Postscripts Rx
Conversations Beyond the Prescription. Where pharma, HCPs, life science and digital health solutions meets patients—after the script is written. Conversations on digital health, engagement, and real-world impacts that are re-writing the future of patient engagement.
Postscripts Rx
Digital Health's Secret: Patient-First Approach
What defines truly effective digital health technology in today's healthcare landscape? According to Brian Carr, SVP of Marketing at Medisafe, the answer is refreshingly straightforward: patient engagement.
When seven out of ten users access your platform daily—outperforming even social media giants like Facebook—you know you've created something that genuinely resonates with patients. Medisafe's journey began with a personal crisis when the founder's father accidentally double-dosed on insulin after forgetting his previous dose. This pivotal moment established the company's unwavering patient-first philosophy that continues to guide their innovation today.
The secret behind Medisafe's remarkable engagement metrics lies in their proprietary database built over twelve years, containing billions of anonymized patient interactions. This rich foundation powers their Just-In-Time Interventions (JITI), delivering personalized support precisely when patients need it most. Unlike many emerging AI solutions dependent on third-party datasets, Medisafe's technology draws from real-world patient behaviors to create truly personalized experiences.
Beyond medication reminders, Medisafe bridges critical gaps in the healthcare ecosystem. Patients can share adherence reports with providers, display their complete medication lists during emergency visits, and access digital copay cards—all from their smartphones. Meanwhile, pharmaceutical partners gain unprecedented visibility into patient behaviors, seeing how their medications perform alongside others in real-world settings, with insights available not just quarterly but hour-by-hour.
Looking toward healthcare's future, Carr envisions AI-powered voice agents and deeper integration across care settings, transforming how patients experience their treatment journeys. The leaders who will thrive in this evolving landscape will combine curiosity and openness with decisive action, recognizing that exceptional technology always begins with addressing genuine patient needs.
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PostScripts Rx is not intended to constitute medical advice, nor is it intended to influence prescribing decisions or any other medical or clinical decision-making. All medical and clinical judgment and decision-making, prescribing decisions, and all related considerations remain exclusively the responsibility of providers and patients.
Okay. So hi everyone, and welcome to PostscriptsRx podcast. This is the podcast where we explore the innovations, the leaders and the breakthroughs shaping the future of patient care. Joining me today is Brian Carr, svp of Marketing at Medisafe, which is a digital health platform that's re-imagining how patients connect with their therapies and how the broader care ecosystem supports those journeys, and at the heart of it is JITI, our Just-In-Time Interventions, which is personalizing and data-driven nudges that help patients stay on track at the exact moments that they need help and support. Brian's here to help us explore this and to help us understand how this is changing the game in digital health. So, brian, thanks and welcome to the show. Well, thanks for having me, kathy. Great seeing you again. You too. Well, hey, just to kick us off, I'd love to know what is your perspective actually on what defines best-in-class as a digital health solution today?
Brian Carr:For me it is our patients actually using it right. So you know, with all due respect to a lot in the industry, you can win awards, things like that, but if patients aren't using it on a regular basis and engaging with it and passionate about it, I think that that's kind of a red flag. So I love to see when patients are passionate about their solutions. And you know, you know, here over the past 12 years now we've had, you know, phenomenal growth in patients who are really passionate about how they tested many solutions and they found that the one we offer is really engaging and is exactly what they needed. And you know, sometimes, you know our typical patients on five or six medications may have a very difficult titration schedule or, you know, complicated dosing schedules in other ways. And you know we have adapted and grown with some of their questions and suggestions and it's really come. Our engagement metrics are phenomenal. You know seven. What is it? Seven out of ten of our folks who are using Medisafe on a monthly basis are coming at least once a day.
Cathy Zaremba:That's phenomenal, and if you compare that to industry standards, I mean that I think I've heard someone say that's even more than Facebook or Instagram. So that's pretty amazing. What do you think is at the root of that? I mean, how do you get patients to engage with the platform? What's kind of the secret sauce there?
Brian Carr:Yeah, I think it's in our DNA, at least at Medisafe, because it was started as a patient-first solution, right? This was started by two brothers who were having lunch with their dad and he said did you see me take my insulin dose this morning? And they said no, he didn't. So he went back in and unfortunately ended up double dosing and he was in the hospital for 24 hours. So that's always been the DNA of Medisafe is patient first. There's no reason for someone to double dose if they're keeping track of it, no matter what their condition or their age or even their digital savviness, it's very simple to use. So that to me, I think, is the key value that it's built from the patient first. So when we spent a good 10, 12 years of listening to what patients said, there was a lot more competitors back then, a lot of people trying new apps out, but we were the ones that really grew and listened to what people said and delivered too, not just yeah, yeah, yeah, we'll get to it. We really do deliver.
Cathy Zaremba:That is so fascinating when you think about that, like all that data collection that you're doing and now we're talking about, ai is the rage, right? Everybody's talking about AI. Well, when you think about what is the AI learning, what's the model, what's building, the model for messaging out to patients, what would you say to that? How does AI play into this?
Brian Carr:Exactly so. Any AI solution is only as good as the database or the model it's learning off of right. So language learning models you know what database of collections do they have that they have? Now, ours is proprietary, that we've been building over the past 12 years and it's data points that are anonymized. You know, any patient can use Medisafe and not even give an email address or anything. It's completely anonymous. Again, we built from the patient first. We do recommend the patients set up an account so when they get a new phone or if they lose their phone, they can just log into Medisafe and their whole history is there. But they're not forced to.
Brian Carr:But you can imagine with you know, literally billions of data points on patients over more than a decade who have you know, more than six medications that marking has taken or oh, I skipped this one or that.
Brian Carr:We've got, you know, in some solutions. We've got more than 120 trackers that are available. You can add all your doctors and your appointments. We've got more than a million doctors that have been added into the platform from patients who are like I have an appointment with them across the board. So you have, you know, billions of data points that we use from AI on a regular basis to you know, we can put our AI agents against it and really come up with phenomenal solutions, and that's at the core of JITI, or just-in-time innovation, inventions Now we've had for more than five years now, so when people talk about AI solutions coming to market, we've been analyzing and making interventions individually on a personalized basis, based on how patients are using the platform on an individual basis, using just-in-time innovations, for years and again, it's our own data, so we're not reliant on oh, this is a third-party database that people bought, that everyone's using.
Cathy Zaremba:Yeah, yeah, that is so true. And when you think about it, I mean when we're talking about chronic diseases, which really has just escalated tremendously over the last 10 years I mean the fact that you're able to track every medication in the med cabinet, how does that play into making this seamless for the patient? So it's really, you know, it's not something that's jarring, it's something that fits into the fabric of their patient journey, into their daily routine.
Brian Carr:Right, and we do have some patients who, you know, laugh. They know, you know, when the shaking pill bottle sounds, everyone knows that it's time. You know, the people around them hear it too, whether they're kids or their grandkids or whatever, and they, you know, say it's time to take it. I think you know, also, with the app being, you know, patient-centric. First off, it's very simply used. We keep it simple to use. It works.
Brian Carr:On other platforms We've actually grown with the patients. For example, we're compatible with watches and digital watches, for example. Right, we can also do right now, we do voice agent calls. So, you know, with some people, we can have them talk to an AI voice agent which can remind them hey, we didn't see you take your med today. Make sure that you know. We'll just call and make sure you're okay. We do a symptom check. All those things are becoming available as patients grow. So we're growing with the ways that patients want to adapt. Some patients want to use a web interface. We can deliver on all those as well. What's also interesting is, not only is it usable for patients, but the people who interact with patients, right. So, for example, you know, we've got platforms and on Medisave, where you can upload your report to your doctor before your appointment.
Cathy Zaremba:I was just going to ask you about that. How do you engage with the whole care? Ecosystem Perfect.
Brian Carr:We've had it for years. You can upload hey, here's your adherence report, here's the meds you're taking. Upload it to your doctor ahead of your appointment. The other thing we see is patients will especially acute care patients if they have something happen and they're in the emergency room, where we've got loads of stories where people just show the Medisave app to the intake nurse who then see the list of medications and they're, frankly, they're thrilled because it's all there. They have the doses, the schedule, when was it last taken? As opposed to and we've had nurses tell us this like oh, I have an intake patient going through their pocketbook looking for the pill bottles, right, and it takes 20 minutes to happen for an intake. So we often don't think of the way that digital is, not only the patients, of adopting it, but we see the elsewhere in the clinics and elsewhere. You know we work with clinics who used to do all their infusions with spreadsheets, right.
Cathy Zaremba:Now we can do it, integrate it into a digital interface where they can see oh, they did take the infusion at the clinic down the road, so now they can get the MRI here, for example. That is so critical. I mean, when you think about medication reconciliation, I mean it is an utter nightmare if you don't have everything at your fingertips. And how can you remember, when you're on six or more meds, what was in the pill cabinet, unless you are able to kind of put that front and center? I think it's interesting. You're saying you can share data, the patient can share data, but then what about cross-clinic? What about other sites of care? How have you worked with technology to connect sites of care?
Brian Carr:Yes, so we, you know, we launched, in conjunction with some partners of ours, a new product called Pathways right? So Pathways is. It's an interface for HCP clinical care offices, infusion centers and other clinics for, particularly for Alzheimer's disease, right? So when you have Alzheimer's, there's a lot of stages of infusions, mris and checks that you have to go through on a regular basis and you really can't go to the next level unless you've had, you know, you're checked off on your MRI from your previous appointment.
Brian Carr:So what we found was a lot of clinics are using spreadsheets to monitor their patients go from one to the other, and what we did is we launched a solution with some partners which basically allows any infusion center to monitor the infusion track and the journey of the patients from anyone. They're all in one simple interface where you know and we have a whole permissioning structure who can see how the patients went through, what level of permission at the clinical care center can do that. So it really has had a great reception and we won actually a breakthrough award this year for it. So it's really been adopted in the industry. It's great.
Cathy Zaremba:Oh, wow, that's fantastic. You know that's interesting. You brought up pharma partners, so you were working with partners that helped bring this to bear in the market. When you think about some of the stakeholders that you work with so you've got the patients, you've got the providers, you've got the pharma leaders how do you help bring them along? How do you help bring especially pharma leaders along the digital innovation cycle, if you will? What's their appetite for AI and things like that?
Brian Carr:Yeah, it's fascinating. I've been here more than almost a decade now and you know what typically happened was you had digital innovation teams at pharma companies, which you still do, and they had some voice, you know five, seven years ago where they were building great technology, but it was very brand specific for a particular medication. The challenge is at least for the patients we're serving. As I said, they're on five, six, seven medications, often more than eight medications, and it'd be very difficult for them to download eight different branded app experiences and mark each one as taken across the board, right. So I think you know we have brought to the solution. We are somewhat agnostic on what your condition is. We're not just specifically for diabetes or oncology or anything. We realize the comorbidities that happen and you can manage your entire treatment journey all in one place in Medisafe, depending. It doesn't matter what brand you're on, right. So I think that's one reason we've been somewhat we've definitely been adopted by a lot of our pharma partners is because they see, yes, we can do a branded app experience, but the engagement suffers because we know they're taking three or four other medications but they can't track that in this branded app experience from the pharma partner, because then there's a whole bunch of reasons why they can't do that. So we've had really good relationships with our partners because we can actually show them not only how your patient's progressing.
Brian Carr:To some extent, you know, we can track also one of the drug-to-drug interactions for patients, just to make sure there are other medications we can send in certain programs. We can say, by the way, here's some more information about your condition. We actually do digital copay cards for some of our partners right, so you have in your wallet, but now you can just show your phone to your pharmacist. Everyone has their phone, they're paying everything else, they're doing their banking on their phone. Why not show the balance that's available on your copay card right to a pharmacist while you're going through there? So that's the type of that adoption we've seen, which is phenomenal for digital integration with partners who can. Actually, you know, we have complete opt-in on data. So anyone who wants to use MedSafe privately, you can do that, or you can opt in and get more solutions and a copay card and programs from pharma with some of our programs and it's all permission-based.
Cathy Zaremba:I can see how this benefits the patient. I mean being able to, if I'm taking six or more meds and if I've got two that have special programs, I'm now able to access that information for both. So it's treating me the holistic person. You know, from the pharma's perspective. You know if I'm thinking of some of these large pharma companies that have deep knowledge and deep pipeline in, say, oncology for example, you know how does this look for an enterprise approach, even where pharma benefits from the fact that it's not just one drug that they have to select. They can potentially select many.
Brian Carr:Right. So you can imagine scenarios where we do enterprise solutions for our pharma partners. Why? Because we've already worked together well with a brand and they're seeing, frankly, they're seeing data they've never seen before all anonymized, never seen before all anonymized.
Brian Carr:But you know, if you're a Pharma brand manager, you can see, you know your monthly and your quarterly reports on prescriptions, new fills, refills, etc.
Brian Carr:Okay, with us we've got day-to-day, hour-to-hour basis and in conjunction with here's the other medications patients are taking, and if they're taking, say, three or more medications along with your medication, here's how it affects their compliance and their adherence rates and things like that too.
Brian Carr:In addition, we so you can see that we work with them on not only data you haven't seen before, but you can imagine if we've already worked well together and they often have, you know, other medications in their portfolio very similar related to the treatment area. They easy for easy, meaning we can transfer over a lot of our learnings and, you know, do some, you know, particular development for whatever the brands are that are there at scale much easier. And that because we've already, a worked together and, b we know a lot about the patients coming in right, so we can tell them hey, we know here's your patients, we know what medications they're on. Here's what's happening on their adherence on certain days of the week, for example data you've never seen before and we can talk to them more efficiently with Jidi, because our program is going to talk different to Kathy the way it talks to.
Brian Carr:Brian, just in messaging and cadence.
Cathy Zaremba:Yeah, yeah, boy, I know you know that I came from pharma before coming over to digital health and I tell you, if I had that data, if I would have had that data at the time, it would have been so just enlightening. If I'm thinking about the VP of marketing in a pharma situation sitting there, they care about two and three and four brands, not just one. So being able to have that data, to be able to compare and contrast adherence rates across different brands, across different therapy areas, would have been really helpful to see.
Brian Carr:And also campaign data. So you're doing some enrollment campaigns. Obviously we all see the TV ads and other enrollment channels for awareness. But also you know if a pharma campaign is paying money and trying to get people enrolled for the new prescription, which channels are working the best. We have all that program and we can say you want to get more people from this doctor's office or this channel or this advertising campaign? You did, because we know not only are they coming, they're engaging and we're seeing good activity and good results and impact. You're going to want to find out more from that channel than somewhere else where maybe they're just not as engaged.
Cathy Zaremba:So what I'm hearing you say, brian, I mean at the heart of this, is how do you engage patients that you're doing it so well with really personalized interventions, and then you're able to really feed that data back that pharma companies haven't ever been able to access so they really have a deeper understanding of what's happening in their own markets. As we look ahead, what kind of leadership traits do you think would be the most compelling for the next gen of digital health solutions? Where should we go next?
Brian Carr:It's interesting, I think, a curious, open mind and then ability to act, right, so we've got a lot of AI things that are coming to the fore. Okay, and what's interesting is you see how different companies are reacting to AI so you can use AI in the supply chain, right, to do efficiencies there as well. You, you, you, you know you're going to see a lot more AI agents actually interfacing not only directly with insurance companies and pharma companies working on, you know, pharma benefits and things like that. Right, there's a lot of AI in the B2B we call the B2B business to business level but certainly what we're going to see is adoption on the patient level as well. Right, you know, you've heard, I even see you know you hear stories with the up and coming folks, don't? The last thing they want to do is talk to a person, right, but when we have AI agents, what I mean by that is a person, a voice agent on the phone that acts in very similar to, you know, a support person, just for general support. Right, no, medical advice is ever given out or anything like that. Medical advice is ever given out or anything like that, but you're going to start seeing that become more regular. I need to talk to someone I do.
Brian Carr:We have a med friend functionality where Kathy would get a call if I get notified if I didn't take my medications. You get a text message today. Brian missed his medications. You might want to give him a nudge, right? You can imagine a time, if you're open-minded, that not too right now, actually you can actually have a voice agent call you. Hey, kathy, just letting you know Brian didn't take his meds. You might want to call something like that, right, and that interactions me to have an open mind. But what's going to happen is the adoption is going to happen very quickly, right. Once some of those first innovative companies start taking over, everyone's going to want it all at once, right. So it's just a matter of who's going to, and we see some pharma companies embracing it, and even you know clinics, so you know Mayo Clinic and others. You could see them doing studies where they're using AI to help analyze patients and things like that, and it's going much further and it's saving a lot of money.
Cathy Zaremba:Well, it's great to be the leader and on the forefront of that exciting times, brian, it has been fantastic. Thank you so much for taking us behind the scenes of what it really means to lead in digital health today. Hey, it's clear that you're making it really personal and tailoring it to the patient journey. So, to our listeners, thank you for tuning in and if you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and share it with your colleagues who are passionate about transforming healthcare through smarter and more personalized technology. Until next time, I'm Kathy Zaremba. Stay curious, stay connected and keep leading the change.
