The Power of AI: Personalized Medicine and Predictive Analytics

In this Pharmaceutical Executive video interview, Peter Ax, CEO of UpScriptHealth, discusses the future of telehealth and its potential to revolutionize healthcare. He highlights the increasing complexity of cases being handled through telehealth platforms, including specialized treatments and diagnostic testing.

Ax emphasizes the importance of streamlining access to care and reducing administrative burdens for patients and providers. He discusses the role of telehealth in addressing the challenges of prior authorizations and ensuring timely access to medications.

The conversation also touches on the impact of the DEA's recent extensions for telehealth prescribing of controlled substances, which is expected to expand access to various treatments, including sleep aids, weight loss medications, and men's health products.

Furthermore, Ax discusses the potential of AI to enhance telehealth services, from improving patient communication to predicting future healthcare needs. He acknowledges the challenges of navigating a complex regulatory landscape and advocates for a more streamlined and unified approach to telehealth regulations.

Can you share some specific examples of how AI is being used to personalize treatment plans, monitor patient progress, and identify potential issues?

We're starting to use AI really in the background. It's not so much that the patient sees us using AI, but it's things like, each one of our patients that comes online through one of our platforms receives a series of questions. Those Question Sets are prepared, generally by clinicians. Today, we're having them initially prepared using AI tools, and then have them reviewed by clinicians. And AI can sometimes make the wording better and more friendly and more user friendly for the patient, so we really appreciate that opportunity. In addition, we're seeing some AI opportunities in our chat bots and things like that that are involved in the digital interface with patients. We use AI right now in our technology platform development.

So, our tech people are using AI to streamline things. So, AI right now is in the background, not necessarily front and center with the patient, but we use it in lots of different ways today, and that those use cases will continue to expand as well. We'll find more and more uses for AI to become more efficient. I've always envisioned a world where we look at the data of various populations, overlay the demographics of a patient coming online with us, and we can help predict what that patient will need over the next decade of their life. That's where I think it's just really headed for us particularly, but that's, but that's a bit away.