PipelineRx, a medication management and telepharmacy company has announced a partnership with YouScript to offer personalized prescribing tools on its PowerGridRx platform. YouScript is a provider of precision prescribing analytics and clinical decision support enabling gene-based prescribing at the point of care. Together, Pipeline Rx said the partnership helps improve patient outcomes by ensuring each patient is on an optimal and safe medication regimen, thus reducing risk and readmissions, and lowering the overall cost of care. The technology is fully integrated with electronic health records and can service hospitals independently or with PipelineRx’s Patient Discharge Solution.
"Youscript has advanced software that analyzes how patients taking multiple medications may be at risk due to the combination of the meds they are taking,” Brian Roberts, CEO of PipelineRx told Healthcare Purchasing News. “Most of the tools today measure drug to drug interaction not the impact created by the combination of medications - impact could include adverse drug events, re-hospitalization or could impact the clinical effectiveness of the medications. This service benefits the hospital or payer who would be financially responsible for the re-admittance and/or the cost of ineffective medications.”
With 50 million Americans taking five or more medications and $528 billion spent addressing non-optimized drug regimens and adverse drug events (ADEs) each year, the company says it is essential to understand how each prescription interacts with other medications or supplements – not just as drug-to-drug interactions, but also as drug-to-drug-to-drug, known as polypharmacy. Further, research has revealed that half of all medications do not work as intended due to each individual’s unique genetics. The result is that non-optimized medication regimens lead to over 275,000 deaths yearly.
Addressing these growing concerns in medication management, the partnership between PipelineRx and YouScript will identify and stratify patients who are at risk of polypharmacy drug interactions or drug-gene interactions, enabling healthcare providers to focus on patients who are most likely to benefit from medication therapy changes. Onsite or remote pharmacists can then follow up with prescribers to make medication changes if appropriate. These interventions also help reduce costs by eliminating medications that are ineffective or have the potential to cause injury or death.
“Built on years of clinical research, our medication management system is the only tool available that assesses the cumulative effect of a patient drug regimen and unique pharmacogenomic results with multiple peer-reviewed studies showing reductions in hospitalizations, ER visits and costs,” said YouScript CEO Kristine Ashcraft in a statement. “Partnering with PipelineRx helps us achieve our mission to end avoidable adverse drug events by making our technology available exactly where it’s needed: at the point of care.”
Roberts added, “Youscript also identifies patients that might benefit from a genetic test to determine if/how they metabolize certain medications. Some meds are expensive and are often not metabolized the same way for each individual for example PGx testing for psychiatry greatly reduces overall cost of prescription medications, and saves patients time, effort, and leads to much higher precision in prescribing.”
YouScript analyzes genetic data and the latest clinical knowledge on drug metabolism to identify and select prescription medications that will work best for each patient. For its polypharmacy solution, the platform looks beyond single drug-drug interactions to understand how a patient’s complete medication regimen interacts and provides actionable clinical insight if an intervention is needed. In a recently published study, the YouScript platform helped providers reduce re-hospitalizations and emergency department visits by 52 percent and 42 percent respectively, for improved outcomes, reduced costs, and high patient and provider satisfaction.
All functionality is available as a standalone service or in conjunction with PipelineRx’s Patient Discharge Solution, which helps onsite, or remote, pharmacists to prepare for and counsel patients as they leave your facility, then follow up to ensure medications are picked up and taken correctly after the patient has returned home.
“Throughout the process, PipelineRx pharmacists will be involved in counseling and instructing the patients and providers based on the results the patient receives and making recommended changes to the medication regimen,” Roberts said.
