Becker’s Healthcare Podcast Unlocking Specialty Drug Access: Pharmacy Strategy Meets AI Automation
Dec 8, 2025
Will Yin, CEO of Mandolin and a healthcare entrepreneur, dives into how AI is revolutionizing specialty pharmacy by streamlining workflows and enhancing patient access. He explains the challenges within the industry, particularly the tangled web of payer incentives and administrative hurdles. Yin highlights key bottlenecks like inconsistent documentation and staffing issues, while emphasizing AI's potential to cut denials and boost efficiency. He also addresses the importance of adopting effective change management strategies to make the most of these technological advancements.
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Founder Story Drives Mission
- Will Yin left Stanford and founded Mandolin after seeing family Alzheimer's and realizing system barriers, not science, blocked patient access to therapies.
- He built Mandolin to apply AI agents to automate administrative tasks and connect patients to life-changing specialty drugs.
Complexity Is Both Barrier And Opportunity
- Payers often benefit from system complexity, making specialty pharmacy workflows uniquely resistant to naive automation.
- That complexity creates outsized opportunity for agentic automation to empower providers and patients.
Four Root Bottlenecks Slowing Access
- Major bottlenecks are staffing, changing site-of-care rules, inconsistent documentation, and many disconnected portals and SOPs.
- These fragmented processes make it impossible for staff to master workflows without decades of experience.