00:00:03
Speaker 1: Since March 2009 the pharmacy podcast has been developing content monthly, weekly and daily for the business of pharmacy, with more than 25 different podcast channels, more than one million downloads and 30 plus participating pharmacists. The Pharmacy podcast network Feed the global leader in podcasting For the pharmacy professional. Find all of our podcast channels by going to pharmacy podcast dot com. Forward slash shows
00:00:30
Speaker 1: Way We're excited to have our ex destroyer sponsoring the pharmacy podcast network. Rx Destroyer is transforming the drug disposal space by Bring your facility and patients a simple and effective method. A safely disposing of unused, unwanted medications.
00:00:50
Speaker 1: If you're worried about drug diversion and federal rules compliance, learn how our ex destroyer can keep you. D a compliant by checking out www dot Rx destroyer dot com forward slash pharmacy Podcast Network
00:01:07
Speaker 1: Nation to receive 10% off your first order used code Pharmacy.
00:01:22
Speaker 1: Today we live in a unique point in human history, where data is becoming the new currency beyond oil dollars and social status, data is emerging as one of the most powerful and consequential currencies around the globe. Technology, computer processing, cloud storage and artificial intelligence are empowering these data to transform zeros and ones into insightful and even profound realizations about almost every aspect of our lives.
00:01:55
Speaker 1: I'm John Lost Technology, Pharmacy and Better Health Care delivery. By creating more efficient, higher quality concierge's like Pharmacist service's, we can transform from the pharmacist of Yesterday into the future provider of pharmacy tomorrow. Future Does Dot is a member of the pharmacy podcast network, the global leader in pharmacy broadcasting and the largest, most influential network of podcasts about the profession and business of pharmacy.
00:02:27
Speaker 1: Pharmacy. Podcast Nation's
00:02:30
Speaker 1: future Does not Czech listeners welcome back to the pharmacy podcast? There are
00:02:35
Speaker 1: organizations in place today
00:02:39
Speaker 1: driving change in the digital health space
00:02:43
Speaker 1: that are extremely exciting to watch, to see, grow up and partner with
00:02:48
Speaker 1: about, Um, just
00:02:50
Speaker 1: a couple
00:02:51
Speaker 2: days ago, the S H P rolled out amazing group of technology providers mixed into,
00:03:00
Speaker 2: uh, therapeutics and pharma companies at the mid year in Las Vegas was amazing time to be there,
00:03:09
Speaker 2: talking with lots of young pharmacists at that p four level. At the resident level,
00:03:15
Speaker 2: lots of deer in headlights looks because, with all of the surge of change in pharmacy, we know that the number of pharmacists in chain as well as in long term care and even community, is going to change in the way
00:03:31
Speaker 2: that they have traditionally been used. But you should all be extremely excited because you have opportunity to do things in pharmacy, in healthcare that have never been done before. There are very few people that I reach out to for consistent input to this digital health space. In pharmacy,
00:03:53
Speaker 2: Dr Timothy Angst is one of them. He's on our network under future does dot Tech.
00:03:58
Speaker 2: But the original guy I would reach out to was Harry Travis, and he helped us launch the specialty pharmacy podcast,
00:04:07
Speaker 1: which
00:04:07
Speaker 2: now is part of the N s peace podcast. So I wanna welcome back Harry Travis to the show. What's going on here?
00:04:16
Speaker 1: Good morning, Tide. It's great to be back. Thanks for the introduction.
00:04:20
Speaker 2: You will always have a home here in the land of podcasting. So any time you want to check in, you're more than welcome.
00:04:27
Speaker 1: And given that the home is in western Pennsylvania, I'm feel really comfortable there and enjoy that
00:04:35
Speaker 2: paint job. Pittsburgh and you're a pit alumni. So that's that's the reason that we all feel feel like home here. That's right.
00:04:43
Speaker 2: So I have been keeping
00:04:47
Speaker 2: the cap on the bottle per se that pun in the tongue in cheek about your new endeavors, which really isn't that new anymore, because you've been doing it for quite some time
00:04:58
Speaker 2: and you're the CEO of Detect our X,
00:05:02
Speaker 2: And you've had some extremely exciting changes in advancements and what you guys were doing. But the timing couldn't be better. And before we kind of unpack that, because that's kind of like
00:05:14
Speaker 2: my way of, ah, watching the gift under the Christmas tree, and I want to unwrap it right away. I want to kind of take a pause and give you the mike so that you can give our listeners kind of on upper overview of why we're all here today and
00:05:30
Speaker 2: what your opinion is and what your view is of how digital health is crashing together, infusing together ah, brand new space for the pharmacist whose technology driven who's very innovative and thinking and who believes in using um, acts as a CZ prescriptions as actual therapy. So I wanna give you the floor to just give us an overview of what you see happening in the market place. And then I have some specific questions.
00:06:00
Speaker 1: Well, that's that's a lot to unpack. And I appreciate you giving me this opportunity. So I'll try toe, put it out there and bite size pieces. And you can react as as we walk through this because I agree with you. It is a very exciting time
00:06:18
Speaker 1: in pharmacy. Let's just focus on pharmacy, obviously, healthcare, too. But we've got up a $3 trillion healthcare market, of which 400 billion of it is prescription drugs, and all related service is around that. It is a big space that is right now.
00:06:44
Speaker 1: Undergoing dramatic change is a result of all of the digital technologies that are coming online,
00:06:51
Speaker 1: not just digital. Their payment mechanisms, happy pink changes to payment mechanisms. There's political winds. There's just a
00:07:00
Speaker 1: just a plethora of change hitting it. And let's just focus mostly on digital right now and think about how digital has completely upended certain industries. You think about where the travel agents that we knew where is Borders books? Where where's Blockbuster? All of those companies just got, you know, pretty much wiped out because they weren't ready or they couldn't adapt to the digital. You know what I call a digital tsunami that hit them? And if you think about what a tsunami is like, it usually comes with very little warning. It's very destructive, and you can't stop.
00:07:46
Speaker 1: The trick here is how does the pharmacy profession
00:07:49
Speaker 1: kind of, ah, surf the tsunami rather than get crushed by it?
00:07:56
Speaker 1: So a detect their ex? We're right in the middle of it because we are a company that is, that has developed an ingestible microchip for ingestion event marking, which is the technical term that the FDA gives this product category ingestible event markers.
00:08:19
Speaker 1: So that is, that is our space. That's what we've developed, and that's what we're about to commercialize right now.
00:08:28
Speaker 2: So I was talking to Harry before we got started, and I told him that I
00:08:35
Speaker 2: interviewed Mr John Rossman, who was ah, senior executive at Amazon. He's now an author of several books about
00:08:43
Speaker 2: Amazon like strategies with his let latest called Think like Amazon, and he and I had
00:08:51
Speaker 2: about a 45 minute conversation before recording,
00:08:55
Speaker 2: and he said, out of all of the facets of health care.
00:08:59
Speaker 2: He thought that pharmacy, based on his knowledge of pharmacy and in the back end business of that where the data lies,
00:09:07
Speaker 2: he said, You know, pharmacy is, is should be the bright, shining star of health care right now. And I said, Why is that? And he said, with all that data, if someone knew how to use it in really pinpoint what's necessary and what the customers looking for and what the customer expects and what the customer needs. And you put that in the hands of a, um, hands on like health care provider, which pharmacist are, He says, you should have no problem succeeding because really, you need to drive everything from the customer's perspective. So you know I'm a nerd. You're a nerd, Harry, with the youngsters, a nerd. There's lots of nerds out there. But if if US nerds don't start looking at this stuff from the customer, the patient's perspective
00:09:57
Speaker 2: and this is gonna lead me to my first question. If we don't look at it from their perspective, then it's all going to kind of dwindle away, no matter how sexy the data seems and the technology seems and the buzzword scene.
00:10:10
Speaker 2: And that kind of leads me to these digital therapeutic companies that have built some pretty cool, seemingly pretty cool stuff
00:10:18
Speaker 2: that hasn't hasn't stuck like they thought it would to the patient. So
00:10:25
Speaker 2: my first question is, why did Proteus fail? Like what? What in the world happened with them when? When we thought, Wow, this organization is is gonna be the next thing you know it's gonna be It's gonna be a complete opportunity for different pharmacists and physician collaborate collaborators to put together some therapies and monitor some outcomes through digestion and things that were happening there. But what's your what's your outlook on that?
00:10:54
Speaker 1: Well, that's a very hot topic right now, and I'll give them the benefit of the doubt to say that the only thing that I know and we know is what we're reading in the headlines. So it obviously looks like there's there's trouble and that they're having a hard time.
00:11:09
Speaker 1: Failure might be too strong of a term right now. It's relative terms of how you define that, so I'll let them define it. But I will comment on why do I think that there was not greater pick up on the technology or their first product, the Abilify in my Sight product.
00:11:32
Speaker 1: And I think that there are some basic rules of physics, and I'm paraphrasing an article that I just read in MM. And I am a medical media and marketing, I think, is what the three m's air for. Uh, I apologize because they don't have the author's name in front of me. But it was just published recently in last couple days on Why, Why Proteus is having their trouble.
00:11:58
Speaker 1: And I think one of the fundamental rules of health care is that I'm going to quote another friend of ours. And that's dug long at ICU via formerly of of I. M. S and one Doug's favorite phrases when it comes to health care and health care providers and healthcare suppliers. Whether you're a pharmaceutical company or medical device company, his favorite saying is, if you don't have outcomes, you won't have income.
00:12:29
Speaker 1: You you have to be able to demonstrate a value proposition. You have to demonstrate an outcome that can be kind of turned back into savings or, you know, it achieves
00:12:45
Speaker 1: at least one of the elusive aims of the you know the grande triple aim of health care, which is lower cost, greater access, better quality. Are you hitting one of those lower costs per capita? Are you improving quality or are you getting more people into the system and helping more people? And can you quantify that? Uh, and I don't think that Proteus
00:13:15
Speaker 1: made the case strongly enough
00:13:18
Speaker 1: that their technology could do that.
00:13:22
Speaker 1: Uh,
00:13:23
Speaker 2: so the gentleman's name that wrote an article just recently called What's behind Smart filmmaker Proteus funding woes
00:13:33
Speaker 2: was Mark, uh, it quits or s quits right yet and saying that the Proteus Digital Health CEO wants confidently proclaimed
00:13:44
Speaker 2: that in a couple of decades every medicine will have a chip in it.
00:13:49
Speaker 2: And, um, I I think that there is something exciting about that statement. I think it's, ah, overreaching in some ways. But nonetheless, I I think that some of these specialty medications that you have to see how fast it's being
00:14:07
Speaker 2: digested, metabolized and other things that's going to come from the digestible
00:14:14
Speaker 2: capsule,
00:14:15
Speaker 2: and it's gonna tell physicians it's gonna tell pharmacists what's happening. Um, in the system of the patient that goes back to
00:14:24
Speaker 2: customize medicine, that goes back to pharmacogenomics that goes back to other sciences that we do understand.
00:14:32
Speaker 2: We're at the beginning of all of this and how this digestible pill will work. You have some insights in that with detect our XO share with us what's happened recently with some of the hurdles that you've raped that you've overcome and what's next in place for detect Rx.
00:14:52
Speaker 1: Well, the the most significant milestone that we've hit most recently was on December 6.
00:15:00
Speaker 1: Week ago today, we received clearance from the FDA on our 5 10 k application to be able to market the I. D. Cap.
00:15:11
Speaker 1: So that was a process that started depending on how you where you wanna kind of put the marker on the calendar. You could say it's been 10 years, plus 10 years for the company. I've been with the company for a little over three years, but the very first ideas for this came out of the lab something Gainesville
00:15:33
Speaker 1: over 10 years ago. Ah, long process along delivered process 14. Call it 14 months through the FDA
00:15:45
Speaker 1: to get the clearance, and through it all,
00:15:49
Speaker 1: I give the FDA a lot of credit. They were very good students on the technology. We had a file, an application that set Proteus is product as our credit kit, which is the way you do a 5 10 K. Somebody establishes the class and produce, to their credit, filed a de Novo 5 10 K, which established the class of ingestible event markers. We then filed a five test standard 5 10 K application that sets them is the predicated, and we deem ourselves substantially equivalent to them in the terms off the regulations around 5 10 K. But still, it's a very new product, and it's not something that the FDA has seen dozens of these things. So they were very deliberate in their research, very deliberate in their review of our data. They taught us a lot in the process, and I think we taught them a little in the process and came out of it better on on both sides. So we have got clearance now and and we can go commercial, and we're thrilled that we're at this place, as I said, and my post on lengthen, I want to thank
00:17:04
Speaker 1: you know the employees. We have a great team. We have patient and visionary investors. We have great suppliers. We have terrific collaborators up at Brigham and Women's and Fenway Health. Dr Peter Chai. Dr Ed Boyer, Dr Jose Mantia out in University of Colorado Denver's about to start up, Uh and you know, it takes a team to pull something like this off. And everybody was there working hard to get it done. So kudos to everybody. So now
00:17:39
Speaker 1: you know, as Churchill said, it is the end of the beginning
00:17:45
Speaker 1: where,
00:17:47
Speaker 1: uh, uh, big milestone. But now you know, it's just that the hill keeps getting it. It's like climb a mountain and you get to the peak and you realize, Oh, no, this is not the peak. This is just the first peak in the range on I've got a lot more crime. So we are right now setting our our commercial plans in place. We're also doing some preliminary work on financing. We're headed out to J. P. Morgan Health Care event. You know the annual event where everyone involved in health care financing like that it's It's almost like a sem be up with the swallows returning to Capistrano, all of the healthcare veces all of the healthcare investment bankers the send on Union Square in San Francisco that second week of January. So that is consuming the calendar right now. But it is an exciting time, and you have been here with us for a long time, and I appreciate your support in interest throughout it.
00:18:46
Speaker 2: This excites me because they think of different
00:18:50
Speaker 2: chronic disease states that I've
00:18:52
Speaker 2: heard so much about and have been involved in, from a supportive perspective in the world of opioid usage disorder and
00:19:00
Speaker 2: understanding how that affects families and communities. And when I think of the I d. Capsule as this ingestible wireless sensor that transmits information back to the the wearable, that then gives the data to the capturing device the phone, and then it transmits it back to that central place where the physician has access to it. The pharmacists can get access to it to collaborate on what's happening in that patient
00:19:33
Speaker 2: you guys were staging to get to this next level. I absolutely agree with you. After 10 years of doing podcasting, I'm now at a plateau where it's really time to dig into important conversations to advance specific things happening in the business of pharmacy in one of those, of course, is the digital health side of of this. So we're gonna grow out this content. But what is the next steps for, um, for detect Rx in the Ivy capsule?
00:20:03
Speaker 1: Our next steps are to prove the I'll go right back to what we said at the very beginning, we need to prove the outcomes. We need to prove that improving adherence
00:20:16
Speaker 1: improves healthcare outcomes, lowers quality, improves access all of those things. And we have
00:20:24
Speaker 1: a number of conversations going on now with potential collaborators that will set the stage for kind of focused pilots focused studies that will the large and scope but focused in a particular therapy area on a particular set of patients to deliver that data to generate that data that says, Okay, if you get a 5 10 15% increase in adherence in a particular therapy what? What does that What does that do in terms of an outcome? Yeah,
00:21:06
Speaker 1: we think that and I agree that Okay, adherence is good. You should take your medicine as prescribed, and you should take it as closely to the schedule. And you should be a hearing. But we all know not everybody is that hearing.
00:21:22
Speaker 1: And, you know, the outcomes are what they are. It is the real world. Uh, but incremental changes in adherence. Okay, using any technology classed a certain amount of money and okay, what's the return on that? So that's what we are about right now. So we're We have
00:21:44
Speaker 1: conversations that are going on right now at pharmaceutical manufacturers with digital health cos we're looking forward to having conversations with anybody who's interested in working with us to include confirmed medication, adherence with whatever other platform or service they're providing. There are wearable companies out there. They're talking about the digital therapeutics companies. Many of the digital APS work in concert with your medicine.
00:22:19
Speaker 1: Not all of in fact, most of the digital laps are not trying to replace the drug. They're trying to augment the drug. And if we could include in that a confirmed medication adherence, we think, and we've had this confirmed by talking with people, that would be a more robust app that plays whipped nicely with the medication adherence but also provides a cognitive behavioral therapy section or some motivation session, depending on what the nature of the diseases or the therapy that's being delivered.
00:22:59
Speaker 2: I think of Inter Mountain as a health system that really digs into
00:23:04
Speaker 2: digital on some of their specialty disease states that they have a pretty good handle on. I think of UPMC. I think of you, P, W V U Medical Center and right here is that they're doing so. I'm excited. I I want you to continue to circle back for the network, to the pharmacy podcast network through any of the platforms and shows that we build out that when it fits that, you can come on in
00:23:31
Speaker 2: and we can bring on another guest that it can talk about the outcomes that can talk about. Hey, we've been doing this now for 90 days. We've been doing this for 120 days or a year, and here's what's what's taken place. Here's how detect our exes help us to accelerate the knowledge of what's happening with the specific patient within that specific condition. So I'm excited for you, Harry. I'm excited for our industry. So how do we future proof pharmacy with the tsunami of change?
00:24:03
Speaker 2: Let's circle back to the very beginning of the show
00:24:06
Speaker 2: that it's like a tsunami, and that first wave doesn't seem so violent. It's the 2nd 3rd 4th 5th work just keeps coming and coming and changing and changing. And there's so many organizations, individuals, people in their careers, it is hard for them to keep up. But what do you think? How do we future proof pharmacy?
00:24:28
Speaker 1: I think this might sound overly simple, but I think the first is for the profession to pay attention to
00:24:37
Speaker 1: the digital landscape.
00:24:40
Speaker 1: It is e because I said, there's so much going on in pharmacy right now. You could spend, you know, if you are a pharmacist, just let's just take a prototypical pharmacists. You could spend all your time worrying about selling gene therapies or biosimilars or opioid use disorders. These are big issues that take a lot of time. All I'm saying is there's another big issue on the plate
00:25:06
Speaker 1: that some fraction of the pharmacy profession or some small percentage of everybody's mind needs to be focused on,
00:25:15
Speaker 1: because if if we as a profession don't put time and effort into understanding these digital trends,
00:25:23
Speaker 1: they the digital trends, they're so they're so easy to dis disrupt an industry that we could have people who really don't understand the pharmacy business kind of turning the pharmacy business on its head.
00:25:38
Speaker 1: Jeff Bezos is a good example. Okay. Bezos doesn't have, you know, a good guy. I take nothing away from him, but he really doesn't have a pharmacy background. But he is now one of the big players in pharmacy.
00:25:51
Speaker 1: And you, I joke about into my presentations. If the pharmacy profession isn't out in front
00:25:58
Speaker 1: studying and spending time really getting into the geeky stuff of what? What is the impact of faster chips? What is the impact of five G? What's the impact of natural language processing? What's the impact of a eye on pharmacy? If we're not out there answering those questions as pharmacists, we're all gonna end up working for guys with the last name of Zucker burger or be Zoe's, or cook or something like that. If we're not careful.
00:26:31
Speaker 2: So I think that you're absolutely correct. Um, I don't I don't see this being for just one pharmacist. And this goes back to a comment that I made
00:26:43
Speaker 2: to, um, to another player in the Space pharmacist, United for truth and transparency that focus on PBM reform. I don't think PBM reform is just for the politicians and the policy drivers and the and the lobbyists in protection of pharmacy and better patient care. I think I think every pharmacist it is an act of pharmacists right now needs to understand it. And I think every pharmacist that's active right now must also understand
00:27:17
Speaker 2: the future of pharmacy and digital health so that you haven't least some level of knowledge of how this will affect your career and how this is going to affect the pharmacist role in health care.
00:27:29
Speaker 1: Great. 100%.
00:27:32
Speaker 2: So once again, Harry, we gotta have you back as you make your next plateau in the in the climb to the peak.
00:27:40
Speaker 2: And, um, I don't think that will ever come. By the way, I think we're always gonna have plateaus, that we're gonna have to keep
00:27:46
Speaker 2: climbing until we decide it's time to retire.
00:27:50
Speaker 2: Then maybe that's our peak. Um, but I so much enjoy your insights and our friendship throughout the years and meeting you the very first time at a conference room in New Jersey with armada health who's transformed into a some bia What an amazing organization and what they've done over the years. But I just thank you so much for your insights and what you do for the pharmacy industry.
00:28:15
Speaker 1: Well, right back at you. Thanks for all you do and have a very happy holiday. It's my pleasure to be on your podcast.
00:28:24
Speaker 2: We were talking with Harry Travis on future dose dot Tech, part of the pharmacy podcast network. We thank you for listening the way that you can help us with this publication, which, by the way, is your publication. Because the pharmacist is the hub of health care is to share these and to get these out through lengthen and other social media. And once again, I thank you
00:28:45
Speaker 1: so much for listening. Thank you for listening to future does dot attack. If you enjoyed this episode, please share this podcast on your favorite social media. L've legs. Be sure to stay connected to the firm. See podcast network and return for your next future dose dot Tech episode coming soon
Speaker 1: Since March 2009 the pharmacy podcast has been developing content monthly, weekly and daily for the business of pharmacy, with more than 25 different podcast channels, more than one million downloads and 30 plus participating pharmacists. The Pharmacy podcast network Feed the global leader in podcasting For the pharmacy professional. Find all of our podcast channels by going to pharmacy podcast dot com. Forward slash shows
00:00:30
Speaker 1: Way We're excited to have our ex destroyer sponsoring the pharmacy podcast network. Rx Destroyer is transforming the drug disposal space by Bring your facility and patients a simple and effective method. A safely disposing of unused, unwanted medications.
00:00:50
Speaker 1: If you're worried about drug diversion and federal rules compliance, learn how our ex destroyer can keep you. D a compliant by checking out www dot Rx destroyer dot com forward slash pharmacy Podcast Network
00:01:07
Speaker 1: Nation to receive 10% off your first order used code Pharmacy.
00:01:22
Speaker 1: Today we live in a unique point in human history, where data is becoming the new currency beyond oil dollars and social status, data is emerging as one of the most powerful and consequential currencies around the globe. Technology, computer processing, cloud storage and artificial intelligence are empowering these data to transform zeros and ones into insightful and even profound realizations about almost every aspect of our lives.
00:01:55
Speaker 1: I'm John Lost Technology, Pharmacy and Better Health Care delivery. By creating more efficient, higher quality concierge's like Pharmacist service's, we can transform from the pharmacist of Yesterday into the future provider of pharmacy tomorrow. Future Does Dot is a member of the pharmacy podcast network, the global leader in pharmacy broadcasting and the largest, most influential network of podcasts about the profession and business of pharmacy.
00:02:27
Speaker 1: Pharmacy. Podcast Nation's
00:02:30
Speaker 1: future Does not Czech listeners welcome back to the pharmacy podcast? There are
00:02:35
Speaker 1: organizations in place today
00:02:39
Speaker 1: driving change in the digital health space
00:02:43
Speaker 1: that are extremely exciting to watch, to see, grow up and partner with
00:02:48
Speaker 1: about, Um, just
00:02:50
Speaker 1: a couple
00:02:51
Speaker 2: days ago, the S H P rolled out amazing group of technology providers mixed into,
00:03:00
Speaker 2: uh, therapeutics and pharma companies at the mid year in Las Vegas was amazing time to be there,
00:03:09
Speaker 2: talking with lots of young pharmacists at that p four level. At the resident level,
00:03:15
Speaker 2: lots of deer in headlights looks because, with all of the surge of change in pharmacy, we know that the number of pharmacists in chain as well as in long term care and even community, is going to change in the way
00:03:31
Speaker 2: that they have traditionally been used. But you should all be extremely excited because you have opportunity to do things in pharmacy, in healthcare that have never been done before. There are very few people that I reach out to for consistent input to this digital health space. In pharmacy,
00:03:53
Speaker 2: Dr Timothy Angst is one of them. He's on our network under future does dot Tech.
00:03:58
Speaker 2: But the original guy I would reach out to was Harry Travis, and he helped us launch the specialty pharmacy podcast,
00:04:07
Speaker 1: which
00:04:07
Speaker 2: now is part of the N s peace podcast. So I wanna welcome back Harry Travis to the show. What's going on here?
00:04:16
Speaker 1: Good morning, Tide. It's great to be back. Thanks for the introduction.
00:04:20
Speaker 2: You will always have a home here in the land of podcasting. So any time you want to check in, you're more than welcome.
00:04:27
Speaker 1: And given that the home is in western Pennsylvania, I'm feel really comfortable there and enjoy that
00:04:35
Speaker 2: paint job. Pittsburgh and you're a pit alumni. So that's that's the reason that we all feel feel like home here. That's right.
00:04:43
Speaker 2: So I have been keeping
00:04:47
Speaker 2: the cap on the bottle per se that pun in the tongue in cheek about your new endeavors, which really isn't that new anymore, because you've been doing it for quite some time
00:04:58
Speaker 2: and you're the CEO of Detect our X,
00:05:02
Speaker 2: And you've had some extremely exciting changes in advancements and what you guys were doing. But the timing couldn't be better. And before we kind of unpack that, because that's kind of like
00:05:14
Speaker 2: my way of, ah, watching the gift under the Christmas tree, and I want to unwrap it right away. I want to kind of take a pause and give you the mike so that you can give our listeners kind of on upper overview of why we're all here today and
00:05:30
Speaker 2: what your opinion is and what your view is of how digital health is crashing together, infusing together ah, brand new space for the pharmacist whose technology driven who's very innovative and thinking and who believes in using um, acts as a CZ prescriptions as actual therapy. So I wanna give you the floor to just give us an overview of what you see happening in the market place. And then I have some specific questions.
00:06:00
Speaker 1: Well, that's that's a lot to unpack. And I appreciate you giving me this opportunity. So I'll try toe, put it out there and bite size pieces. And you can react as as we walk through this because I agree with you. It is a very exciting time
00:06:18
Speaker 1: in pharmacy. Let's just focus on pharmacy, obviously, healthcare, too. But we've got up a $3 trillion healthcare market, of which 400 billion of it is prescription drugs, and all related service is around that. It is a big space that is right now.
00:06:44
Speaker 1: Undergoing dramatic change is a result of all of the digital technologies that are coming online,
00:06:51
Speaker 1: not just digital. Their payment mechanisms, happy pink changes to payment mechanisms. There's political winds. There's just a
00:07:00
Speaker 1: just a plethora of change hitting it. And let's just focus mostly on digital right now and think about how digital has completely upended certain industries. You think about where the travel agents that we knew where is Borders books? Where where's Blockbuster? All of those companies just got, you know, pretty much wiped out because they weren't ready or they couldn't adapt to the digital. You know what I call a digital tsunami that hit them? And if you think about what a tsunami is like, it usually comes with very little warning. It's very destructive, and you can't stop.
00:07:46
Speaker 1: The trick here is how does the pharmacy profession
00:07:49
Speaker 1: kind of, ah, surf the tsunami rather than get crushed by it?
00:07:56
Speaker 1: So a detect their ex? We're right in the middle of it because we are a company that is, that has developed an ingestible microchip for ingestion event marking, which is the technical term that the FDA gives this product category ingestible event markers.
00:08:19
Speaker 1: So that is, that is our space. That's what we've developed, and that's what we're about to commercialize right now.
00:08:28
Speaker 2: So I was talking to Harry before we got started, and I told him that I
00:08:35
Speaker 2: interviewed Mr John Rossman, who was ah, senior executive at Amazon. He's now an author of several books about
00:08:43
Speaker 2: Amazon like strategies with his let latest called Think like Amazon, and he and I had
00:08:51
Speaker 2: about a 45 minute conversation before recording,
00:08:55
Speaker 2: and he said, out of all of the facets of health care.
00:08:59
Speaker 2: He thought that pharmacy, based on his knowledge of pharmacy and in the back end business of that where the data lies,
00:09:07
Speaker 2: he said, You know, pharmacy is, is should be the bright, shining star of health care right now. And I said, Why is that? And he said, with all that data, if someone knew how to use it in really pinpoint what's necessary and what the customers looking for and what the customer expects and what the customer needs. And you put that in the hands of a, um, hands on like health care provider, which pharmacist are, He says, you should have no problem succeeding because really, you need to drive everything from the customer's perspective. So you know I'm a nerd. You're a nerd, Harry, with the youngsters, a nerd. There's lots of nerds out there. But if if US nerds don't start looking at this stuff from the customer, the patient's perspective
00:09:57
Speaker 2: and this is gonna lead me to my first question. If we don't look at it from their perspective, then it's all going to kind of dwindle away, no matter how sexy the data seems and the technology seems and the buzzword scene.
00:10:10
Speaker 2: And that kind of leads me to these digital therapeutic companies that have built some pretty cool, seemingly pretty cool stuff
00:10:18
Speaker 2: that hasn't hasn't stuck like they thought it would to the patient. So
00:10:25
Speaker 2: my first question is, why did Proteus fail? Like what? What in the world happened with them when? When we thought, Wow, this organization is is gonna be the next thing you know it's gonna be It's gonna be a complete opportunity for different pharmacists and physician collaborate collaborators to put together some therapies and monitor some outcomes through digestion and things that were happening there. But what's your what's your outlook on that?
00:10:54
Speaker 1: Well, that's a very hot topic right now, and I'll give them the benefit of the doubt to say that the only thing that I know and we know is what we're reading in the headlines. So it obviously looks like there's there's trouble and that they're having a hard time.
00:11:09
Speaker 1: Failure might be too strong of a term right now. It's relative terms of how you define that, so I'll let them define it. But I will comment on why do I think that there was not greater pick up on the technology or their first product, the Abilify in my Sight product.
00:11:32
Speaker 1: And I think that there are some basic rules of physics, and I'm paraphrasing an article that I just read in MM. And I am a medical media and marketing, I think, is what the three m's air for. Uh, I apologize because they don't have the author's name in front of me. But it was just published recently in last couple days on Why, Why Proteus is having their trouble.
00:11:58
Speaker 1: And I think one of the fundamental rules of health care is that I'm going to quote another friend of ours. And that's dug long at ICU via formerly of of I. M. S and one Doug's favorite phrases when it comes to health care and health care providers and healthcare suppliers. Whether you're a pharmaceutical company or medical device company, his favorite saying is, if you don't have outcomes, you won't have income.
00:12:29
Speaker 1: You you have to be able to demonstrate a value proposition. You have to demonstrate an outcome that can be kind of turned back into savings or, you know, it achieves
00:12:45
Speaker 1: at least one of the elusive aims of the you know the grande triple aim of health care, which is lower cost, greater access, better quality. Are you hitting one of those lower costs per capita? Are you improving quality or are you getting more people into the system and helping more people? And can you quantify that? Uh, and I don't think that Proteus
00:13:15
Speaker 1: made the case strongly enough
00:13:18
Speaker 1: that their technology could do that.
00:13:22
Speaker 1: Uh,
00:13:23
Speaker 2: so the gentleman's name that wrote an article just recently called What's behind Smart filmmaker Proteus funding woes
00:13:33
Speaker 2: was Mark, uh, it quits or s quits right yet and saying that the Proteus Digital Health CEO wants confidently proclaimed
00:13:44
Speaker 2: that in a couple of decades every medicine will have a chip in it.
00:13:49
Speaker 2: And, um, I I think that there is something exciting about that statement. I think it's, ah, overreaching in some ways. But nonetheless, I I think that some of these specialty medications that you have to see how fast it's being
00:14:07
Speaker 2: digested, metabolized and other things that's going to come from the digestible
00:14:14
Speaker 2: capsule,
00:14:15
Speaker 2: and it's gonna tell physicians it's gonna tell pharmacists what's happening. Um, in the system of the patient that goes back to
00:14:24
Speaker 2: customize medicine, that goes back to pharmacogenomics that goes back to other sciences that we do understand.
00:14:32
Speaker 2: We're at the beginning of all of this and how this digestible pill will work. You have some insights in that with detect our XO share with us what's happened recently with some of the hurdles that you've raped that you've overcome and what's next in place for detect Rx.
00:14:52
Speaker 1: Well, the the most significant milestone that we've hit most recently was on December 6.
00:15:00
Speaker 1: Week ago today, we received clearance from the FDA on our 5 10 k application to be able to market the I. D. Cap.
00:15:11
Speaker 1: So that was a process that started depending on how you where you wanna kind of put the marker on the calendar. You could say it's been 10 years, plus 10 years for the company. I've been with the company for a little over three years, but the very first ideas for this came out of the lab something Gainesville
00:15:33
Speaker 1: over 10 years ago. Ah, long process along delivered process 14. Call it 14 months through the FDA
00:15:45
Speaker 1: to get the clearance, and through it all,
00:15:49
Speaker 1: I give the FDA a lot of credit. They were very good students on the technology. We had a file, an application that set Proteus is product as our credit kit, which is the way you do a 5 10 K. Somebody establishes the class and produce, to their credit, filed a de Novo 5 10 K, which established the class of ingestible event markers. We then filed a five test standard 5 10 K application that sets them is the predicated, and we deem ourselves substantially equivalent to them in the terms off the regulations around 5 10 K. But still, it's a very new product, and it's not something that the FDA has seen dozens of these things. So they were very deliberate in their research, very deliberate in their review of our data. They taught us a lot in the process, and I think we taught them a little in the process and came out of it better on on both sides. So we have got clearance now and and we can go commercial, and we're thrilled that we're at this place, as I said, and my post on lengthen, I want to thank
00:17:04
Speaker 1: you know the employees. We have a great team. We have patient and visionary investors. We have great suppliers. We have terrific collaborators up at Brigham and Women's and Fenway Health. Dr Peter Chai. Dr Ed Boyer, Dr Jose Mantia out in University of Colorado Denver's about to start up, Uh and you know, it takes a team to pull something like this off. And everybody was there working hard to get it done. So kudos to everybody. So now
00:17:39
Speaker 1: you know, as Churchill said, it is the end of the beginning
00:17:45
Speaker 1: where,
00:17:47
Speaker 1: uh, uh, big milestone. But now you know, it's just that the hill keeps getting it. It's like climb a mountain and you get to the peak and you realize, Oh, no, this is not the peak. This is just the first peak in the range on I've got a lot more crime. So we are right now setting our our commercial plans in place. We're also doing some preliminary work on financing. We're headed out to J. P. Morgan Health Care event. You know the annual event where everyone involved in health care financing like that it's It's almost like a sem be up with the swallows returning to Capistrano, all of the healthcare veces all of the healthcare investment bankers the send on Union Square in San Francisco that second week of January. So that is consuming the calendar right now. But it is an exciting time, and you have been here with us for a long time, and I appreciate your support in interest throughout it.
00:18:46
Speaker 2: This excites me because they think of different
00:18:50
Speaker 2: chronic disease states that I've
00:18:52
Speaker 2: heard so much about and have been involved in, from a supportive perspective in the world of opioid usage disorder and
00:19:00
Speaker 2: understanding how that affects families and communities. And when I think of the I d. Capsule as this ingestible wireless sensor that transmits information back to the the wearable, that then gives the data to the capturing device the phone, and then it transmits it back to that central place where the physician has access to it. The pharmacists can get access to it to collaborate on what's happening in that patient
00:19:33
Speaker 2: you guys were staging to get to this next level. I absolutely agree with you. After 10 years of doing podcasting, I'm now at a plateau where it's really time to dig into important conversations to advance specific things happening in the business of pharmacy in one of those, of course, is the digital health side of of this. So we're gonna grow out this content. But what is the next steps for, um, for detect Rx in the Ivy capsule?
00:20:03
Speaker 1: Our next steps are to prove the I'll go right back to what we said at the very beginning, we need to prove the outcomes. We need to prove that improving adherence
00:20:16
Speaker 1: improves healthcare outcomes, lowers quality, improves access all of those things. And we have
00:20:24
Speaker 1: a number of conversations going on now with potential collaborators that will set the stage for kind of focused pilots focused studies that will the large and scope but focused in a particular therapy area on a particular set of patients to deliver that data to generate that data that says, Okay, if you get a 5 10 15% increase in adherence in a particular therapy what? What does that What does that do in terms of an outcome? Yeah,
00:21:06
Speaker 1: we think that and I agree that Okay, adherence is good. You should take your medicine as prescribed, and you should take it as closely to the schedule. And you should be a hearing. But we all know not everybody is that hearing.
00:21:22
Speaker 1: And, you know, the outcomes are what they are. It is the real world. Uh, but incremental changes in adherence. Okay, using any technology classed a certain amount of money and okay, what's the return on that? So that's what we are about right now. So we're We have
00:21:44
Speaker 1: conversations that are going on right now at pharmaceutical manufacturers with digital health cos we're looking forward to having conversations with anybody who's interested in working with us to include confirmed medication, adherence with whatever other platform or service they're providing. There are wearable companies out there. They're talking about the digital therapeutics companies. Many of the digital APS work in concert with your medicine.
00:22:19
Speaker 1: Not all of in fact, most of the digital laps are not trying to replace the drug. They're trying to augment the drug. And if we could include in that a confirmed medication adherence, we think, and we've had this confirmed by talking with people, that would be a more robust app that plays whipped nicely with the medication adherence but also provides a cognitive behavioral therapy section or some motivation session, depending on what the nature of the diseases or the therapy that's being delivered.
00:22:59
Speaker 2: I think of Inter Mountain as a health system that really digs into
00:23:04
Speaker 2: digital on some of their specialty disease states that they have a pretty good handle on. I think of UPMC. I think of you, P, W V U Medical Center and right here is that they're doing so. I'm excited. I I want you to continue to circle back for the network, to the pharmacy podcast network through any of the platforms and shows that we build out that when it fits that, you can come on in
00:23:31
Speaker 2: and we can bring on another guest that it can talk about the outcomes that can talk about. Hey, we've been doing this now for 90 days. We've been doing this for 120 days or a year, and here's what's what's taken place. Here's how detect our exes help us to accelerate the knowledge of what's happening with the specific patient within that specific condition. So I'm excited for you, Harry. I'm excited for our industry. So how do we future proof pharmacy with the tsunami of change?
00:24:03
Speaker 2: Let's circle back to the very beginning of the show
00:24:06
Speaker 2: that it's like a tsunami, and that first wave doesn't seem so violent. It's the 2nd 3rd 4th 5th work just keeps coming and coming and changing and changing. And there's so many organizations, individuals, people in their careers, it is hard for them to keep up. But what do you think? How do we future proof pharmacy?
00:24:28
Speaker 1: I think this might sound overly simple, but I think the first is for the profession to pay attention to
00:24:37
Speaker 1: the digital landscape.
00:24:40
Speaker 1: It is e because I said, there's so much going on in pharmacy right now. You could spend, you know, if you are a pharmacist, just let's just take a prototypical pharmacists. You could spend all your time worrying about selling gene therapies or biosimilars or opioid use disorders. These are big issues that take a lot of time. All I'm saying is there's another big issue on the plate
00:25:06
Speaker 1: that some fraction of the pharmacy profession or some small percentage of everybody's mind needs to be focused on,
00:25:15
Speaker 1: because if if we as a profession don't put time and effort into understanding these digital trends,
00:25:23
Speaker 1: they the digital trends, they're so they're so easy to dis disrupt an industry that we could have people who really don't understand the pharmacy business kind of turning the pharmacy business on its head.
00:25:38
Speaker 1: Jeff Bezos is a good example. Okay. Bezos doesn't have, you know, a good guy. I take nothing away from him, but he really doesn't have a pharmacy background. But he is now one of the big players in pharmacy.
00:25:51
Speaker 1: And you, I joke about into my presentations. If the pharmacy profession isn't out in front
00:25:58
Speaker 1: studying and spending time really getting into the geeky stuff of what? What is the impact of faster chips? What is the impact of five G? What's the impact of natural language processing? What's the impact of a eye on pharmacy? If we're not out there answering those questions as pharmacists, we're all gonna end up working for guys with the last name of Zucker burger or be Zoe's, or cook or something like that. If we're not careful.
00:26:31
Speaker 2: So I think that you're absolutely correct. Um, I don't I don't see this being for just one pharmacist. And this goes back to a comment that I made
00:26:43
Speaker 2: to, um, to another player in the Space pharmacist, United for truth and transparency that focus on PBM reform. I don't think PBM reform is just for the politicians and the policy drivers and the and the lobbyists in protection of pharmacy and better patient care. I think I think every pharmacist it is an act of pharmacists right now needs to understand it. And I think every pharmacist that's active right now must also understand
00:27:17
Speaker 2: the future of pharmacy and digital health so that you haven't least some level of knowledge of how this will affect your career and how this is going to affect the pharmacist role in health care.
00:27:29
Speaker 1: Great. 100%.
00:27:32
Speaker 2: So once again, Harry, we gotta have you back as you make your next plateau in the in the climb to the peak.
00:27:40
Speaker 2: And, um, I don't think that will ever come. By the way, I think we're always gonna have plateaus, that we're gonna have to keep
00:27:46
Speaker 2: climbing until we decide it's time to retire.
00:27:50
Speaker 2: Then maybe that's our peak. Um, but I so much enjoy your insights and our friendship throughout the years and meeting you the very first time at a conference room in New Jersey with armada health who's transformed into a some bia What an amazing organization and what they've done over the years. But I just thank you so much for your insights and what you do for the pharmacy industry.
00:28:15
Speaker 1: Well, right back at you. Thanks for all you do and have a very happy holiday. It's my pleasure to be on your podcast.
00:28:24
Speaker 2: We were talking with Harry Travis on future dose dot Tech, part of the pharmacy podcast network. We thank you for listening the way that you can help us with this publication, which, by the way, is your publication. Because the pharmacist is the hub of health care is to share these and to get these out through lengthen and other social media. And once again, I thank you
00:28:45
Speaker 1: so much for listening. Thank you for listening to future does dot attack. If you enjoyed this episode, please share this podcast on your favorite social media. L've legs. Be sure to stay connected to the firm. See podcast network and return for your next future dose dot Tech episode coming soon
