Premier Inc. (NASDAQ: PINC) has partnered with Pensiamo Inc., a company owned by Pittsburgh-based integrated health system UPMC, to launch a pharmaceutical supply chain solution that was co-developed with UPMC.
The companies said that CognitiveRx predicts, manages and solves for challenges related to drug shortages, inflation, declining reimbursement and other factors impacting the life sciences supply chain. UPMC will be the first to implement CognitiveRx to more precisely monitor market demand signals, predict shortage risk and recommend inventory levels that support its ability to insulate patient care from supply disruption. As part of the partnership, Charlotte, N.C.-based Premier will offer CognitiveRx to other hospitals and health systems
“CognitiveRx provides access to market exclusive recommendations that predict drug supply disruption risk, and support the rapid identification of clinical, purchasing and inventory solutions,” said Jim Szilagy, president and CEO of Pensiamo and chief supply chain officer for UPMC, in a statement. “The teams at Pensiamo and UPMC have developed a truly innovative tool, and we are excited to partner with Premier to launch it. We believe it will help UPMC and other healthcare organizations advance cost management and drug shortage mitigation strategies to further bend the cost curve.”
CognitiveRx uses machine learning to the process of controlling and reducing pharmaceutical costs. It sends real-time “buy-right” signals to direct procurement activities and recommend formulary management strategies for buying the most advantageous products. By replacing manual data manipulation and integrating siloed data sources, the solution enables rapid insights on price increase predictions, egregious price changes and margin capture opportunities, the companies said.
David A. Hargraves, senior vice president of supply chain at Premier, said the collaboration would complement Premier’s suite of supply chain technologies. Premier describes itself as a "healthcare improvement company," uniting more than 4,000 U.S. hospitals and health systems and approximately 165,000 other providers and organizations to transform healthcare by offering integrated data and analytics, collaboratives, supply chain solutions, and consulting and other services.
