Forus, a health tech startup that uses artificial intelligence to automate prescription workflows, is partnering with the American College of Gastroenterology to improve access to medicines for patients with gastrointestinal conditions.
Forus, formerly known as Tandem, has built an artificial intelligence-powered network that connects physicians, pharmacies, payers, and biopharmaceuticals to automate the prescription-to-patient path. Forus’ technology handles the tedious back-end administrative tasks that often create friction points and make it difficult for patients to get the medications they need. The company automates prior authorizations, appeals, financial assistance, and pharmacy routing between various parties. It is free for both doctors and patients.
CEO and founder Sahil Jaggi says the company’s purpose is simple: “We are focused on helping people access medicines faster, easier and cheaper, and are most effective for people with high costs and complex conditions.”
Diseases such as autoimmune diseases, COPD, psoriasis, and cancer can make medicines more expensive without insurance coverage or financial assistance, and often complicate supply chains. “Getting a drug on time and at an affordable price may require weeks of calls, research, and paperwork for doctors and patients. What we’re doing is using AI to take all of that complexity and distill it down so that you can get the drug without the burden on your shoulders,” he told Fierce Healthcare. “Our AI platform knows exactly where a clinic writes a prescription and fulfills it all the way to the pharmacy where it is ready for pickup or delivery, keeping both patients and providers informed along the way.”
Founded three years ago, Forus executives say the company is used by thousands of medical practices and health systems in all 50 states and is rapidly expanding across specialties. Over the past two years, provider adoption has increased 10x year over year. The company says Forus currently serves people in nearly 80% of U.S. residential ZIP codes, including many patients with complex conditions.
AGA sets evidence-based standards for gastrointestinal disease care and advocates on behalf of gastrointestinal disease patients and the clinicians who treat them. This strategic partnership combines AGA’s clinical leadership with Forus’ medication access platform to give gastrointestinal patients faster access to physician-prescribed treatments.
“As we’ve grown, gastroenterology (gastroenterology) has become one of our largest and fastest-growing specialties supporting patients and physicians. We’ve been thinking a lot about the different ways we can expand our reach beyond what we do directly with providers and clinics using our platform,” Jaggi said.
Patients with gastrointestinal disorders are often delayed or refused treatment recommended by their doctors. This partnership combines AGA’s clinical leadership with Forus’ unique perspective on the drug access process, helping AGA strengthen its advocacy for patients and deepen the value that its clinical guidance provides to its members.
“There is clearly a lot of overlap in our goals, particularly helping physician practices be more efficient and successful, and supporting drug access for gastrointestinal disease patients,” Jaggi said.
The initial focus of the partnership will be to analyze how guideline-based care impacts treatment access and identify gaps where patients are not receiving optimal treatment.
“The direction there is to understand where providers are already leveraging the resources that AGA is generating and how they are helping patients get the right care at the right time, but then to understand where there are gaps in the system and where they are concentrated,” Jaggi said.
These gaps may be due to financial access barriers, practice patterns, payer policies, etc., Jaggi noted.
Insights from Forus’ platform will help AGA identify gaps in care and target efforts to improve access to and adherence to best medical care.
“AGA exists to advance gastrointestinal care and advocate for the patients our members serve,” said Dr. Alison Kim, AGA’s vice president of clinical science. “We have long collaborated with our clinician members, patient partners, and other stakeholders in gastrointestinal health to better understand the barriers that patients face in accessing their medications. Our partnership with Forus strengthens that effort by giving us another tool to identify and address these barriers, whether as payers, policy makers, or on behalf of our members,” said Dr. Alison Kim, AGA’s vice president of clinical and scientific affairs.
This collaboration is built to grow over time, with the expectation that as the partnership develops, it will provide joint outcomes and resources to the GI community. The larger goal is to demonstrate how major medical societies and widely used AI platforms can work together to advance access to health care across the field, the organizations said.
“We have the advantage of really working on this drug access issue, so we understand some of the core pieces of these, from prioritization to affordability and access challenges to the dynamics of implementation. We also have a deep understanding of specific medicines and the conditions in which they work, so we can connect the dots in a way that is a little more tightly tied to the infrastructure that we’ve already built and the expertise that we’ve already built around these processes,” Jaggi said.
The partnership with AGA could also serve as a blueprint for future collaborations.
“I think there are some opportunities to apply what we’ve learned here to other categories and specialties,” he said.
In May, the company raised $160 million at a $1 billion valuation to expand its AI-powered prescription processing platform. The startup is backed by Thrive Capital, General Catalyst, Accel, Bain Capital Ventures (BCV), Redpoint, BoxGroup, and Pear VC.
In a May interview, Jaggi told Fierce Healthcare that the company plans to use the funding to accelerate growth in three key areas. These include expanding the platform to more physician practices and specialties, investing in AI and platform capabilities to better navigate complex prescription and treatment workflows, and expanding the team (particularly engineering and operations) to support its scale and innovation.
