI has gone so quickly with, I mean,
• 26:11
  Speaker 15: everyone knows that, but I guess two years ago, I
• 26:13
  Speaker 15: thought the technology day, whatever it.
• 26:15
  Speaker 3: Was called back then, Yeah. It's a different name each year.
• 26:19
  Speaker 15: But we asked the survey, like, raise your hand if you're,
• 26:22
  Speaker 15: what you're doing with AI.
• 26:22
  Speaker 3: And nobody had launched anything. Nobody had piloted anything.
• 26:25
  Speaker 15: 100% of the people were interested in doing something, but
• 26:29
  Speaker 15: nobody had taken action yet. And I think they were
• 26:31
  Speaker 15: kind of waiting to see. And then they asked the
• 26:32
  Speaker 15: same question yesterday. And zero people had done nothing. Zero
• 26:37
  Speaker 15: people were on the sideline. Everyone had done something. And
• 26:39
  Speaker 15: more than half had launched a pilot or were.
• 26:41
  Speaker 3: Actually in production. I don't know. Maybe some people just
• 26:43
  Speaker 3: didn't want to put their hand up and say they
• 26:44
  Speaker 3: did nothing. That's probably more realistic.
• 26:46
  Speaker 12: Yeah.
• 26:47
  Speaker 15: But everyone's doing something. And it seems like a lot
• 26:50
  Speaker 15: of talk of KPIs. I mean, now that some time
• 26:52
  Speaker 15: has passed, people are really looking at how do you
• 26:54
  Speaker 15: measure not just the efficiency of your cost to fill,
• 26:58
  Speaker 15: your time to fill, things like that, but the quality.
• 27:02
  Speaker 15: Has it made things better? Obviously, it's making it faster,
• 27:05
  Speaker 15: but the impact on quality. And also capacity. There's a
• 27:10
  Speaker 15: lot of talk of AI's creating this new capacity. So
• 27:14
  Speaker 15: rather than taking jobs, it's freeing up time to do
• 27:18
  Speaker 15: things that pharmacists want to do, which has always been, you.
• 27:20
  Speaker 3: Know, the goal and what people hope would happen.
• 27:23
  Speaker 15: I mean, I kind of wonder, I guess the question
• 27:25
  Speaker 15: would be like, there's only so much capacity and you
• 27:28
  Speaker 15: can take referrals from the companies who are falling behind
• 27:31
  Speaker 15: and not keeping up with AI. But at some point,
• 27:33
  Speaker 15: you know, it's going to hit the wall and then,
• 27:36
  Speaker 15: you know, you've saved headcount and what are you going
• 27:38
  Speaker 15: to do with that? So, I mean, I'm kind of
• 27:41
  Speaker 15: pessimistic that there's still going to be Some AI taking
• 27:44
  Speaker 15: over some pharmacy jobs at some point. We're still in
• 27:47
  Speaker 15: that early stage where, like I said, it improves capacity
• 27:51
  Speaker 15: so you can win some more referrals and grow your business.
• 27:53
  Speaker 15: But it's hard to see that continuing as everyone kind
• 27:57
  Speaker 15: of gets these tools to start using them. But it's
• 28:00
  Speaker 15: a really exciting time for people that are using it
• 28:02
  Speaker 15: and the health systems and the pharmacies who are adopting it.
• 28:04
  Speaker 15: I mean, they're seeing just crazy improvements across the board.
• 28:09
  Speaker 5: I'm hearing... Not as many horror stories as I'm hearing
• 28:14
  Speaker 5: success stories, but there are crash and burn stories out
• 28:19
  Speaker 5: there where you'll have a very innovative, aggressive business owner,
• 28:24
  Speaker 5: could be a pharmacist, doesn't have to be, where I've
• 28:27
  Speaker 5: heard them trying to take AI and trying to do
• 28:31
  Speaker 5: it themselves as an amateur. And that's where I've talked
• 28:36
  Speaker 5: with these professional programmers who who were doing coding 20
• 28:42
  Speaker 5: years ago when SQL Server was.
• 28:45
  Speaker 3: A big deal.
• 28:46
  Speaker 5: And now you put AI on top of the mature
• 28:49
  Speaker 5: veteran in the technology development space. That is a different
• 28:55
  Speaker 5: world and universe than the amateur. But you know what?
• 28:58
  Speaker 5: AI has encouraged the amateur to rise. And they're overshooting.
• 29:05
  Speaker 5: They don't know of the security and the cybersecurity issues
• 29:08
  Speaker 5: that are being created. Talk to me about some of,
• 29:12
  Speaker 5: you don't have to name names, but talk to me
• 29:14
  Speaker 5: about some of those red flags that AI have brought
• 29:17
  Speaker 5: to the entrepreneur and the aggressiveness of using it.
• 29:22
  Speaker 15: I mean, I guess I love the innovation that people
• 29:25
  Speaker 15: are trying to do all these things.
• 29:27
  Speaker 3: I think there's some false confidence.
• 29:28
  Speaker 15: I mean, the difference between a demo and a prototype
• 29:32
  Speaker 15: and something that's actually like production enterprise ready and live,
• 29:35
  Speaker 15: especially in something as important as healthcare.
• 29:37
  Speaker 3: I mean, that contrast has been there for as long
• 29:40
  Speaker 3: as we've been around.
• 29:40
  Speaker 15: I mean, you see smoke and mirror demos, but with AI,
• 29:43
  Speaker 15: I mean, you can make one of those demos in
• 29:45
  Speaker 15: five minutes, come here and start showing it and show
• 29:48
  Speaker 15: what it can do. And I mean, whether or not
• 29:50
  Speaker 15: that's going to work in the real world remains to
• 29:52
  Speaker 15: be seen for a lot of those companies. But Just
• 29:54
  Speaker 15: even with some guidance and some expert help, the expert
• 29:58
  Speaker 15: doesn't have to do it. I think people get this
• 30:02
  Speaker 15: sense of confidence that they can do it themselves, which
• 30:05
  Speaker 15: it feels like they can. And it's not that they
• 30:07
  Speaker 15: need someone else to come in and do it for them.
• 30:09
  Speaker 15: They just might need some guidance, someone who's been there before,
• 30:11
  Speaker 15: someone who's seen what can happen to go in and
• 30:14
  Speaker 15: just make sure they're not doing something crazy.
• 30:16
  Speaker 3: And, you know, you don't want to get.
• 30:17
  Speaker 15: Yourself in the news for rushing something out the door
• 30:20
  Speaker 15: and all of a sudden, you know, all things are compromised.
• 30:22
  Speaker 5: HIPAA violation everywhere.
• 30:23
  Speaker 3: Left and right, yeah.
• 30:24
  Speaker 15: So, I mean, AI is a tool like anything else
• 30:27
  Speaker 15: and needs to be used responsibly and, you know, the
• 30:30
  Speaker 15: right way.
• 30:31
  Speaker 5: It's helped your organization, obviously. So what's JB Consulting doing
• 30:36
  Speaker 5: with AI right now to really help jump and make
• 30:40
  Speaker 5: programming happen quicker than what it was?
• 30:43
  Speaker 15: Yeah, I mean, our programming team, they're using it. Just
• 30:47
  Speaker 15: like most development teams, it saves a lot of time.
• 30:50
  Speaker 15: But the same way you obviously can't just ask it
• 30:53
  Speaker 15: to write some code and copy and paste it in,
• 30:55
  Speaker 15: I mean, unless.
• 30:55
  Speaker 3: You're asking for security problems.
• 30:56
  Speaker 15: You know, that's kind of what the whole thing with AI,
• 30:59
  Speaker 15: like it can help move things quicker and it can
• 31:01
  Speaker 15: help you prototype.
• 31:02
  Speaker 3: And it can do a lot.
• 31:03
  Speaker 15: You just need somebody in the chain that knows what's
• 31:05
  Speaker 15: going on. the same way if you had a junior
• 31:07
  Speaker 15: programmer like you wouldn't necessarily have them writing code and
• 31:10
  Speaker 15: like hey an hour later it's in production like right
• 31:13
  Speaker 15: slow down see what they're doing the same thing you
• 31:14
  Speaker 15: do with ai so i mean i see within our
• 31:17
  Speaker 15: group we're still also focused on you know research and
• 31:21
  Speaker 15: we're helping other companies kind of use ai to force
• 31:24
  Speaker 15: multiply things that they would be doing i mean there's
• 31:26
  Speaker 15: a lot of companies doing automation we're not necessarily doing
• 31:29
  Speaker 15: that right now but we are helping people select vendors
• 31:32
  Speaker 15: that would be the best ones to do so knowing
• 31:34
  Speaker 15: who to trust and who's been around and kind of
• 31:36
  Speaker 15: helping vet out some of these vendors that are out here.
• 31:39
  Speaker 3: We've been doing a.
• 31:39
  Speaker 15: Lot with that, but AI ourselves, I mean, we're doing
• 31:42
  Speaker 15: a lot, like I said, research and just force multiplying.
• 31:46
  Speaker 5: So, Sean, you and I are basically sharing with the
• 31:49
  Speaker 5: listeners the exact same scenarios that a pharmacist who has
• 31:55
  Speaker 5: to do, they're using their license to push a product
• 32:00
  Speaker 5: out to the patient, and it's their responsibility to And
• 32:05
  Speaker 5: we say the same thing to them. Hey, AI is wonderful.
• 32:10
  Speaker 5: Go ahead and merge it or plug it into your
• 32:12
  Speaker 5: MediSpan database. Let's get it to kind of think forward.
• 32:16
  Speaker 5: Predictive modeling becomes real. However, it comes back to the
• 32:21
  Speaker 5: pharmacist as the clinical leader and medication leader to say,
• 32:25
  Speaker 5: at the end, I'm going to still check this work.
• 32:28
  Speaker 5: I'm going to still check this And this information, just
• 32:33
  Speaker 5: as if it were a pharmacy tech that was helping
• 32:35
  Speaker 5: me push this prescription through the process, you can't rely
• 32:40
  Speaker 5: on that as the end all be all. And I
• 32:43
  Speaker 5: would think ever. I mean, I don't care how great
• 32:46
  Speaker 5: AI becomes someday, 10 years from now. it's still going
• 32:49
  Speaker 5: to come back to the human DEA slash license individual
• 32:57
  Speaker 5: to have the final say. It's your license. It's your responsibility.
• 33:01
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a great analogy.
• 33:02
  Speaker 15: And I'd say the same, like, the vendors who are
• 33:05
  Speaker 15: building this, they have responsibility to make sure that these
• 33:08
  Speaker 15: tools they're.
• 33:08
  Speaker 3: Building are right.
• 33:09
  Speaker 15: But you as the pharmacy and the pharmacist, you know,
• 33:12
  Speaker 15: you have that responsibility to make sure the vendors are
• 33:14
  Speaker 15: coming in and doing the right thing.
• 33:15
  Speaker 3: And it's a true partnership. I mean, the vendors who
• 33:17
  Speaker 3: are doing it right.
• 33:19
  Speaker 15: Integrity is maybe a hard word to use, but the
• 33:21
  Speaker 15: ones who are really here for the right reasons or
• 33:24
  Speaker 15: genuinely trying to help, they'll assume that risk. They'll partner
• 33:27
  Speaker 15: up with you. It's not going to be like, hey,
• 33:29
  Speaker 15: you shouldn't have turned it on. They're really there to
• 33:32
  Speaker 15: also take ownership and take some responsibility. I think it's
• 33:37
  Speaker 15: a great analogy you said about the tech and the pharmacist.
• 33:39
  Speaker 15: The buck always stops at the pharmacist. It really does,
• 33:42
  Speaker 15: which is good. That's who we want the buck to
• 33:43
  Speaker 15: stop with.
• 33:44
  Speaker 12: All right.
• 33:45
  Speaker 5: So when's the Terminator going to come destroy us do
• 33:48
  Speaker 5: you think how many years is it going to take
• 33:50
  Speaker 5: for ai to say you know forget you humans um
• 33:53
  Speaker 5: we want it all.
• 33:54
  Speaker 15: Yeah i don't i think we'll still be here november
• 33:57
  Speaker 15: december i think we're safe at least for now we'll
• 34:00
  Speaker 15: be here i was going to say my friend i
• 34:01
  Speaker 15: got to point out the uh the top host award
• 34:03
  Speaker 15: that i'm hearing about oh yeah anyone more deserving of
• 34:07
  Speaker 15: it than todd in the podcast the pharmacy podcast network.
• 34:10
  Speaker 5: But sean's talking about something that's coming so i heart
• 34:13
  Speaker 5: media I was nominated, and I'm not sure who nominated me,
• 34:17
  Speaker 5: but they reached out to me and they said, you're
• 34:19
  Speaker 5: being looked at as a top host. And I immediately
• 34:24
  Speaker 5: want to push that back to the work I do
• 34:27
  Speaker 5: in rising the voice of pharmacists and people in pharmacy
• 34:31
  Speaker 5: because I still feel like pharmacy is the redheaded stepchild
• 34:37
  Speaker 5: of healthcare and gets pushed to the back. They almost
• 34:40
  Speaker 5: make it transactional. And if people like Mark Cuban, for example,
• 34:45
  Speaker 5: who's made comments about specialty pharmacy several times, he needs
• 34:49
  Speaker 5: to come to the NASP or he needs to come
• 34:51
  Speaker 5: to Assembia and realize, holy crap, specialty pharmacy really is
• 34:56
  Speaker 5: as intensive as they say. And just because you have
• 34:58
  Speaker 5: bad players out there that have taken advantage of formulary
• 35:02
  Speaker 5: or pricing or rebate and don't put all the bad
• 35:06
  Speaker 5: eggs in the same basket under the guise of what
• 35:09
  Speaker 5: is specialty pharmacy. So if I win that award and
• 35:12
  Speaker 5: it should be awesome, it's all being pushed back to
• 35:15
  Speaker 5: the exposure of what's happening in our industry.
• 35:18
  Speaker 3: That's awesome. Yeah, no, no one deserves it more than you.
• 35:20
  Speaker 3: So I'm wishing you luck.
• 35:21
  Speaker 15: I think, To answer your question, I think we'll be
• 35:24
  Speaker 15: here when the voting comes out.
• 35:26
  Speaker 3: AI won't take us out by then.
• 35:27
  Speaker 5: So we will see you cry on the top host. AI,
• 35:31
  Speaker 5: I heard, is trying to take over podcasting. And they're like, hey,
• 35:34
  Speaker 5: plug your voice into this system and it'll give it
• 35:37
  Speaker 5: a script and it'll build a podcast. And I'm like,
• 35:39
  Speaker 5: that's not what podcasting is. Podcasting is about the human
• 35:43
  Speaker 5: to human speaking about something very intimate and it differentiates them.
• 35:49
  Speaker 5: any other form of media. It differentiates from video. It
• 35:52
  Speaker 5: differentiates from blogging. And it's very special. So I don't, like,
• 35:57
  Speaker 5: I'm always going to fight if someone's like, hey, it's
• 35:59
  Speaker 5: an AI podcast. I don't listen to AI podcasts. I
• 36:02
  Speaker 5: think I've listened to one or two just to say
• 36:04
  Speaker 5: I've listened, but I refuse to listen to a machine
• 36:08
  Speaker 5: talking to another machine.
• 36:10
  Speaker 3: Yeah, no, totally.
• 36:10
  Speaker 15: And I mean, that's like, that's what makes podcasting so appealing.
• 36:14
  Speaker 15: I mean, it's just, it's so genuine. That's like, the
• 36:16
  Speaker 15: best host, it's always like a genuine conversation.
• 36:19
  Speaker 3: People like that.
• 36:20
  Speaker 9: It's real.
• 36:20
  Speaker 3: It's unscripted. It's unfiltered.
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 36:22
  Speaker 3: That's how it should be.
• 36:23
  Speaker 15: I mean, nobody wants to hear a polished AI podcast.
• 36:26
  Speaker 3: That's true.
• 36:27
  Speaker 5: At least I don't.
• 36:27
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't either. All right.
• 36:29
  Speaker 5: Sean Jensen, so good to have you back on the
• 36:32
  Speaker 5: NASP podcast. And we'll have you back soon on Twerks.
• 36:35
  Speaker 3: Sounds great. So happy to be here. And thanks for
• 36:37
  Speaker 3: everything you do, Todd.
• 36:38
  Speaker 16: Specialty pharmacy teams are being asked to do more than
• 36:41
  Speaker 16: ever before. Between patient outreach, refill coordination, prior authorizations, and
• 36:46
  Speaker 16: the endless volume of phone calls, valuable clinical and operational
• 36:50
  Speaker 16: time is often consumed by administrative work. At Hendren AI,
• 36:54
  Speaker 16: we believe the people caring for patients should spend less
• 36:57
  Speaker 16: time managing workflows and more time delivering meaningful outcomes. That's
• 37:02
  Speaker 16: why we build AI-powered solutions designed specifically for specialty and
• 37:06
  Speaker 16: infusion pharmacy organizations. Our platform helps automate repetitive phone-based and
• 37:11
  Speaker 16: administrative processes, streamline operations, and improve the patient experience while
• 37:16
  Speaker 16: fitting into existing workflows. Hendren AI is focused on a
• 37:20
  Speaker 16: simple mission, turning human labor into software so healthcare organizations
• 37:25
  Speaker 16: can scale more efficiently while keeping patients at the center
• 37:28
  Speaker 16: of care. To learn more, visit Hendren.ai and discover how
• 37:33
  Speaker 16: AI can help your team work smarter, not harder.
• 37:40
  Speaker 7: Hey, it's Ulrich Dvorsky, co-founder and CEO of Telomed, and
• 37:43
  Speaker 7: you are listening to the Pharmacy Podcast.
• 37:50
  Speaker 5: Julik, here at the Inspire 2026 NASP Podcast. It's great
• 37:55
  Speaker 5: to have you back.
• 37:57
  Speaker 9: It's great to be back.
• 37:58
  Speaker 5: I don't know if you ever watched Saturday Night Live
• 38:00
  Speaker 5: back in the 80s, but they started this yellow jacket
• 38:03
  Speaker 5: thing where if the host... was on SNL as the
• 38:09
  Speaker 5: host for like the fourth time, they get to don
• 38:11
  Speaker 5: the jacket. Do I need to get you a jacket?
• 38:13
  Speaker 9: Do I get a jacket or something?
• 38:14
  Speaker 5: We need to get you a jacket. You're on the
• 38:16
  Speaker 5: shows all the time. So it's good to see you.
• 38:20
  Speaker 5: Something that I like is that I've been tracking the
• 38:23
  Speaker 5: success of TaylorMed and what you've done and how it's improved,
• 38:26
  Speaker 5: especially specialty pharmacy care for years. through Assembia, through NASP,
• 38:31
  Speaker 5: some of the things we've done on our own. You're
• 38:34
  Speaker 5: one of the first organizations to really be talking about
• 38:37
  Speaker 5: how you were going to leverage artificial intelligence into workflow
• 38:41
  Speaker 5: and into specialty. Had to be four or five years
• 38:44
  Speaker 5: ago before it was now everybody's like, I got AI.
• 38:47
  Speaker 5: And I'm like, that's great. But I almost don't trust
• 38:50
  Speaker 5: AI unless it's in the hands of an organization that
• 38:53
  Speaker 5: was building things way before AI was even a thing,
• 38:56
  Speaker 5: which is interesting. But you were featured on a panel
• 39:00
  Speaker 5: at Inspire 2026. I want you to give our listeners
• 39:03
  Speaker 5: kind of a summary of that panel.
• 39:05
  Speaker 9: Yeah, it was actually a panel that I moderated.
• 39:08
  Speaker 7: We brought a few different voices. We brought Tina from KabaFusion,
• 39:12
  Speaker 7: we brought Dave from UC Davis, and we brought Jen
• 39:16
  Speaker 7: from Bon Secours Mercy Health. And it was a fun
• 39:18
  Speaker 7: panel because it wasn't just to promote how easy things
• 39:22
  Speaker 7: are in the age of AI, and it also wasn't
• 39:24
  Speaker 7: like to talk about the apocalypse that is coming up
• 39:28
  Speaker 7: for humanity, but it was trying to give very concise
• 39:33
  Speaker 7: feedback and how to think about adoption and implementation of
• 39:37
  Speaker 7: AI across organizations, and obviously within especially pharmacy and just
• 39:42
  Speaker 7: in general pharmacy workflows. We talked about three different topics, affordability, access,
• 39:47
  Speaker 7: and prioritization.
• 39:49
  Speaker 9: And adherence. And I would say it was interesting to see.
• 39:51
  Speaker 7: How each had some level of results already with AI
• 39:58
  Speaker 7: tools that they work, whether it's our platform or other platforms,
• 40:03
  Speaker 7: early results on how they measure it, which I think
• 40:05
  Speaker 7: is key. But also a lot of questions about how
• 40:09
  Speaker 7: do we consolidate a lot of different initiatives across the
• 40:12
  Speaker 7: organization to provide from silos, which was A big topic
• 40:16
  Speaker 7: in the panel because not everybody has that solution. We
• 40:19
  Speaker 7: also talked about how do you measure ROI when you're
• 40:22
  Speaker 7: thinking about AI? Because everybody now is asking you and
• 40:24
  Speaker 7: is asking in the boardroom to implement AI and to
• 40:27
  Speaker 7: make sure that we are ahead of the curve.
• 40:29
  Speaker 9: What does it actually mean?
• 40:30
  Speaker 7: And how do you approach an initiative or choose a
• 40:32
  Speaker 7: vendor where you know what you're solving for?
• 40:35
  Speaker 9: What are the KPIs that you're going to track?
• 40:37
  Speaker 7: Establish a baseline and justify the overall investment from IT
• 40:41
  Speaker 7: to your team to the change management. So it was,
• 40:43
  Speaker 7: I think, a very good discussion, and I think one
• 40:47
  Speaker 7: that was transparent and vulnerable, but we ended on what
• 40:52
  Speaker 7: is the future going to look like. I think for
• 40:54
  Speaker 7: us at TaylorMade, what we've seen is that the more
• 40:57
  Speaker 7: you implement agents and the more you start seeing manual
• 41:01
  Speaker 7: tests that we've been requiring 12, 15, 25 FTEs before,
• 41:07
  Speaker 7: fully identified, it frees those people up to really do
• 41:10
  Speaker 7: patient care, and you are starting to create we call
• 41:14
  Speaker 7: it in TaylorMade, instead of having a co-pilot AI to
• 41:18
  Speaker 7: the human, the human is becoming a co-pilot to the
• 41:20
  Speaker 7: agent where it's only being dispatched tasks that the agent
• 41:23
  Speaker 7: couldn't complete and focus on patient care every other part
• 41:28
  Speaker 7: of their day.
• 41:29
  Speaker 9: So it was a great panel.
• 41:31
  Speaker 5: And then the collection of that interaction with the patient,
• 41:35
  Speaker 5: with all of the ancillary things happening in their lives.
• 41:38
  Speaker 5: When I think of, transportation issues to the hospital or
• 41:42
  Speaker 5: your appointment or maybe they're living alone and they need
• 41:47
  Speaker 5: someone to check up on them more often. I think
• 41:50
  Speaker 5: that specialty with AI is on a whole other level
• 41:55
  Speaker 5: in comparison to some of the other sectors of pharmacy
• 41:58
  Speaker 5: because specialty pharmacists are used to doing these extra things already.
• 42:03
  Speaker 5: So what other things other than I understand prior authorization
• 42:08
  Speaker 5: and predictive analytics was a buzzword 10 years ago. Now
• 42:13
  Speaker 5: it can come alive because you could ask the AI agent, hey,
• 42:17
  Speaker 5: run a report on me of all of the lab
• 42:20
  Speaker 5: work for this patient over the last 10 years. Give
• 42:24
  Speaker 5: us a prediction and blah, blah, blah, whatever it is.
• 42:27
  Speaker 5: But what else do you see in the realm of
• 42:29
  Speaker 5: rare disease management that AI is going to really be
• 42:32
  Speaker 5: able to help operations and systems with?
• 42:35
  Speaker 9: I think Exactly what you said.
• 42:37
  Speaker 7: Everybody is talking about before first fill, and we do
• 42:41
  Speaker 7: a ton of work there in prior auth, in affordability.
• 42:44
  Speaker 7: But what happens when the patient starts therapy? There is
• 42:47
  Speaker 7: a whole very long, hopefully, journey for persistence and adherence.
• 42:52
  Speaker 7: And there are many other barriers that patients are facing,
• 42:55
  Speaker 7: and nobody is there to help them. Especially pharmacists are
• 42:58
  Speaker 7: doing an awesome job trying to do that. They are
• 43:00
  Speaker 7: thinking about transportation, education, healthcare. calling patients to remind them
• 43:05
  Speaker 7: to come to their next infusion therapy or to refill
• 43:08
  Speaker 7: their next oral therapy. But it's a very antiquated, heavy
• 43:14
  Speaker 7: call center model. AI completely changes that. Tailwind launched two
• 43:17
  Speaker 7: years ago the first patient journey companion that basically allows
• 43:22
  Speaker 7: patients to self-serve. And we started where we were kind
• 43:24
  Speaker 7: of focused at the moment, which was affordability. And we
• 43:27
  Speaker 7: created this automated copay wallet that patients can use and enroll.
• 43:33
  Speaker 7: We are now expanding that to look at the full
• 43:35
  Speaker 7: orchestration of the journey. So as a specialty pharmacy, a
• 43:38
  Speaker 7: lot of my core services and enhanced services that I
• 43:40
  Speaker 7: do for patients, that I do with life science companies,
• 43:44
  Speaker 7: can now be fully built in to TaylorMed. And you
• 43:46
  Speaker 7: can orchestrate the entire journey and have your call center
• 43:49
  Speaker 7: be the escalation point. And I think AI enables that,
• 43:53
  Speaker 7: but also the patient engagement component. Because otherwise, if AI
• 43:57
  Speaker 7: is only powering back office work, how would patients get
• 44:00
  Speaker 7: the benefits of those tools?
• 44:02
  Speaker 5: So I have always known TaylorMed to be at the
• 44:05
  Speaker 5: center of specialty pharmacy and supporting our specialty pharmacists and operations.
• 44:10
  Speaker 5: Are there other sectors of pharmacy that TaylorMed is either
• 44:13
  Speaker 5: in that we don't know about or looking at getting into?
• 44:17
  Speaker 9: A lot.
• 44:19
  Speaker 7: So TaylorMed's network now reaches about 75 million patients a year.
• 44:23
  Speaker 9: Jeez, that's great.
• 44:23
  Speaker 8: 1,000 hospitals, 5,000 clinics, 3,100 pharmacies.
• 44:30
  Speaker 7: With those pharmacies, obviously, especially pharmacies, but we are taking,
• 44:34
  Speaker 7: I think, over the entire ambulatory infusion center space with
• 44:39
  Speaker 7: big accounts joining our network every month. From a health
• 44:44
  Speaker 7: system perspective, we partner with the second largest health systems
• 44:47
  Speaker 7: in the country earlier this year, just going live now
• 44:50
  Speaker 7: across all of their hospitals, clinics, pharmacies. And from a
• 44:55
  Speaker 7: strategy perspective, we want to be everywhere medication is written.
• 44:59
  Speaker 9: And or dispensed.
• 45:01
  Speaker 7: That means that any medication encounter, whether it's an inpatient, outpatient, specialty, pseudo-specialty, retail,
• 45:08
  Speaker 7: is something that we support. And the last thing we
• 45:10
  Speaker 7: did in order to continue to embody that strategy is
• 45:13
  Speaker 7: we are actually now.
• 45:14
  Speaker 9: Available on consumer websites.
• 45:16
  Speaker 7: There are pharmacies, retail pharmacies, that when you go to
• 45:18
  Speaker 7: their website and you search for a drug, if there
• 45:21
  Speaker 7: are copay cards available, we power that. So we want
• 45:23
  Speaker 7: to make sure that patients are exposed to those options
• 45:25
  Speaker 7: everywhere they are getting their care or searching for An
• 45:29
  Speaker 7: available option.
• 45:30
  Speaker 5: All right. Where's the next event that you'll be attending
• 45:33
  Speaker 5: where TaylorMet will be?
• 45:35
  Speaker 7: AVBCC in New York. It's the Association of Value-Based Cancer Care,
• 45:42
  Speaker 7: I think. Hopefully I didn't butcher it. But I think
• 45:46
  Speaker 7: it's a very important one because oncology as a whole
• 45:49
  Speaker 7: is its own industry because of the complexities of both
• 45:52
  Speaker 7: the disease but also the treatments and what does it
• 45:55
  Speaker 7: take to get there.
• 45:57
  Speaker 9: I will be actually on a panel.
• 45:58
  Speaker 7: There talking about how providers, pharmacies, life sciences companies, and
• 46:04
  Speaker 7: hubs are working together. I think the models are changing,
• 46:08
  Speaker 7: and we're trying to help them be broken a little bit.
• 46:12
  Speaker 7: And it goes back to what technology now unlocks. So,
• 46:15
  Speaker 7: very excited about this one.
• 46:17
  Speaker 5: The website, taylormed.com?
• 46:19
  Speaker 12: Yeah.
• 46:19
  Speaker 9: Okay.
• 46:19
  Speaker 5: So, if you want more information, you'd like to engage
• 46:22
  Speaker 5: with Shrilak, he's absolutely brilliant, and their team, go to taylormed.com. Sure,
• 46:28
  Speaker 5: like this has been awesome. Thanks for making this a tradition.
• 46:31
  Speaker 9: Thanks so much.
• 46:31
  Speaker 7: Looking forward to the fifth time and maybe like a
• 46:34
  Speaker 7: little jacket.
• 46:35
  Speaker 9: Yellow jersey or something. Thanks, Todd. Appreciate it.
• 46:39
  Speaker 12: Tim Mohamedou, Senior Vice President of Pharmacy for Plentiful. And
• 46:43
  Speaker 12: you're listening to the Pharmacy Podcast Network.
• 46:48
  Speaker 5: Tim, welcome to the NASP podcast here at Inspire 2026.
• 46:52
  Speaker 5: It's great to have you.
• 46:53
  Speaker 8: On the show.
• 46:54
  Speaker 9: Thank you. It's a pleasure being here.
• 46:56
  Speaker 5: All right, so we have a couple interviews from Plenful.
• 47:00
  Speaker 5: I'm glad that you're here because I'd like to really
• 47:03
  Speaker 5: talk about some of the modeling and some of the
• 47:06
  Speaker 5: use of artificial intelligence to customize some of the most
• 47:10
  Speaker 5: complex workflow systems in all of pharmacy that are inside
• 47:14
  Speaker 5: specialty pharmacy. The reason is, is as a disease state
• 47:18
  Speaker 5: continues to be modified in management and in treatment, it
• 47:23
  Speaker 5: now starts to become individualized. It's being individualized by the
• 47:27
  Speaker 5: labs and by pharmacogenomics and by ancillary treatment, helping the
• 47:33
  Speaker 5: patient live better throughout that disease state. And it all
• 47:38
  Speaker 5: comes back to, of course, my favorite provider, the pharmacist.
• 47:42
  Speaker 9: That's you.
• 47:43
  Speaker 5: So talk to us about your background a little bit
• 47:45
  Speaker 5: and what you do at Plentiful.
• 47:47
  Speaker 12: Yeah. I'm a pharmacist by training, like many of your
• 47:52
  Speaker 12: guests and spent the majority of my career on the
• 47:55
  Speaker 12: health system side, leading pharmacy services for.
• 48:00
  Speaker 3: Health systems across the.
• 48:01
  Speaker 12: Country, and then transitioned into the healthcare technology space. And
• 48:06
  Speaker 12: I've spent six years there with two different organizations, most
• 48:10
  Speaker 12: recently with Plentful, and really thinking about how we leverage
• 48:14
  Speaker 12: AI and technology automation to move pharmacy forward.
• 48:18
  Speaker 5: So that's so important. More pharmacists in technology, they used
• 48:23
  Speaker 5: to call it infomatics. That's still kind of a thing,
• 48:26
  Speaker 5: but that's really grown. And I think with the advent
• 48:29
  Speaker 5: of AI in pharmacy, it's going to give a lot
• 48:32
  Speaker 5: of nerdy pharmacists out there an opportunity to apply their
• 48:36
  Speaker 5: understanding of something very specific into AI. So let's talk
• 48:40
  Speaker 5: about You mentioned before we started recording how Plenful is
• 48:45
  Speaker 5: customizing workflows and some of the modeling that you've done.
• 48:48
  Speaker 5: I think that's super interesting, so let's dig into that.
• 48:51
  Speaker 12: Yeah, I think what's become really exciting with some of
• 48:54
  Speaker 12: our world-class technologists at Plenful is being able to use
• 48:58
  Speaker 12: memory to really advance and customize the models for specific
• 49:03
  Speaker 12: pharmacy workflow automations. And a good example is in the
• 49:09
  Speaker 12: prior authorization, benefit investigation, and intake process, where we really
• 49:14
  Speaker 12: look at two different types of memory. One would be
• 49:17
  Speaker 12: an institutional memory, where we have specific utilization, prescribing patterns,
• 49:26
  Speaker 12: cost and purchase data, margin profiles from our specific partners.
• 49:31
  Speaker 12: And then we also have larger ecosystem data that's available
• 49:35
  Speaker 12: across the industry as a formularies by specific prescription drug
• 49:42
  Speaker 12: plans or medical insurance. And when our partners start with
• 49:46
  Speaker 12: a model, I think oftentimes we provide a confidence score
• 49:51
  Speaker 12: on that. And they're able to see how much we
• 49:57
  Speaker 12: can advance the confidence scores. Maybe we're starting at 50
• 50:01
  Speaker 12: or 60%. And then as we start to use some
• 50:04
  Speaker 12: of their institutional specific memory on their specific practices, their workflows,
• 50:10
  Speaker 12: we can move those confidence scores of the model's ability
• 50:14
  Speaker 12: to move agentic workflow through that at 90, 95% confidence.
• 50:19
  Speaker 3: So it's been really exciting.
• 50:21
  Speaker 5: How does the interaction with the patient, plugging that information
• 50:26
  Speaker 5: that you're pulling from the patient, whether that's through texting,
• 50:30
  Speaker 5: whether through it's an interview, telemedicine, how is that information
• 50:34
  Speaker 5: being multiplying and deviating the decisions that Plenfo helps to
• 50:41
  Speaker 5: design to start customizing, to further customize the patient experience?
• 50:48
  Speaker 9: Yeah, great question.
• 50:49
  Speaker 12: One of the things that I think is really important
• 50:51
  Speaker 12: to our partners is to have some level of governance.
• 50:54
  Speaker 12: It's great to have a feedback mechanism. We talked about
• 50:57
  Speaker 12: the institutional memory that the model can take and learn from.
• 51:00
  Speaker 12: But we still want an individual with their clinical expertise,
• 51:04
  Speaker 12: their pharmacy background, to make sure that that's a decision
• 51:08
  Speaker 12: that they want the model to accept and apply moving forward.
• 51:11
  Speaker 12: So we think about this sort of twofold, where we're
• 51:14
  Speaker 12: using institutional memory, but we're also leveraging the expertise of
• 51:18
  Speaker 12: pharmacists and then those stakeholders involved in that workflow to
• 51:22
  Speaker 12: make sure that that information is pertinent and applicable to
• 51:25
  Speaker 12: the models that we're using.
• 51:26
  Speaker 5: All right. And the... administration of the system. I always
• 51:34
  Speaker 5: think of the pharmacy management system, NCPDP has the script qualification,
• 51:42
  Speaker 5: you have CPT codes, ICD-9, or ICD-10 now, database management.
• 51:49
  Speaker 5: Where does Plenful come into that ecosystem?
• 51:53
  Speaker 12: Yeah, we're really, I think, transferable across a variety of
• 51:57
  Speaker 12: those different pieces it really depends on the use case
• 52:00
  Speaker 12: we support pharmacy automation through a variety of different areas
• 52:04
  Speaker 12: everything from the 340b program plentiful can be used as
• 52:09
  Speaker 12: a compliance tool a way to optimize and grow your
• 52:13
  Speaker 12: 340b program we also do some work in financial reconciliation
• 52:17
  Speaker 12: with the complexity around medicare fair price refunds And then
• 52:22
  Speaker 12: most recently, what we've been spending some time on is
• 52:25
  Speaker 12: the intake benefit investigation and prior authorization process for medication access.
• 52:30
  Speaker 12: So all of those areas are opportunities to leverage AI, automation,
• 52:36
  Speaker 12: and again, opportunities to utilize the institutional specific memory to
• 52:41
  Speaker 12: have more of an agentic experience and supplement your team.
• 52:45
  Speaker 5: Where did you start your pharmacy career? implementation of Plenful?
• 52:50
  Speaker 5: Was it in specialty, retail chain, compounding, hospital system?
• 52:55
  Speaker 8: Where did it start?
• 52:58
  Speaker 3: Depends on the use case.
• 53:00
  Speaker 12: We support each of those different market segments, whether it's
• 53:04
  Speaker 12: an independent specialty pharmacy, whether it's a health system that's
• 53:07
  Speaker 12: looking at their larger market access from medical infusion, ambulatory infusion,
• 53:14
  Speaker 12: their hospital outpatient departments. We also work with some of
• 53:17
  Speaker 12: the largest national home infusion companies in the country.
• 53:21
  Speaker 5: Excellent. Well, that means I want you back on the
• 53:23
  Speaker 5: show because I'd like to dig in more into the
• 53:26
  Speaker 5: application of Plenful because we usually divide our coverage based
• 53:31
  Speaker 5: on the sector. And there's, oh, my goodness, 8 to
• 53:35
  Speaker 5: 12 sectors out there of pharmacies. So there's plenty of
• 53:39
  Speaker 5: Plenful that we could be talking about.
• 53:41
  Speaker 3: I love it.
• 53:42
  Speaker 9: Sounds great.
• 53:42
  Speaker 5: Thank you, Tim.
• 53:43
  Speaker 9: Thank you.
• 53:45
  Speaker 14: Hello, this is Vivian Bernice, VP of Business Development at ThermoSafe,
• 53:50
  Speaker 14: and you're listening to the Pharmacy Podcast.
• 53:54
  Speaker 5: Hey, welcome to Inspire 2026, the NASP podcast. It's so
• 53:59
  Speaker 5: good to see you.
• 54:00
  Speaker 9: Thank you.
• 54:01
  Speaker 7: Likewise, Todd.
• 54:02
  Speaker 14: Thanks for having us.
• 54:03
  Speaker 7: All right.
• 54:04
  Speaker 5: Is this your first event? Is this your first Inspire 2020?
• 54:07
  Speaker 5: It's everybody's first Inspire 2026. It's a brand new conference,
• 54:11
  Speaker 5: but The NASP. Is this the first NASP?
• 54:14
  Speaker 3: It is.
• 54:15
  Speaker 14: My first event, and I cannot rave about the energy enough.
• 54:19
  Speaker 14: I mean, the warmth, the accessibility of everybody, it's been
• 54:22
  Speaker 14: so welcoming. It's been a wonderful experience so far.
• 54:26
  Speaker 5: So I attend between 8 to 12, if my wife
• 54:30
  Speaker 5: allows me, events per year. And it's a lot of
• 54:34
  Speaker 5: conference going. And I want to echo what you say,
• 54:38
  Speaker 5: because the NASP... I think they're the first national organization
• 54:45
  Speaker 5: to give me a press pass in access to their booth,
• 54:50
  Speaker 5: where I'm embedded into the NASP booth as an extension
• 54:53
  Speaker 5: of their communications team. And they give me 100% trust
• 54:58
  Speaker 5: to their brand and to their name. And it just
• 55:02
  Speaker 5: gives me chills. It's just like they're such a welcoming organization.
• 55:06
  Speaker 5: And I think that echoes throughout the entire Inspire event.
• 55:11
  Speaker 5: And just a shout out to Sheila Arquette and her team.
• 55:14
  Speaker 5: What you said is very special because as a first-time attendee,
• 55:17
  Speaker 5: you're already picking that up. There's a lot of conferences
• 55:20
  Speaker 5: where it's like very clubbish. And it's like you have to.
• 55:25
  Speaker 5: It's kind of like the popular kids' table at high school,
• 55:29
  Speaker 5: and it's not like that here. No, not at all, actually.
• 55:32
  Speaker 14: Even the lunch breakfast experiences, you're being welcomed by strangers
• 55:36
  Speaker 14: just because you have a unified mission and inspire NSAP.
• 55:41
  Speaker 14: They really embody that, and I think really, truly, everybody
• 55:46
  Speaker 14: that's here is an extension of that, and so, therefore,
• 55:48
  Speaker 14: it just becomes a natural aspect of the ambiance, right?
• 55:51
  Speaker 12: Yeah, exactly.
• 55:52
  Speaker 5: Exactly. All right, so specialty pharmacy, super complex. People with
• 55:58
  Speaker 5: diseases they find out they have, it wrecks their life.
• 56:02
  Speaker 5: It brings a lot of trauma for them and their families.
• 56:05
  Speaker 5: An aspect of specialty that keeps it extremely special is
• 56:10
  Speaker 5: the aspect of delivery and the protection of the medications.
• 56:16
  Speaker 5: The temperature safety, the temperature sensitivity. Talk to us about
• 56:20
  Speaker 5: your mission and your organization and how you plug into
• 56:24
  Speaker 5: specialty pharmacy.
• 56:26
  Speaker 14: That question carries so much weight to it because it really,
• 56:29
  Speaker 14: at the end of the day, if you look at it,
• 56:31
  Speaker 14: it's so much more beyond just operations of getting something
• 56:35
  Speaker 14: from point A to point B.
• 56:37
  Speaker 5: It's about the patient.
• 56:39
  Speaker 14: At the end of that transaction or exchange, that patient
• 56:45
  Speaker 14: is receiving... maybe a life-extending, life-enriching, life-saving medication, which ultimately
• 56:52
  Speaker 14: is being fueled by science. And the way that that
• 56:55
  Speaker 14: science works is chemistry. And what happens with chemistry? Well,
• 57:00
  Speaker 14: you know, if anybody's done that volcano experiment, if you
• 57:03
  Speaker 14: put in a little bit of vinegar, you add some
• 57:07
  Speaker 14: baking soda into the mix, something happens, right? Well, that's visible.
• 57:13
  Speaker 14: You can see that. What you can't see in the
• 57:17
  Speaker 14: context of the complexity of medications is what's happening at
• 57:20
  Speaker 14: the molecular level when that medication is exposed to high
• 57:25
  Speaker 14: heat temperatures for an extended period of time, which in
• 57:30
  Speaker 14: most cases, that efficacy is put at risk. So if
• 57:34
  Speaker 14: you have an oncology product, that patient's really relying on
• 57:38
  Speaker 14: the full maximum potential of that medication to help steer
• 57:44
  Speaker 14: the outcomes right from a health perspective. And so the
• 57:48
  Speaker 14: cold chain is an integral part of that equation to
• 57:52
  Speaker 14: make sure that patients are not just receiving their medication,
• 57:57
  Speaker 14: but they're receiving it with the utmost care. potential so
• 58:01
  Speaker 14: that they can get on track with ultimately why they're
• 58:04
  Speaker 14: adhering or even starting that plan from the get-go.
• 58:07
  Speaker 5: So has your organization always been within specialty from the
• 58:11
  Speaker 5: get-go or did you come from and evolve from a
• 58:14
  Speaker 5: different industry?
• 58:16
  Speaker 14: Excellent question. The landscape has been evolving and changing. We
• 58:20
  Speaker 14: have always been in the life sciences and healthcare space
• 58:24
  Speaker 14: and predominantly within more of a commercial take, but because
• 58:28
  Speaker 14: of the rise of e-commerce, the Amazon effect, COVID also
• 58:33
  Speaker 14: catapulted a lot of organizations to reconsider.
• 58:36
  Speaker 8: Their distribution practices.
• 58:38
  Speaker 14: And even in the specialty pharmacy space, pharmacists themselves there's
• 58:43
  Speaker 14: been an explosion of needs that have been generated through
• 58:48
  Speaker 14: the ease right of patient centricity and accessibility to purchasing
• 58:54
  Speaker 14: products online and that's where packaging started to come up
• 58:58
  Speaker 14: as a key aspect in that equation because there's the
• 59:02
  Speaker 14: the patient unboxing experience there's the um the regulatory piece
• 59:08
  Speaker 14: of it of making sure that you're a with your
• 59:11
  Speaker 14: accreditation if that's something that a company aspires to achieve.
• 59:15
  Speaker 14: And so there's a lot of facets that have ultimately
• 59:19
  Speaker 14: driven us to play a more predominant role and bring
• 59:23
  Speaker 14: awareness more than anything because as I was explaining about
• 59:27
  Speaker 14: the science of that volcano, There's a lot of lack
• 59:31
  Speaker 14: of knowledge to what actually happens when a specialty pharmacy
• 59:35
  Speaker 14: is starting their journey and deciding what type of packaging
• 59:38
  Speaker 14: they want to use to ultimately get the products into
• 59:41
  Speaker 14: the patient's hand.
• 59:43
  Speaker 5: If our specialty pharmacist that's out there, the operator, the administrator,
• 59:47
  Speaker 5: they're listening to the podcast and they're like, I want
• 59:50
  Speaker 5: to talk more about this. How do we get a
• 59:52
  Speaker 5: hold of you?
• 59:53
  Speaker 14: Very easy.
• 59:54
  Speaker 8: ThermoSafe.com. We're on the website.
• 59:57
  Speaker 14: We've got a LinkedIn platform. We're also on all of
• 59:59
  Speaker 14: the social media channels. We're happy to connect. Even if
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 14: it's just to share awareness, education, that's a large premise
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 14: of how we look at things. We know that this
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 14: space can be overwhelming if you haven't operated from within it.
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 14: So there may be like a large learning gap, but
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 14: we're here to support generally from an interest of just
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 14: helping to advance the industry overall toward a safer distribution
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 14: of products that require cold chain.
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 12: All right.
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 5: You heard it here on the NASP podcast. Thermalsafe.com. Plug
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 5: it in. Reach out. Ask questions. I promise that this
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 5: isn't your last podcast with us. We have to have
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 5: you back. I'd be delighted. Thank you for the opportunity.
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 7: All right.
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 3: Thank you.