< + > Leading ACCESS Model Participants

The CMS Advancing Chronic Care with Effective Scalable Solutions (ACCESS) Model went into effect on July 5. The 10-year, voluntary model aims to bring “technology-supported care” options to chronic condition management for Medicare beneficiaries. Per CMS, tech-supported care may include patient education, virtual consultations, medication management, counseling, lifestyle and behavioral support, and remote monitoring using FDA-authorized devices.

At its launch, ACCESS includes four clinical tracks: Behavioral health (depression and anxiety), chronic musculoskeletal pain, early cardio-kidney-metabolic conditions (eCKMs) such as high blood pressure and prediabetes, and later-stage cardio-kidney-metabolic conditions (CKMs) such as diabetes, chronic kidney disease, and heart disease. CMS may consider additional clinical tracks over time.

There are more than 150 ACCESS Model accepted applicants. Many recognizable names are in specific clinical tracks, such as Headspace for behavioral health and Weight Watchers for eCKM. All told, 50 organizations are participating in all four clinical tracks; they range from provider groups to community health centers to technology vendors.

Here’s a look at some of the leading ACCESS participants that are operating nationally and participating in all four clinical tracks. There’s a clear theme of virtual care and remote monitoring augmented by AI, though each approach has nuanced differences.

Attune AI makes Agentic Voice, which provides automated outreach for care coordination (including post-discharge instructions) and preventive care (such as wellness education and screening reminders). Health systems can build custom flow logic for voice interactions, including handoff and escalation logic; this can help provide predictable behavior patterns, which is helpful for scalability as well as auditability.

CareHarmony looks at chronic care management and remote patient monitoring (RPM) from the broader lens of preventive care. The company recently introduced CareBlocks, which are interventions that its software recommends for patients based on the details of their medical records – which can include biometric data thanks to the integration of RPM devices with EHR and other clinical applications.

Castlight Health serves employers and health plans, emphasizing care navigation and member engagement. Members are connected with care guides who have access to AI tools providing next-best action recommendations for in-network interventions and services. The company has nearly 40 digital health partners to help support condition management and general wellness.

GamePlan Medical emphasizes senior care anchored by a “GamePlan Score” that measures physical, mental, and functional and paired with community-based touchpoints such as pharmacies, mobile health vans, and food/nutrition support. The company’s care navigators have AI-enabled tools to support patients and their families manage care and connect to their care team.

GenieMD provides an all-in-one virtual care platform that offers access to prescriptions, labs, chronic care management, and longevity care guided by board-certified physicians as well as medical-grade AI. The product is free for single practitioners, with scripts and labs available as add-ons billed monthly, which offers a low barrier of entry for physicians hoping to leverage ACCESS to support patients.

IntelaCare describes itself as a “care companion” that includes virtual care, remote monitoring, and patient-facing applications for chronic care and behavioral health management – all supplemented with conversational AI and voice assistants. The company has experience working at scale through customers such as Army Medical Command and the Department of Veterans Affairs

MDchronic is another virtual care platform, but the company differentiates itself by providing patients with a set of smart devices at no charge and using the data collected to create tailored care plans for numerous chronic conditions. MDchronic works directly with qualified Medicare beneficiaries and customers in the small business, health plan, and benefits advisor markets.

Nationwide Vitals focuses primarily on home-based blood pressure monitoring, with daily readings supported by monthly check-ins from the company’s care team (and interventions form the care team and a patient’s PCP if necessary). The company supplies the blood pressure cuff, and it doesn’t require Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, or a smartphone sync – valuable features to support patients aging in place.

Nudj supports cardiometabolic health with a combination of clinical care, connected devices, and analytics to power personalized recommendations. Two aspects of the company’s offering stand out: An in-house content team that creates custom messaging and RCM services to help physician practices properly bill and collect for lifestyle medicine services.

SynsorMed calls its offering “remote care as a service” that enables payers and providers to support remote monitoring and chronic care without standing up their own programs. The company will assess patient/member data to identify eligible individuals, and its platform couples clinical care with AI-driven sentiment analysis that adapts outreach based on how interactions are going.

< + > Elevating Cybersecurity: Effective Threat Intelligence for Large-Scale Healthcare IT

The following is a guest article by Dataminr

Large healthcare organizations face mounting cyber threats while managing complex IT environments that span electronic health records, connected medical devices, legacy systems and cloud applications. Security teams struggle with alert fatigue from fragmented monitoring tools and limited staff to investigate every signal. Finding the best threat intelligence platform for enterprise healthcare requires solutions that reduce noise, automate analysis and deliver actionable insights without adding to operational complexity.

Understanding the Dangers of Alert Fatigue and Tool Sprawl

Too many alerts can obscure genuine threats. Healthcare IT teams may receive a constant stream of security notifications from endpoints, networks, cloud systems, medical devices and threat intelligence feeds. When everything appears urgent, analysts can struggle to distinguish a developing attack from routine background activity. Alert fatigue can slow incident response, creating windows of opportunity for adversaries.

Tool sprawl complicates threat identification. Large hospitals often operate complex environments that include electronic health records, connected medical devices, legacy infrastructure, cloud applications and third-party systems. Adding separate tools for monitoring, intelligence, communication and response can create silos where important information is bottlenecked during transfer between teams.

More technology may not automatically mean better protection. Each platform may require its own configuration, integrations, training and maintenance. Planning and prioritization are essential for turning disparate signals into coherent and actionable threat intelligence.

Overcoming the Cybersecurity Talent Shortage

Automation may extend limited security expertise. Hospitals often lack sufficient experienced cybersecurity professionals on staff to provide continuous monitoring across all systems. Threat intelligence platforms should reduce analyst workload. Solutions that contextualize indicators, correlate related events and filter irrelevant information can help smaller security teams make faster decisions without manually investigating every signal.

Building cross-functional cybersecurity knowledge matters beyond the IT department. Healthcare security extends beyond technical teams. Training staff across the organization can help create a broader understanding of how cyber incidents affect patient care and business continuity. Organizations can also use external expertise strategically and choose tools that scale with the team rather than overwhelming it.

Top Threat Intelligence Platforms for Large Hospital Systems

During an enterprise threat intelligence solutions comparison, large hospital systems should prioritize platforms that integrate with existing security infrastructure, reduce alert noise and provide context tailored to healthcare environments. The best threat intelligence platform for enterprise healthcare will offer real-time detection, automation and the ability to correlate external threats with internal systems.

1. Dataminr

Dataminr is suited for organizations that need rapid visibility into emerging cyber threats and large volumes of external signals. Trusted by two-thirds of the Fortune 50 and over 100 U.S. government agencies, Dataminr’s platform demonstrates its ability to handle massive enterprise-scale workloads. Dataminr for Cyber Defense draws on more than one million public, deep and dark web sources and uses AI to identify and contextualize developing threats in real time.

2. AlertMedia

AlertMedia takes a broader risk intelligence and response approach, connecting threat monitoring with impact assessment, incident management and communication. This can be valuable for large hospital networks where a cyber incident may need to be contained across multiple campuses, facilities and teams.

3. Everbridge

Everbridge is positioned around critical event management and organizational resilience rather than cybersecurity threat intelligence alone. For large hospitals, that broader approach can be useful because cyber incidents often intersect with operational events and technical issues, potentially affecting staff, patients, facilities and continuity of care.

Securing the Future of Healthcare Technology

Selecting the best threat intelligence platform for enterprise healthcare can help organizations move from reactive security postures to proactive threat detection. Platforms that automate analysis, integrate with existing tools and provide clear context can help security teams protect patient data and clinical operations without overwhelming limited staff. As healthcare technology continues to expand, investing in intelligence platforms designed for enterprise scale will be essential for managing both current and emerging threats.

< + > This Week’s Health IT Jobs – August 26, 2026

It can be very overwhelming scrolling through job board after job board in search of a position that fits your wants and needs. Let us take that stress away by finding a mix of great health IT jobs for you! We hope you enjoy this look at some of the health IT jobs we saw healthcare organizations trying to fill this week.

Here’s a quick look at some of the health IT jobs we found:

• HIM Sr. Specialist – TEKsystems
• Government Healthcare Financial Consulting Manager – Mercer
• Director of Operations (RN Required) – HealthBridge Personalized Medicine
• Sr Privacy Specialist – Fresenius Medical Care
• Community Health Worker – Essentia Health
• Patient Services Representative Outpatient Rehab – Corewell Health
• Digital Health Strategist – Alignerr
• Health Equity Operations – Healthcare Shares
• Assistant Vice President & Chief Health Officer – Case Western Reserve University
• Community Health Worker – COPE Health Solutions
• Operations Lead, Adult Outpatient Services – Lyra Health
• Clinical Safety Analyst – AbbVie
• Managed Care Contract Analyst I – Boston Children’s Hospital
• Social Determinants of Health (SDOH) Coordinator – POOL – AtlantiCare
• Health Services Data Analyst – Elevance Health
• Compliance Analyst – Parkland Health
• Patient Access Representative II – Conifer Health Solutions
• Telehealth Operations – Healthcare Shares
• Patient Engagement Specialist (100% Remote) – Vori Health
• Insights Analyst – Health & Life Science – Escalent

If none of these jobs fit your needs, be sure to check out our previous health IT job listings.

Do you have an open health IT position that you are looking to fill? Contact us here with a link to the open position and we’ll be happy to feature it in next week’s article at no charge!

*Note: These jobs are listed by Healthcare IT Today as a free service to the community. Healthcare IT Today does not endorse or vouch for the company or the job posting. We encourage anyone applying to these jobs to do their own due diligence.

< + > Why Ambulatory Groups Need Standardized IT Infrastructure – and the Right MSP Partner

The following is a guest article by Steven Norris, Vice President of Technical Services at HCTec

Technology sprawl is an unfortunate reality in healthcare. IT leaders for large ambulatory groups, with seemingly ever-growing rosters of hardware and software tools to manage, are especially likely to feel the pain.

Unfortunately, unchecked technology sprawl impedes efficient care delivery. It contributes to IT complexity, as maintaining thousands of mission-critical apps and devices also means maintaining relationships with the vendors that make them. Sprawl also poses a security threat, as IT teams are forced to juggle patch schedules, maintain increasingly disparate endpoints, and manage intricate dependencies among identities.

Shifting to a standardized approach to hardware and software management/ownership can help ambulatory groups reduce complexity – and the cost that comes with it. Organizations can also expect to improve their security posture and boost efficiency for clinical and IT staff.

Making this happen is easier said than done, though. Ambulatory groups with limited experience with infrastructure standardization would be well served to work with a trusted managed service provider (MSP) to guide them through migration and IT management. The right MSP can standardize technology with minimal clinical downtime – implementing end-user devices, peripherals, and network infrastructure while establishing ongoing Technical Managed Services support and establishing ongoing Technical Managed Services support designed to improve response and resolution times.

However It Happens, IT Sprawl Hurts Ambulatory Groups

In the ambulatory market, multiple factors contribute to technology sprawl. Entities coming together in a merger or acquisition typically use different business or clinical applications, or give staff members different makes of laptops or mobile phones. Groups that lack a coordinated procurement strategy see individual locations or business units acquire technology independently. Finally, legacy applications or databases often remain in place, even as new technology is implemented, because groups need access to data and lack the resources to migrate it.

Whatever the causes, the technology sprawl that results is detrimental to ambulatory group operations for three important reasons.

• Cost. Higher costs can be obvious, such as additional spending on staff for tech support or increased resource consumption. But costs can also go unnoticed if key technology isn’t centrally managed. For example, different business units may hold separate licenses for enterprise resource planning (ERP) software or threat monitoring services.
• Inefficiency. Let’s take the ERP example further. When the finance department receives reports from disparate systems, accountants must enter data manually because systems don’t integrate. They also must undergo ERP training for each tool, which takes away from their day-to-day work. Meanwhile, sales and procurement teams have more contracts to manage. None of this makes work more efficient.
• Security. The more hardware and software that’s in place, the harder it is for security teams to track what’s due to be patched, what depends on third-party integrations, and what runs an operating system that’s no longer supported. Sprawl also affects security tools themselves, and point solutions can easily proliferate for threat monitoring, access management, reporting, auditing, and so on.

Left unchecked, these problems present a clear impediment to growth – and an obstacle to providing high-quality care to patients in need.

IT Standardization Can Change the Game

Transitioning an ambulatory group to a strategy of standardized hardware and software can eliminate technology sprawl and the challenges that come with it. While all organizations will achieve standardization differently, there are five general steps to putting the approach in place.

1. Inventory hardware and software. List every software application and end-user device in use at every location within the organization. Note the cost of maintaining each item, namely support services and vendor contracts. Beyond creating a simple list, IT leaders should map out how items integrate with each other; that will illustrate the complexity of the relationships among existing hardware and software.
2. Identify areas of redundancy. When multiple apps or devices are being used for the same purpose, determine which is best of breed. While considerations often include ease of use, cost to maintain, or length of vendor contract, ease of integration with other systems (especially the EHR) should be a top priority.
3. Select a core underlying technology platform. This decision will be heavily influenced by the organization’s picks for best-of-breed hardware and software. With a single platform in place, previous disparate business units and practice locations will have guardrails to implement technology that meets their needs and supports the organization’s broader standardization strategy.
4. Update governance policies. New guidance for IT procurement and adoption use should spell out who has decision rights about which technology to use where, along with who gets to provide input on the decision. Strong governance policies coupled with technology platform implementation go a long way toward preventing IT sprawl from happening again.
5. Augment IT lifecycle management. Creating a formal process for monitoring when IT infrastructure is nearing the end of its life will enable a more strategic approach to procurement. Organizations can transition from small, stopgap purchases to large-scale investments from a single partner, which will reduce both the per-unit cost and time to implement.

Infrastructure standardization requires significant time, specialized expertise, and coordination across clinical, operational, security, and IT stakeholders. Even organizations that recognize the impact of technology sprawl may lack the internal capacity to address it while supporting day-to-day operations.

MSPs: Valuable Partners for the IT Standardizations Journey

This is where managed service partners enter the picture. MSPs offer a range of technical managed services that can guide ambulatory groups through key processes such as identifying redundant systems, consolidating best-of-breed systems, updating governance and procurement policies, and onboarding all impacted clinics within the group.

Leading MSPs such as HCTec don’t walk away once standardized technology is in place, though. They also provide ongoing remote and onsite support. This minimizes downtime in the days following a standardization initiative and improves incident response time in the long run, helping to ensure the benefits of new technology aren’t bogged down by Help Desk bottlenecks.

Recently, HCTec helped an ambulatory managed service organization that expanded its footprint across multiple states by acquiring 60 clinics. Post-divestiture, the transitions services agreement with the prior clinic help desk was only active for 90 days – and the provider was unable to scale to support their expanded scope of operations.

HCTec led site-level discovery, equipment staging, and a phased implementation that included standardization of networks, end-user devices, printers and telephone systems. In addition, HCTec continued to provide support, and tickets that once sat unresolved for months were now closed within a day. The organization also reported improvements in internet speed, equipment performance, and clinical satisfaction thanks to its partnership with HCTec.

IT sprawl can prevent growing ambulatory organizations from controlling costs, scaling effectively, and delivering the reliable technology experience clinicians need. An experienced healthcare MSP such as HCTec can help establish a standardized infrastructure strategy that reduces complexity, strengthens security, improves support, and minimizes downtime, allowing clinical teams to remain focused on patient care.

About Steven Norris

Steven Norris serves as Vice President of Technical Services at HCTec, where he leads the strategy, operations, and delivery of technical services for healthcare and enterprise clients. With more than 25 years of IT experience—including over 15 years in managed services—he brings deep expertise in aligning technology operations with business objectives, particularly in healthcare.

Steven specializes in designing and implementing secure, scalable IT infrastructures, with a strong background in disaster recovery, solution architecture, and managed services leadership. At HCTec, he oversees Technical Services operations with a focus on service excellence, customer experience, and operational efficiency, including leading initiatives such as HITRUST certification.

Known for his strategic and operational leadership, Steven builds high-performing teams and drives measurable outcomes. Prior to joining HCTec in 2021, he served as Executive Vice President of Technical Services and Partner at Talon Healthy IT Services, leading call center and managed IT service teams.

HCTec is a proud sponsor of Healthcare Scene

< + > OpenLoop Announces Investment Strategy to Expand Its Clinical Infrastructure Across New Care Categories

Happy Sleep is the Latest in a Series of Investments OpenLoop Has Made Alongside Its Acquisitions Since 2024

OpenLoop, the leading telehealth infrastructure platform powering more than 300 organizations nationwide, today announced it is adding strategic investments to how it expands, putting capital into clinical companies working in categories its infrastructure already supports rather than acquiring them outright. Its newest investment is in Happy Sleep, maker of the first and only FDA-cleared smart ring capable of diagnosing sleep apnea at home in as little as five days with 98% accuracy. Terms were not disclosed.

Since 2024, OpenLoop has completed 13 strategic investments and acquisitions, including Season Health, a nutrition and chronic care platform, and Hey Revia, an AI-powered patient communication platform. That approach brought new clinical capabilities into the platform but required full integration each time, which limits how many categories the company can move into at once and how fast. 

OpenLoop already runs clinical operations for companies across sleep, weight management, nutrition, and pharmacy, which means it sees demand inside a category months before the market does. Taking a stake lets it back operators in those categories without absorbing them, and without slowing down to integrate.

“We’ve spent six years building the infrastructure that runs clinical operations for a lot of companies,” said Jon Lensing, Co-Founder and CEO at OpenLoop. “We see visit volume inside a category before the market has a read on it. Acquiring a company makes sense when the capability needs to live inside our platform. Often it doesn’t need to, and the company grows faster staying independent with capital behind it. We expect to make more of these strategic investments this year.”

As healthcare consumerism grows, OpenLoop plans to concentrate on companies serving categories where its clinical operations are already running, and where the barrier to growth is the cost of standing up compliant care nationwide rather than demand.

OpenLoop has run the clinical side of Happy Sleep’s diagnostic process, including provider review, since April 2026. Sleep apnea remains widely undiagnosed, in part because in-lab testing is inconvenient enough that patients skip it.

Each investment expands what a single brand can offer its patients, connecting capabilities such as sleep diagnostics, GLP-1 programs, nutrition, and AI-supported care operations through a single infrastructure layer. OpenLoop expects to pursue additional equity investments in category-defining companies that are accelerating the adoption of consumer-driven healthcare and making care more convenient and accessible.

About OpenLoop

OpenLoop is a provider of virtual care operations, powering 300+ organizations to deliver scalable care solutions. By offering end-to-end infrastructure like clinicians, technology, and clinical compliance, companies can launch a fully operational telehealth program on demand, under their brand. OpenLoop has been recognized on TIME’s Top HealthTech Companies (2025).

Learn more at openloophealth.com.

Originally announced August 18th, 2026

< + > CIO Podcast – Episode 120: Healthcare Education and Training with Stephanie Lahr

For the 120th episode of the CIO podcast hosted by Healthcare IT Today, we are joined by Stephanie Lahr, MD, CMO at uPerform, and Former CIO, to talk about healthcare education and training! We kick this episode off by talking about why we think education often gets treated as an afterthought by leadership during major health IT initiatives, as well as the implications of that mindset. Then Lahr shares how she would convince a room of health system executives that education deserves a seat at the strategy table, not just the support desk. Next, we debate if memorization is the right goal for training, and if not, what should organizations be optimizing for with their training instead.

Personalization is a constant topic in conversations about adoption. Going from that, we discuss why, at a high level, one-size-fits-all education falls short and how organizations should be personalizing their education. Next, we dive into another hypothetical scenario. We discuss what would be the first thing Lahr would advise a health system leadership team undergoing a major transformation to get right when it comes to preparing their people. Lastly, Lahr shares the best piece of advice she’s been given in her career.

Here’s a look at the questions and topics we discuss in this episode:

• When you look at major health IT initiatives, training often isn’t the first thing leadership thinks about. Why do you think education gets treated as an afterthought, and what are the implications of that mindset?
• If you had to convince a room of health system executives that education deserves a seat at the strategy table, not just the support desk, how would you make that case? 
• Is memorization the right goal for training, or what should organizations actually be optimizing for with their training instead?
• Personalization comes up constantly in conversations about adoption. At a high level, why does one-size-fits-all education fall short, and how should organizations be personalizing their education?
• If you were advising a health system leadership team about undergoing a major transformation, what’s the first thing you’d tell them to get right when it comes to preparing their people?
• What’s the best piece of advice you’ve been given in your career?

Now, without further ado, we’re excited to share with you the next episode of the CIO Podcast by Healthcare IT Today.

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< + > Designing Prescription Infrastructure for the Transparency Era

The following is a guest article by Raj Ramaswamy, Chief Technology Officer at Buzz Health and Board Member

Pharmacy claim processing has become significantly faster and far more demanding. The timeframe benchmark for adjudicating claims has steadily narrowed, dropping from approximately 16 seconds to a target of just two seconds. That narrowing window now sits at the center of pharmacy infrastructure design.

Inside it, pharmacies, health plans, pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs), and consumers expect answers that older systems were never designed to produce.

Several forces are converging at once. Federal transparency rules, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) prior authorization deadlines, and the growth of cash-pay and direct-to-patient programs have moved real-time accuracy from a competitive edge to a baseline requirement.

These trends shift the pressure point to infrastructure. The way that infrastructure is structured today will determine which organizations can deliver real-time accuracy inside that two-second window for the next decade or more.

A Piecemeal Architecture

The current prescription ecosystem was assembled over decades around point-to-point feeds, Health Level Seven Version 2 (HL7 v2) push messaging, batch reconciliation, and fax-and-portal workflows. Each component solved a real problem when it was introduced.

It worked for the era in which it was built. Consider what that era ran on: one-to-one connections between named partners, push-based events that fired when something happened, and end-of-day reconciliation that served as the audit trail. For a world where claims could be reconciled overnight, and patients first saw the price at the register, this was sufficient.

Today, that piecemeal architecture is no longer sustainable. Pressure on prescription infrastructure now arrives from multiple directions, regulatory and commercial alike.

For example, federal regulators are moving on two tracks. CMS interoperability mandates are establishing real-time data access as a federal standard, while a parallel set of rules dictates how quickly prior authorizations must be resolved. A 2026 CMS proposed rule would extend and harmonize the existing drug prior authorization timeframes, 24 hours for an expedited request and 72 hours for a standard one, across more payers.

More consequentially, it would require prior authorization for real-time electronic exchange, using the Prior Authorization API for medical-benefit drugs and NCPDP standards for pharmacy-benefit drugs, with compliance proposed for October 1, 2027. On top of these federal pressures, state-level price transparency laws are layering additional disclosure requirements at the pharmacy counter.

Commercial forces compound those regulatory pressures. Employers and plan sponsors are demanding auditability of every transaction. At the same time, cash-pay and direct-to-consumer growth is operating entirely outside the traditional benefit rails, creating a parallel ecosystem that older infrastructure was never positioned to support.

Each of these forces packs more work into the same fixed window. What used to be reconciled overnight must be addressed within the claim window. Information that used to flow through batch files at the end of the day now needs to be returned in milliseconds.

The gap between what the industry was built to do and what it is now expected to do narrows at the underlying architecture layer, where actual response times and data flows are determined.

What Real-Time Demands in Production

The crux of the challenge is that every claim demands real-time orchestration across multiple systems. The production system must query external sources in parallel, assembling eligibility, pricing, prior authorization, and benefit data from systems that have historically returned results asynchronously. The pharmacy counter cannot wait for those systems to take turns.

That orchestration runs against a hard clock. The two-second ceiling forces every design decision to bend around it. The system has to respond to external sources that slow down or fail, decide what to do when a response does not come back in time, and still return a clean answer to the pharmacist. The engineering challenge sits in that combination of constraints rather than in any single one of them.

Beyond speed, the architecture has to absorb constant change. Benefit designs, regulatory requirements, and pricing rules change continuously, and every routing decision encoded in compiled software becomes a future bottleneck. The architecture’s responsiveness to that change has become as important as its responsiveness to a single claim.

The system must also validate its work. For example, a patient’s decision to compare pricing and select an alternative off-benefit option must hold throughout downstream processing, and the system must be able to demonstrate that on demand. Most marketplace and adjudication systems leave that loop open, surfacing a price at the point of selection and trusting it will reappear at the point of dispensing.

How the New Architecture Responds

The architecture that meets these demands rests on three principles: speed at the moment of decision, configurability as the business rules change, and verification once the claim executes. Each one addresses a specific challenge described above.

Speed lives at the surface of the architecture. Inside the two-second window, the system has to query external sources in parallel, manage the ones that slow down or fail, and still return a clean answer to the pharmacist. Concurrency design, timeout handling, and failover logic have moved from specialized engineering disciplines into baseline architectural requirements for any platform that processes claims at scale. When that engineering holds, latency stops being the binding constraint. Over 90% of transactions clear well below the two-second threshold, with most processed in as little as one second.

Configurability operates one layer underneath. Pricing rules, benefit designs, and regulatory parameters change too quickly for compiled software to keep up. A configuration-driven layer enables business analysts to adjust routing logic directly, compressing the cycle between market signal and production behavior from quarters to days.

Verification runs across the full path. The price selected at the point of comparison has to match the price delivered at the point of dispensing, and the system must demonstrate that match on demand. Closing that loop catches price discrepancies, data staleness, or downstream errors before they reach the patient.

All three principles depend on one foundational design choice: API-first, contract-driven architecture. Standardized, well-documented interfaces reduce integration complexity for partners and support real-time access patterns at scale, with production volumes reaching upward of 145 million API calls per month. Partners that build to that standard will likely find their integrations adopted faster and replaced less often. 

There is also an upstream dimension. Moving real-time pricing and benefit data to the point of prescribing, before the script is written, brings cost and coverage into the original treatment conversation. That is where adherence outcomes begin to improve, ahead of the pharmacy counter rather than at it.

What the Industry Builds Next

All of these improvements directly address the prescription experience itself. Inside that two-second window, the patient, prescriber, pharmacist, and payer all interact with the same infrastructure.  

For decades, that experience was constrained by what legacy systems could deliver. Patients learned prices at the register, pharmacists confirmed coverage by phone, and prescribers wrote scripts without visibility into affordability. The transparency era reframes those defaults as friction that the industry can no longer accept.

Those three principles, speed, configurability, and verification, produce a new kind of experience: speed at the point of decision, configurability at the point of change, and verification at the point of execution. The organizations that treat infrastructure as experience design, not as a compliance project, will set the standard that the rest of the industry is forced to follow. 

About Raj Ramaswamy

Raj Ramaswamy is a technology leader and Buzz Health Board Member with more than 25 years of experience in enterprise technology, including 15 years in the prescription healthcare industry. His expertise spans platform architecture, system design, digital commerce, process automation, cybersecurity, compliance, and large-scale healthcare operations. At Buzz Health, Raj has played a foundational role in scaling the company’s core technology infrastructure, leading the development of key innovations such as the dynamic pricing API, RxCompare platform, and proprietary real-time adjudication capabilities. He is also a co-inventor on a patent-pending innovation that advances Buzz Health’s technology-driven prescription savings solutions.

He brings deep expertise in prescription benefit management, high-volume transaction processing, and the design of secure, scalable systems that enable modular, data-driven healthcare solutions.