Omri Shor, co-founder and CEO of Medisafe, on VatorNews podcast

Medisafe is a company with the goal of increasing medication adherence

Steven Loeb speaks with Omri Shor, co-founder and CEO of Medisafe, a company with the goal of increasing medication adherence.

Our goal is to understand tech breakthroughs radically changing healthcare: the way we screen, diagnose and treat conditions and measure outcomes. And whether tech is helping or hurting our well-being physically and mentally.

Highlights from the interview:

• The idea for Medisafe came from when Shor was visiting his father, who asked if Shor had seen him inject his insulin. When Shor said he hadn’t his father injected himself, which turned out to be the second dose. That left a very strong impression on him as to how easy it is to take or not take your medications as prescribed. He also started talking to payers, providers, and pharma companies and learned that they are interested in improving medication management for patients but that they didn't have a solution. Shor started Medisafe to support people like his father, and support the industry.
• Primary non-adherence is when the patient received a prescription from the physician and that prescription was never picked up from the pharmacy and about 40% of medications are never picked up. This is not an issue of forgetfulness, this is an issue of process, of understanding that the drug is indeed the right thing for you, of trust, and of education. It spans much, much wider and deeper than just forgetfulness.
• 700,000 people a year in the US suffer an emergency because they didn’t take their medication, 125,000 people a year die, and it costs the US healthcare system roughly $290 billion. The issue is divided into two pieces: the first  is better connectivity and alignment between different constituents in healthcare, and the second one is giving patients the proper tools that are engaging, that will support them throughout the process.
• Medisafe started from the patient side, which Shor sees as a true differentiator because many of the companies in the industry actually started from the industry side. It began  as a medication management platform supporting the patient and their care circle but, over those years, it has been able to use the data it collected to understand patients better and support them holistically. Now, fi they have an issue with the price of the drug, or if they have an issue with understanding how to inject the drug, Medisafe will support them. If they need access to patient support teams, that is included inside Medisafe also. So, there are so many different solutions inside Medisafe that will support the patient holistically throughout their patient journey on the way to better health.
• You need personalization to have better engagement; without personalization, you will not have better engagement. You also can't have it on a one-to-one basis since it's not realistic to put the nurse next to each and every point patient throughout the day, so that has to be addressed with technology.
• Medisafe is HIPPA compliant, meaning it does not give personal information to pharma companies. What they do get are insights about what are the key issues are for their patients. For example, physicians have asked patients to inject drugs over the weekend because, in their mind, that's the best time because they're at home and supposed to be more relaxed. The problem is people want to have fun on the weekend, so Medisafe has been able to identify from the data and show that pharma companies that Tuesdays and Fridays in the morning hours are the best time. It also found that females are more likely on that Friday and males are more on Tuesday, and while Shor doesn't know why, that is what the data show. These are types of insights that Medisafe is to provide.

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