Company Profile:
SafeUseNow, Inc.
SafeUseNow℠ is a leading healthcare analytics software company, helping industry stakeholders make informed decisions that enhance patient safety while reducing healthcare costs and utilization. The company’s pioneering use of Big Data and predictive analytics to model patient, prescriber, and pharmacy behavior is transforming the healthcare industry. SafeUseNow℠ provides analytics software and tools to manage risk, fight fraud, combat waste, and decrease the abuse and misuse of prescription drugs. We are positioning our flagship products — National Risk and Network Risk — to become the standard measure of prescription drug utilization risk in the United States. Based on the patent-pending PSI Score™ model, which makes the sources and causes of healthcare risk and costs transparent to stakeholders, our products integrate with a validated educational intervention program that arms healthcare providers with actionable information to support optimal healthcare decision making. Our leadership team is comprised of innovators in the development and application of critical technologies driving information-based decision making. These include predictive analytics, risk management and optimization. Our solutions leverage open-source standards and cloud computing so we can provide flexible delivery options, accelerate deployment and reduce costs.
Q: Please tell us how your business idea was conceived. Was there an "aha" moment or did it evolve gradually?
A: SafeUseNow℠ evolved from a research study designed to predict physicians most likely to lose their medical license due to unsafe prescribing of opioid prescription drugs, like OxyContin®. We developed a risk prediction algorithm using dozens of metrics of individual prescribing behavior for ~500,000 U.S. opioid prescribers from 2007-2008.
To validate the algorithm, we monitored medical license status over 5 years for the Top 100 riskiest prescribers. As it turned out, 81% (n=81) experienced a medical board or law enforcement action, or a negative news event within 1-5 years of their identification by our risk prediction algorithm.
Our “aha” moment occurred when we realized that a product that correctly identifies a tiny proportion (~0.02%) of a population has less intrinsic value than a product that correctly measures, monitors, and can mitigate prescription drug abuse risk for 99.98% of the population.
To validate the algorithm, we monitored medical license status over 5 years for the Top 100 riskiest prescribers. As it turned out, 81% (n=81) experienced a medical board or law enforcement action, or a negative news event within 1-5 years of their identification by our risk prediction algorithm.
Our “aha” moment occurred when we realized that a product that correctly identifies a tiny proportion (~0.02%) of a population has less intrinsic value than a product that correctly measures, monitors, and can mitigate prescription drug abuse risk for 99.98% of the population.
Q: What's the most inventive, innovative, or disruptive aspect of your initiative?
A: Prescription drug abuse is a patient problem, right? After all, patients are the ones who get addicted to prescription drugs. So it should come as no surprise that most solutions are patient-centric, with oversight provided by a medical doctor, a psychiatrist, or other healthcare practitioner. Would it surprise you to learn that <5% of abused pharmaceutical drugs come from street dealers or strangers? In fact, prescription drugs most often come directly from the medicine cabinets of friends and family. And where do those prescription drugs come from?
They come from the family physician. They come from your dentist. They come from the specialist you see for an outpatient surgery. They come from your healthcare practitioner. Our product is not only inventive and innovative, but it is most definitely disruptive because we don’t ignore the elephant in the room. SafeUseNow℠ may be the only explicitly prescriber-centric solution to mitigating prescription drug abuse risk.
They come from the family physician. They come from your dentist. They come from the specialist you see for an outpatient surgery. They come from your healthcare practitioner. Our product is not only inventive and innovative, but it is most definitely disruptive because we don’t ignore the elephant in the room. SafeUseNow℠ may be the only explicitly prescriber-centric solution to mitigating prescription drug abuse risk.
Q: How will it help people live to their greatest potential or contribute to making the world healthier?
A: Over the last decade prescription drug abuse treatment costs have grown by ~16% annually. It has been reported, too, that our U.S. population consumes almost 80% of opioids prescribed in the world. Prescription drug overdose deaths recently surpassed motor vehicle accidents as the #1 cause of accidental death in the U.S. This has to stop. SafeUseNow℠ was designed to help stop the epidemic.
Q: Five years from now, what would you like to be able to say has been your most important contribution to health?
A: SafeUseNow℠ took on a national epidemic, brought innovative and inventive technology to the table, tackled the problem to the ground, and kicked it in the teeth.
Q: What single word or phrase best describes the culture of your startup and why?
A: Allowing healthcare data to tell the real story. Why? Because it’s time to start doing something about this national epidemic.