When Deepak Thomas contracted Lyme disease in his twenties, he quickly discovered how difficult it can be for a person to navigate the healthcare system, particularly when filling prescriptions. “When it came to accessing medications that could keep me healthy and eventually kick this condition, I found myself making three to four trips to the pharmacy every week, despite being covered by a generous healthcare plan.” So, by drawing on many years of experience working for leading tech companies such as Oracle and eBay, Thomas co-founded Phil, which offers a platform designed to remove provider and patient barriers to starting and continuing prescriptions. It’s an important problem to tackle because 50% of treatment failures and 25% of hospitalizations in the U.S. can be attributed to people failing to take their medicines. Thomas says a differentiating feature of Phil’s system is it works with the electronic health record or prior authorization programs the provider already uses while the automation runs behind the scenes. “The prescriber gets the benefits of automation without having to learn a new set of tools.” As for patients, they are sent a link -- often while still in the prescriber’s office - which takes them through the process.  "The enrollment rates into the patient access programs offered by the manufacturers are easily 90% on average across all of our programs." Check out this episode of Raise The Line with host Michael Carrese to learn about a new approach to solving a vexing problem in healthcare, and the other areas of pharma services Thomas wants to focus on next.

Mentioned in this episode: https://phil.us/

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