DosePlanner Takes Adherence Packaging to a New Level

Now more than ever medication management programs are vital to a successful pharmacy. Richard Munger, founder and CEO of DosePlanner, a cloud-based medication management solution, in this interview with ComputerTalk’s Maggie Lockwood, talks about how DosePlanner can improve patient outcomes and generate new revenue.

ComputerTalk: Give us the background on why you came up with the idea for DosePlanner as a medication management solution.

Richard Munger: During high school, I had an evening job working as a janitor at a nursing home. While doing my job, I observed nurses doing their job. Occasionally, while doing their med-pass rounds, they were interrupted by phone calls or other emergencies. When they returned to doing the med-pass, they had to remember where they left off before the interruption. The nurse’s recall was not always correct, and sometimes patients would receive an underdose or overdose of their medication.

After high school, I went on to study engineering and IT. A friend of mine that I grew up with went on to become a pharmacist. Fast forward 20 years, I got a call from my friend to visit his pharmacy to help him program a blister card he found online. He tried using Word and Excel but could not get these programs to do the job. I created a program for him that he then used to help grow his business from $3 million to over $32 million in annual revenues. He sold the pharmacy, and I then took the idea, designed a new program, and began marketing it as DosePlanner.

CT: Adherence programs have become a high priority for pharmacy. Tell us about the features that DosePlanner offers that can benefit pharmacy.

Munger: When DosePlanner entered the market, the market already had three major competitors. The only way for me to compete was to add features that the others were lacking and that would benefit the program users. Some of these features are:

• Pharmacies were experiencing supply chain issues. DosePlanner added support for blisters and labels from four different suppliers.
• Pharmacies were constantly receiving queries from patients to identify the pills they received. We added the ability for the DosePlanner user to add images of the drugs to their labels.
• Pharmacists are asked by their nursing home clients to supply medication administration reports printed (MARs) or in electronic form (eMARs). Normally the pharmacy must contract for another piece of software to meet this demand. DosePlanner added the ability to create MARs and eMARs for the pharmacy to give to their clients and eliminate the need for additional software. There are many more features, but too many to list here.

CT: How does DosePlanner facilitate synchronization of patient data in the workflow?

Munger: DosePlanner’s design presents the patient’s medication profile to the pharmacy user for easy reference. The software also tracks medication refills, expirations, quantity dispensed, and other details about each prescription, enabling the pharmacy to systematically align and synchronize each medication.

CT: The recent announcement of integration with RedSail Technology’s Axys system should be a big help in getting DosePlanner into mainstream use. How do you see this playing out?

Munger: DosePlanner was one of the early adopters for integration with RedSail Technology’s Axys system. RedSail’s announcement of our integration has been beneficial to us for increased exposure to the pharmacy community. We are keen on trends in the industry and want to keep our technological edge with our integrations and features.

CT: Revenue optimization is so important these days. How can DosePlanner play a role here?

Munger: We have given this topic a lot of thought. There are two ways to approach a solution to a business problem: You can look for answers that are cost savers or you can look for revenue generators. A cost saver will help the business to weather a storm by providing a more efficient or productive way to perform a process.

A revenue generator will do that same thing but will also allow the business to grow. We have identified a few areas of need within pharmacies. We have researched the need and have begun development for a new DosePlanner module to help a pharmacy generate more revenue. We cannot say too much about it at this point, but we are excited to say that we should be able to bring the new product to market by first quarter 2024.

CT: Is there anything else you would like to add?

Munger: Since my days working at the nursing home, I have developed an interest and a passion for keeping patients healthy. As the years went by, one of these processes became labeled “medication adherence.” We are looking at medication adherence as well as all other processes from the point where the physician prescribes the medication up to the point of consumption by the patient… from Rx creation to Rx consumption. CT