Digital Health Platforms as Strategic Partners for Pharma Companies

In this Pharmaceutical Executive 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.

How can digital health platforms become strategic partners for pharma companies seeking to maintain accessibility and manage cost pressures?

The light bulb has gone off in pharma, right? Every single pharma company we're aware of is we're in some level of discussion with about the platform that works for them, the direct to patient solution that works. And what we've seen is a massive shift from sort of simple prescribing of a medication when someone has a migraine headache, letting them try, letting that patient try a new medication, perhaps, or shifting them to a different medication, to what is a really complex ecosystem of healthcare. We're now involved in platforms for pharma companies where we will send patients to injection centers or to infusion care centers. And so the level of care and the complexity of the of the patient flow is really evolving to a to a much more complex world that's sort of digital health 2.0

For us, the way we think about it, and the way that really helps pharma, if you think about all the problems we have in the current model for the delivery of care, right? Patients can't get appointments very quickly. Patients don't know what that cost of appointment is going to be for them. They don't know what their co pay is. They don't know what insurance is going to cover. They don't know if it's in network out of network. They oftentimes don't know where the fulfillment is coming from, and whether or not there's a supply of the medication that they need or the treatment that they need. We can solve all those problems by working with our pharma partners.

So, when a pharma company decides to be on the UpScriptHealth platform, it's not just a simple discussion of, we're going to put a button on your website. Patients will click on that button and see a telehealth provider. It's a much more complicated discussion about what is the patient journey, and how do we really make that patient journey a good experience, a positive experience, literally changing the paradigm of healthcare. I think, by the way, that's why Pharma is so interested in these platforms, because they realize they have to help be an instigation for the changing of how healthcare is delivered.