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1rem

 Podcast, CEO and Founder of Sooth, Ian Baer, is back to discuss:

Why people trust friends and influencers over companies

Podcasts

Ian Baer, Founder and CEO of Sooth, discusses how the growing distrust in social media will impact industry marketing strategies and the relationships between pharmaceutical companies and the patients they aim to serve. He also explains dark social, how to combat misinformation, closing the trust gap, and more.

Navigating Distrust: Pharma in the Age of Social Media

In this episode of the Pharmaceutical Executive podcast, Bill Grambley, CEO of AllazoHealth, explores:

How AI can potentially revolutionize patient engagement and adherence

Utilizing patient-level data and predictive modeling

How AI can identify individual needs and preferences

The importance of ethical considerations and data privacy when leveraging AI in healthcare

Bill Grambley, CEO of AllazoHealth, delves into the potential of AI to revolutionize patient engagement and adherence.

Revolutionizing Patient Adherence: Leveraging AI for Personalized Engagement

Delivering Personalized Experiences at Scale: A Fresh Look at Customer Centricity

Polypharmacy, biosimilars, and GLP-1s among the evolving trends likely to play out in the pharmacy benefits space.  

The Shifting Pharmacy Landscape in 2025

Peter Ax, Founder & CEO of UpScriptHealth, identifies strategies that pharmaceutical companies and digital health platforms can employ to navigate a potential drop in demand due to tariff-induced increased costs. 

How Pharmaceutical Companies Can Mitigate a Potential Drop in Demand Due to Tariffs

 Video Interview, Peter Ax, Founder & CEO of UpScriptHealth, discusses the impact of tariffs on the pharmaceutical industry, highlighting that tariffs will initially affect pharmaceutical companies, particularly those dealing with branded medications and generics. He notes that tariffs could lead to strategic supply chain changes, including potential US manufacturing shifts. Digital health platforms like UpScriptHealth aim to reduce friction and costs in healthcare, potentially offsetting tariff impacts. Ax emphasizes the importance of telehealth in ensuring medication availability and the strategic partnerships between digital health platforms and pharma companies to improve patient care and access. He also praises Pfizer's approach to delivering comprehensive care rather than just selling medications.

Tariffs could impact consumer demand. What strategies can pharmaceutical companies and digital health platforms like UpScriptHealth employ to mitigate this potential drop in demand due to increased costs?

Tariffs will increase costs — short run and long run — and will have different effects on the supply curve. But the bigger issue is, how do we solve the systemic problems that are involved in healthcare? And that's where digital platforms like UpScriptHealth (UpScript) come into play. The number one thing we have to do is take the friction and cost out of the system, and that's what we do every single day. We make trained clinicians available to patients right away. We make the insurance reimbursement process a lot simpler in terms of: we'll process the prior authorization for patients. We’ll process a lot of things behind the scenes to help the patient get on therapy as fast as they can.

So, we sort of take friction out of the system, and that's really going to be the job of digital health companies like UpScript, and that's going to continue to be the job. Take costs out of the system, take friction out of the system, make medications accessible, and if we can take some costs out of the system, we might actually offset any effect the tariffs have.

Videos

In this part of his Pharmaceutical Executive Video Interview, Peter Ax, Founder & CEO of UpScriptHealth, identifies strategies that pharmaceutical companies and digital health platforms can employ to navigate a potential drop in demand due to tariff-induced increased costs.

Jen Butler, Chief Commercial Officer for Pleio, the role pharma should be playing in helping to ensure patients have access to health insights they can trust.

Pharma’s Role in Ensuring Patient Access to Trustworthy Health Insights

 video interview, Jen Butler, Chief Commercial Officer for Pleio, discussed the significant threat of misinformation to public health, citing a 2021 report by former Surgeon General Murthy. She highlighted that 70% of false news is shared more often than true news due to its emotional appeal. Butler emphasized the importance of verifying health information by directly contacting trusted sources like Cleveland Clinic, Mayo Clinic, and Kaiser Permanente. She also noted the role of pharma in supporting patient communities and the need for media and health literacy. Butler also suggested that peer-to-patient platforms can enhance patient engagement and adherence, particularly for chronic conditions.

What role can/should Pharma play in helping to ensure patients have access to health insights they can trust?

There's such a fine line that pharma is figuring out when you're referring to online patient communities. I've spoken to a couple online patient communities, and because when we're looking at kind of peer to patient and peer-to-peer platforms. Pharma has to make sure that they're supporting patients with education and content that's been MLR approved, and that they're supporting patients — that's not necessarily attracting and encouraging adverse event reporting. I think it's a very tricky line, and I agree with you, go to where the patients are talking, support them with the facts. 

You just have to be careful with the way that we've set up our requirements as well. Because if what we hear and the whole power is listening to patients, but what we hear also then will require another set of actions. It's a fine line that we play is with pharma coming into patient conversations, but there has to be some sort of middle ground where pharma can start to support patient communities in a way that provides the facts and dispels the opinions and myths that are going on.

I think that pharma has invested so much and so much behind information and resources to patients, and patients are really unaware of a lot of the resources that are available to them. A couple years ago, Freja did a report that said, I think only 23% of patients are aware of the information available to them and the resources. So, to your point, if pharma could somehow involve themselves in patient conversations and communities and let them know about resources that are available, I think it's been a tricky way of building in a traditional way of building the resources for patients to come, but patients are seeking out other patients for support and advice also. So how do we start to change that direction and support with parameters and requirements that are in place with pharma and healthcare organizations overall.

In this Pharmaceutical Executive video interview, Jen Butler, Chief Commercial Officer for Pleio, the role pharma should be playing in helping to ensure patients have access to health insights they can trust.

Jen Butler, Chief Commercial Officer for Pleio, shares some  best practices on finding trustworthy and verified information about a new prescription or medical device.

Verifying Information about New Prescriptions or Medical Devices

Can you share some insights on best practices about a new prescription or medical device?

The practice is again traditional and very basic, but I'll go into a little bit more explanation behind it is. But go to your trusted healthcare provider with a new medication and therapy and questions. That's absolutely the number one golden rule. But that's not always accessible to everybody, right? And your time with your healthcare provider is sometimes limited, but you just want to make sure that you're validating the new therapies, new approaches, beyond what you're hearing in whatever TikTok or AI generated content that you're reacting to.

I'll use GLP-1s as an example, because I think the recently, and what I didn't mention earlier in this is, GLP-1s is kind of that next surgence of massive misinformation. This amazing miracle drug that will have a huge impact on public health, but we have to make sure that the right patients are receiving the right diagnosis with the right medications. There's a lot of you know, I went on TikTok just to look at the fact there are over a dozen categories of GLP-1 discussions going on in videos and ways to find out information. There's also information out there that could be misleading regarding where to access GLP-1s and the compounding GLP-1 sites that you can now access the medications from and get it so far more easily, but not recognizing that there's false claims out there that these compounds are have FDA approval, and these are really important facts, again, versus the opinions of others that might be on these that need to be verified.

 actually just published in January on their health forum a letter acknowledging that this is becoming a concern as well, with patients going through the compound sites, again, just being aware and educated as a patient, as you said before having kind of that consumer education approach as a patient. I mean, patients are people, consumers. We're consuming healthcare. We need to make sure that we're putting the right approaches in place. So, I mentioned

. They're a great resource as well, tons of research. Health literacy might be a little bit elevated in some of the research that they put out there, but you can, at least get extracts and summaries as well of their research reports.

In this Pharmaceutical Executive video interview, Jen Butler, Chief Commercial Officer for Pleio, shares some  best practices on finding trustworthy and verified information about a new prescription or medical device.

Verifying Information About New Prescriptions or Medical Devices

Jen Butler, Chief Commercial Officer for Pleio, talks about where patients are turning for trustworthy health information and some strategies that can be used to verify information.

Where Patients are Turning for Trustworthy Health Information

Where can patients turn for trustworthy health information? What strategies can be used to verify information?

I mean, it's so traditional, but it still stands true. I'm on my Instagram feed. I'm going to get information through social media feeds, but to verify and fact check, it's so important to go directly to the source. If you're looking through, you're coming through a diagnosis, with a condition, and you're kind of seeing and hearing feeds that are coming through on your Instagram or TikTok, and you get some perspectives — go directly to the sources of the health systems.

There's so many health systems that have amazing sources out there, like the Cleveland Clinic, Mayo Clinic, Kaiser, Permanente, Penn Medicine. Even if you just Google and your diagnosis, and what I also want to stress is that what pops up on the top of your search is going to sponsored ads and sponsored content, so make sure you scroll down until you get to those validated sources. There's so many great sources out there.

I have to say that health literacy has been a big, big topic, and I think a lot of these health systems have played into it nicely and recognizing the way that we do absorb information as well. I used to work in my fore way into healthcare. I oversaw marketing for commercial population and for health plan in in the Boston area, and I can say that while you don't turn to your health plans, there are a lot of health plans that have great sources of information as well that are validated by medical teams, and same with the health systems for medication. When you have medication, you're seeking information on medication, specifically, you might not think of it, but your pharma brands and the sites and your manufacturers have also a great resource of information.

Patients don't necessarily seek out pharma, but they have the same medical teams in place to publish information and validate the content. And as much as we don't like to hear all the ISI mumbo jumbo and when we hear the information coming through, think of it more as like a stamp of validation that it's a credit information that's coming your way so that you don't have to second guess it. And I think that's where it's a blend. You want to be aware and find out what people are. You're going to seek out other people and patients’ opinions. But when you want to really get the facts on symptoms, diagnosis, treatment, medications, go directly to the source.

In this Pharmaceutical Executive video interview, Jen Butler, Chief Commercial Officer for Pleio, talks about where patients are turning for trustworthy health information and some strategies that can be used to verify information.

Patient Access

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