#80, Closing the Loop on Hospital Drug Supply Chains, Kevin MacDonald of Bluesight

Prescription drug spending reached $370 billion in the US last year, but up to 10% of that is lost to diversion, waste and non-compliance. In this episode of the AWS Health Innovation Podcast, Kevin MacDonald, CEO & Co-Founder of Bluesight, joins Alex Merwin, Head of Growth, Healthcare & Life Sciences Startups, to discuss how Bluesight is "transforming the health system pharmacy supply chain through software" to help hospitals optimize operations and rein in drug costs. By connecting data from medication manufacturing through utilization, Bluesight provides unprecedented visibility into pharmacy supply chains, reducing waste, ensuring compliance, and detecting drug diversion.

Here are the key topics covered in this episode:

Solving the First Mile - BlueSight partners with manufacturers to tag medications at production for end-to-end tracking into hospital pharmacies.

Automating Safety - By moving from manual to automated tracking of drugs, BlueSight empowers pharmacists to focus on clinical work.

Stopping Diversion - Advanced analytics identify providers diverting drugs for intervention and help.

Creating a Risk Profile - Hundreds of factors feed into AI models that establish normal behavior to detect anomalies.

Learning from Retail - Insights from retail RFID deployments showed the value of tagging individual items beyond cases.

Finding The First Customer - Cold calls to hospital pharmacies led to the first customer willing to pilot the RFID system.

Validating The Model - Despite makeshift testing and storms, BlueSight validated its hospital deployment model with initial customers.

Fueling Growth - BlueSight raised funding from diverse sources like VCs, debt, and private equity to accelerate growth.

Delighting Customers - BlueSight won over customers by delivering on promises like radically faster audits.

Empowering Pharmacists - By providing instant audit trails, BlueSight empowered pharmacists with regulators.

Enabling Investment - Hospitals saved millions through BlueSight, enabling reinvestment into their pharmacies.

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