An Austin startup is making it easier for doctors to inform patients about relevant clinical trials. ePaientFinder is using EHR data and compensating doctors for consulting time to make this happen.
The company’s software is integrated with a physician’s EHR. By analyzing the content of an electronic record, ePatientFinder can suggest that the doctor discuss new drugs and clinical trials with certain patients.
“We’re not just telling the doctors about the trial, we help them ID which of their patients fit the criteria,” said co-founder and COO Tushar Jain.
What’s different about ePatientFinder is that the company pays doctors for having these conversations with these patients. Not for making referrals, but for the consulting time, at whatever the appropriate hourly rate is.
“We want them to talk to their own doctor about it because that’s where the trusted relationship is,” Jain said. “With the clinical trial discussion, we will pay for it and whatever the doc wants we will do, video chat, visit, phone call.”
ePatientFinder gets paid when a person actually signs up for a trial or new treatment.
“Our clients are Boston Scientific and one of the top 5 clinical research organizations in the country,” Jain said.
The service is free to doctors.
Jain stressed that the patient data never leaves the doctor’s office and that conversations with patients about clinical trials are done in a HIPAA-compliant way.
A Deep-dive Into Specialty Pharma
A specialty drug is a class of prescription medications used to treat complex, chronic or rare medical conditions. Although this classification was originally intended to define the treatment of rare, also termed “orphan” diseases, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the US, more recently, specialty drugs have emerged as the cornerstone of treatment for chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.
Tom Dorsett and Greg Sweatt are the other two co-founders of ePatientFinder.
The three started the company last summer and just completed a $1 million seed round.
Jain said that the software integrates with many EHRs currently and the team can connect the two systems manually if necessary.
“We are gradually automating it,” he said.
