Pack4U: Medication Delivery and Patient Monitoring Part 1

Shane Bishop, Pack4U's founder, is a pharmacist and entrepreneur specializing in innovative patient-care models and the use of technology to improve adherence, patient health outcomes and quality measures.

In part 1 of this series, Shane Bishop discusses how Pack4U has created a pharmacy network, making it easier for pharmacies to deliver medications and provide personalized care within their communities.

Drug Topics®: I'd love to get right into our topic. Could you start by telling me a little bit about your background?

Shane Bishop: Yeah, sure. We also I am, you know, pharmacist by profession. In the early days, I was I was actually the first pharmacist to adopt multi dose trip packaging, into pharmacies that are owned and operated here in Western Canada.

I quickly ended up tracking all the inefficiencies and miscommunications based around that new packaging format. As we deployed it to long term care facilities and ended up creating an electronic electronic medication administration record that actually links multi dose trip packaging, to the bedside and scanning barcodes to real time information flow between pharmacy and long term care facility in nursing.

We really look to eliminate, you know, medication related errors at the bedside. So that was a, my, my first involvement from pharmacists into technology.

Drug Topics®: Wow, that's so cool. Could you tell me a little bit about pack for you itself and the company's mission?

Bishop: Yeah, pack for you itself is absolutely focused on its core, which is to be the absolute best at driving true medication adherence for patients, whether they're in long term care facilities, you know, patients at home with with multiple chronic conditions.

You know, that's our goal. And I you know, we I think we have the, the only true fully integrated end to end solution with technology and services that allow us to drive what I term true medication adherence.

Drug Topics®: Wow, that's awesome. Who is your focus, and where can providers and patients find your services?

Bishop: I mean, our focus is different in both Canada and the US. In Canada, we've established a network of pharmacies across all the provinces that I would call super innovative pharmacies and pharmacists that want to do better for the patients in their community.

So, we leverage our network of pharmacies across Canada, and actually provide help with marketing via direct to consumer of campaigns, you know, Facebook, etc, with some of our solutions, and drive these higher risks, you know, chronic patients to our pharmacy network, which has been has been amazing for the patients and the pharmacies, as well.

In Canada, we actually spend a lot of time working with government to collect data, do studies within those structures, and really try to define and look at total cost of care reductions for those entities. So that's kind of what we're doing in Canada. So kind of a two pronged approach. In the US, we really are focused on health plans, the payers looking to, you know, ultimately increase heeta scores and measures, drive up star ratings.

Drug Topics®: Can you tell me a little bit about your transitional care management?

Bishop: Yeah, when it comes to, you know, transition of care, I guess, ultimately, with our solution, we really are trying to focus on patients remaining in the home, which I think is the goal for a number of different you know, healthcare organizations, companies out there, you know, remote patient monitoring chronic care management, you know, from a distance with our clinical pharmacists team is all about keeping keeping patients at home and keeping them out.

Moving into the more acute settings. When we look at, you know, patients being discharged from hospital, it makes a lot of sense for a number of the conditions such as congestive heart failure to definitely keep a patient adherent to their medications and have some form of connected care co hub in the home.

So, look at real time, not only medication adherence to make sure the patients are taking their medications that they've been discharged with, but also looking at real time, blood pressure and weight, and have a team of proactive clinic clinicians around that data to really take care of the patients and ensure that they don't end up back in the acute care setting.