Helping Pharmacists Help Patients
A new corporation is being formed by three University of Minnesota faculty members, aided by the U's Office for Business Development (OBD), to commercialize software they developed that helps pharmacists manage drug therapies for patients.
According to the press release "The software, called the Assurance Pharmaceutical Care System™, helps pharmacists manage patients who take multiple medications and have multiple chronic conditions. The software allows pharmacists to develop care plans for each patient, create and manage patient-specific outcomes and personalize reports for healthcare patients and providers."
It goes on to note: "This spring, the Minnesota Legislature passed a law that requires new approaches to manage the effective use of medications, recognizes trained pharmacists as health care practitioners and allows Medicaid users to receive pharmaceutical care services through a reimbursement system. The Assurance System meets these requirements..."
Technology transfer is one of the important aspects of public engagement by universities, and this seems like a paradigmatic example. Faculty recognize a practical need—defined by community practitioners and government— that can be served by their expertise, do the R&D to turn it into a potentially viable product (software in this case), work with the university's Office of Patents and Technology Marketing to protect the intellectual property, and then with the OBD to "create a business plan, identify potential investors and locate board members."
There are still those who feel that universities have no business getting involved with business (pun intended). But many others (myself included) believe that universities exist to serve society not just by advancing the frontiers of knowledge, but also by helping to put those advances to good use. As Jessica Zeaske in the OBD said, “We aim to unite great university innovations with experienced management teams to fill unmet market needs." Developing and applying these uniting mechanisms is one appropriate way to implement our public engagement mission.