One side effect of public scrutiny of rising drug prices has been greater visibility into the uniquely complex pharmaceutical supply chain. Previously little known distributors and middlemen now regularly receive attention, highlighting how the line between drugmaker and patient is rarely straight.

There are billions of Pills and vials are routed to hospitals and pharmacies by wholesalers like McKesson and AmerisourceBergen but what tech is missing between wholesalers & automation tech which could help fill in the gap of consumption predictability? In just one possible iteration, pharmacies buy medicines, are reimbursed by insurers, which in turn work with or their own pharmacy benefit managers in negotiations with drugmakers.

Often, supply chain issues come down to differences in processes or systems. A single drug or treatment may be administered to hundreds of hospitals through distributors, but with more than 5,000 such healthcare facilities in the U.S. alone, it can be tough to keep track of and meet each buyer’s requirements.

Listen in on this conversation between David Berkowitz, PharmD & Kent Bridgeman, PharmD as they dig deeper into the missing links between drug supply and APIs;  application programming interface, is a computing interface which defines interactions between multiple software intermediaries.