Arine and Gemini Health Announce New Collaboration to Optimize Medications While Lowering Prescription Drug Costs for Blue Shield of California Plan Members

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Oct 26, 2022, 06:00 ET

Integration of the companies' platforms to enhance delivery of value-based care

SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 26, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Arine, a next-generation medication intelligence company, and Gemini Health LLC, a drug cost transparency platform, today announced an integration of the two companies' platforms to optimize value-based care for members of Blue Shield of California (Blue Shield). The collaborative effort will bolster the ability of Blue Shield's care team and affiliated pharmacist provider network to coach and counsel Blue Shield members with real-time and accurate medication recommendations and related cost information. This integration is designed to help members take and stay on the right medications while minimizing out-of-pocket expenditures.

"The medical evidence demonstrates that higher out-of-pocket medication costs, suboptimal drug choice and dosages, and medication non-adherence are associated with more medical visits, hospitalizations, and other adverse events," said Salina Wong, PharmD, senior director of Clinical Pharmacy Programs at Blue Shield of California. "Blue Shield of California is committed to creating a healthcare system that is sustainably affordable, and the integration between Arine and Gemini provides pharmacy care teams with medication insights and cost transparency information that empower them to provide highly personalized medication consultations with each member. This new process is a major leap from looking up a static formulary and helps support us in reaching our goals."

The Arine-Gemini collaboration incorporates Gemini's real-time, patient-specific benefits data into the Arine platform, which generates recommendations for targeted and personalized medication interventions. The integration of the two companies' platforms enables safe and effective therapy at the lowest available costs.

"We are thrilled to collaborate with Gemini to help Blue Shield of California deliver affordable, accessible, and high-quality health care," said Yoona Kim, PharmD, PhD, Arine's co-founder and CEO. "Combining our complementary services allows Blue Shield care teams to provide members with data-driven recommendations that resolve medication gaps while potentially lowering member out-of-pocket costs."

"We see great synergies between Arine's medication intelligence and our real-time benefits capabilities to materially improve cost and quality medication outcomes in a reproducible and scalable manner," commented Ed Fotsch, Gemini Health CEO. "The integrated offering will help Blue Shield of California reach the next level of personalized medication management for its members."

The integration is already paying off. To date, more than a third of members identified as non-adherent have benefited from tailored interventions to improve adherence with cost savings alternatives.

About Arine

Arine is a next-generation medication intelligence company led by some of the world's top experts in pharmacotherapy, data analytics, health economics, engineering, and software development. Arine's platform helps customers devise appropriate, just-in-time interventions to optimize medication management for their patients or members. Health plans using Arine's technology are able to achieve significant ROI, shaving billions of dollars in unnecessary spending within the US healthcare system while doing the right thing by clinicians and patients. Visit www.arine.io or follow us on LinkedIn.

About Gemini

Gemini Health LLC delivers Drug Cost Transparency Services to providers and members to reduce drug and administrative costs for patients, providers, and payers. The four Gemini Drug-Cost Transparency Services focus on new and existing medications and deliver decision support for busy providers and pharmacists integrated into their workflows, including actual patient-specific costs of drugs, lower-cost clinically equivalent alternative drugs and lower-cost pharmacies when applicable. The alternatives and costs are based upon the patient's pharmacy benefit and related health plan coverage details. Gemini serves provider and payer partners, with a focus on Blue plans. For more information, visit www.gemini.health.

SOURCE Arine