In recent years, Big Tech has gotten a bad rep. But of course many tech companies are doing important work making monumental positive changes to society, health, and the environment. To highlight these, we started a new interview series about “Technology Making An Important Positive Social Impact”. We are interviewing leaders of tech companies who are creating or have created a tech product that is helping to make a positive change in people’s lives or the environment. As a part of this series, I had the pleasure of interviewing David Medvedeff.
A pharmacist by education, David Medvedeff has dedicated his career to making a positive impact on the health and lives of patients across the country. He has successfully founded and led multiple healthcare technology companies during his career, including Aspen RxHealth, the leader in clinical pharmacy services. David’s leadership has been recognized across the industry, with awards including Next Generation Pharmacist — Visionary Pioneer, Top Healthcare Technology CEO, and 50 Most Influential Leaders in Pharmacy.
I grew up in a small town in South Florida with parents who immigrated from South America. I had the privilege of being raised in a loving home where both parents were home for dinner every night. My father never had a boss and always worked for himself — a lesson that has stuck with me over the years. Dinner conversation often revolved around the trials and tribulations of entrepreneurship and when we weren’t talking about subjects such as that, I was off playing baseball and tennis. I’m grateful for the childhood that enabled me to harness my entrepreneurial and competitive spirit, giving me the confidence to build organizations of my own.
I’ve had the pleasure of finding myself in many interesting situations throughout the course of my career, one of the most notable was the call I received on Labor Day weekend just after Hurricane Katrina hit. Imagine my surprise when the office of the White House called to ask my team and I to teach several federal agencies about the work we had done to ensure that displaced people were still able to receive necessary medications. Within days, I was on a committee with the FDA, FEMA, and other response agencies. In the years following, I participated in a nationwide speaking tour talking about the work we did to create an on-demand electronic platform to connect pharmacies and patients, ensuring the right medications were available when needed, even after the most significant natural disasters.
I’m grateful to have had many tremendous people of influence along my journey. There are three individuals that have had a lasting impact on me and my leadership style:
David Bainbridge: David is a private equity investor who acquired a business and approached me to run it. At the time, he and I were both young, and he was making a sizable bet on me being the right person for the top job. It was my first experience operating with full autonomy, accountable only to a board of directors, and it proved to be a very valuable experience. Over time, we had many tough conversations, but we always maintained a mutual sense of trust and respect. After that opportunity, David invited me to serve on another board of directors, and over the years we’ve remained close. I will forever appreciate the ways in which he challenged and shaped me.
George Kitchens: George was my first boss after I graduated from pharmacy school. He had a sense of humor that I admired and perhaps more importantly, he believed in me to such an extent that he created a position for me at the Eckerd Corporation headquarters as a young, new graduate. While working for him, he taught me the value of professional networking and engaging with vendors and partners — skills that continue to serve me to this day.
Russ Thomas: Russ was another leader who saw my potential to operate an organization and provided continuous support to me. He gave me opportunities in my early 30’s that I was probably too inexperienced for, but he was willing to take a risk, and I’ll be eternally grateful for his trust and vision.
“Pigs get fat and hogs get slaughtered.” This saying gets lots of mileage — both in my personal and professional lives. Often, we see people get greedy and I think the opposite should be our focus. When more people win, we all win. Focusing on the greater good breeds more success than focusing on winners vs. Losers.
I have the distinct pleasure and challenge of trying to solve for multiple health-related problems. Firstly, adverse drug events, or ADEs, cause about 1.3 million emergency room visits each year, $30 billion in avoidable costs for our healthcare system, and are the fourth leading cause of death in our nation. To top that off, for too long, pharmacists’ expertise and knowledge have been underutilized, too often relegated to managing inventory or staffing issues in a pharmacy. In an age when clinical burnout is at an all-time high, we cannot afford for this frightening trend to continue.
We created Aspen RxHealth as a solution to both problems. By providing a gig-economy platform for pharmacists, they now have a new career path allowing them to practice at the top of their license. At the same time, these pharmacists now have the infrastructure to reach patients all around the US and provide consultations that could not only improve patient health, but save lives. And by allowing our pharmacists to work from wherever they have a secure internet connection in the US, we are seeing unprecedented levels of career satisfaction that traditional models simply cannot provide.
This is an issue that’s very close to home for me, both because I am a pharmacist by education and because I have borne witness to the detrimental effects of medication mismanagement.
Years ago, my grandmother lived in a skilled nursing facility and after a few months, she began to fall — repeatedly. Multiple broken bones and emotional trauma later, I reviewed her medication list. Quickly I uncovered that she had mistakenly been prescribed medication to manage her prostate — which clearly was not only inappropriate for her, but also came with the side effect of lowering her blood pressure upon standing, resulting in her continual falling. I contacted her prescriber to have the issue rectified, and she never fell again. All these years later I still ask myself — why did it have to come to this?
A seemingly simple consultation or medication review by a clinical pharmacist can make the biggest difference in a patient’s health and quality of life. While doctors are experts in their respective fields, pharmacists are the foremost medication experts in all healthcare. When a pharmacist is empowered to deliver true clinical care without the burden of dispensing or inventory management, it’s amazing to think of the positive health impacts we can make at scale. Given the opportunity and reach, pharmacists could play a sizable role in reducing the epidemic of ADEs that our nation faces each year, keeping patients healthier and reducing the overall cost of healthcare.
It’s hard for me to imagine a scenario where greater pharmacist career satisfaction and better patient health could be negative in any way. I truly believe that pharmacist-led clinical care is a positive force for good in our healthcare system and it’s the main reason that my team and I started Aspen RxHealth.
It hasn’t been an easy path, but I wouldn’t change a thing. I have learned many valuable lessons as it relates to building teams and scaling organizations to make a positive impact:
It goes back to human capital. I place full trust in our Information Security Team to keep us best in class as it relates to our IT security practices. Our team ensures that we are always following the latest contemporary practices led by industry experts.
Early on, I decided that I wanted to have the largest positive impact, on the largest number of people. To that end, I built a team of like-minded talent who work relentlessly to improve the lives of thousands of pharmacists and thousands of patients daily. Collectively we are making a lasting impact. And frankly, there is nothing more satisfying than doing well for yourself and your family by doing good for others.
Malcolm Gladwell, without question. I have the most sincere appreciation for writers and the powerful impact that good storytelling can have. Gladwell does a masterful job of breaking down highly technical concepts and creates a path for his audience to reach a conclusion. I’d love to sit down with him for dinner and understand his process for how he artfully delivers his message through storytelling.
If you want to stay up to date with everything going on at Aspen RxHealth, follow us on LinkedIn! We’re always posting new updates, featuring employees and pharmacists, and sharing valuable resources. To learn more about what we do and who we serve, check out our website at aspenrxhealth.com. And of course, you can follow me on LinkedIn as well!
Thank you for this opportunity.