Interview with Omri Shor, CEO of Medisafe

Omri Shor

Our latest interviewee is Omri Shor, co-founder and CEO of the Medisafe, which offers medication management platform that allows users to track their medications in order to improve adherence rates and health outcomes. Shor was inspired to create the Medisafe Project with his brother after their diabetic father accidentally double-dosed on insulin. He drew on his entrepreneurship experience to successfully develop and bring the product to market in less than one year…

How would you pitch your company? What’s your elevator pitch?

Medisafe is the award winning, data driven Medication Management Platform, designed to understand the personal causes of non-adherence and to use this information in real time to create better patient engagement and raise medication adherence. Medisafe’s key audience includes patients taking medications, with a focus on patients with chronic illnesses, as well as those monitoring a loved one’s medication intake, such as caregivers. Medisafe is working on enhancing its platform to further facilitate the connection between patients and healthcare providers (HCPs), in support of patients – to better manage their medications and live healthier lives. Medisafe is rapidly being accepted by patients and caretakers.

What sets you apart from competitors?

Medisafe has several competitive advantages, primarily our connectivity and expansion to other platforms, such as wearables and web. Our focus on a great user experience is also an important component of our growth. For example, in addition to the visual and intuitive virtual pillbox, Medisafe offers a personalized “feed,” which combines patients’ condition and medication information correlated with behavioral data (i.e. difficulty remembering to take their meds, biometric feedback, etc.) to tailor content to individual needs. Examples of feed entries include: missed doses, reminders, MedFriend alerts, educational content about the disease/drug, positive reinforcement using intrinsic rewards. Additionally, Medisafe users are provided with the ability to assign “MedFriends” such as family, friends, and caretakers that receive notifications when a loved one misses a dose.

What’s your business model?

Medisafe’s B2B2C business model is based on creating an eco-system that supports medication management. We collaborate with pharmaceutical companies, drug stores retailers, health insurers, employers and health providers.

Can you share some numbers? How many users do you have?

Currently, Medisafe has over 1.7 million downloads and has collected data on over 120,000,0000 medication doses demonstrating improved adherence rates. The Medisafe app has a 4.5/5 rating, the best in its category.

Where do you see the company going from here?

Medisafe’s number one priority is its users and providing them with support from the app that can translate to the doctor’s office, where a user can share adherence rate reports with their doctor. Medisafe will continue to bring value to both the patients and physicians by delivering relevant and tailored data and medication reminders. Medisafe will remain focused on patient engagement in order to help create healthier and happier lives.

A secondary, but also critically important objective is to streamline inefficiencies and bring much-needed cost savings to an overburdened (U.S.) healthcare system. In order to alleviate some of the stresses associated with the U.S healthcare system Medisafe is implementing several features, including:

  • Integrating personalized content (drug, disease, lifestyle), biofeedback, positive reinforcement (intrinsic motivation), social support systems and other value added services to reinforce the benefits of adherence as part of a comprehensive care plan to sustain behavior change.
  • Medisafe is working to empower patients, better inform providers, and share with key stakeholders actionable data that serves to improve quality of care at a sustainable cost.
  • In the future, Medisafe will enable patients to transfer and (re-)fill prescriptions directly to their preferred pharmacy, as well as access to relevant coupons.


Where do you see the mHealth industry going?

The development of the mHealth industry is working towards opening a new channel of engagement between the physician and patient. This new channel of engagement relies on the success of mHealth tools such as apps and other vital tracking hardware. These apps and devices will be able to uniformly sync, enter, exchange, and interpret data in a fast manner that will provide beneficial feedback to a patient and physician. The interconnectivity between patients and physicians is growing due the increasing availability of smartphones and the 3G and 4G networks.

mHealth will allow doctors to provide a more holistic approach to a patient’s care and prevent the ordering of unnecessary or duplicated tests which will save insurance companies hundreds of thousands of dollars over time. According to a recent report from Grand View Research, demand for mobile health is expected to increase to $49.1 billion by 2020.

How long are we from seeing modern mHealth technologies going mainstream?

In the near future, mHealth apps will transform the wellness trend from a world of fitness apps and calorie trackers to a way to provide patients with remote monitoring and consultation. mHealth capable devices will penetrate user/patient data demand and make hospital systems a more efficient hub for the patient, providing a better method and level of communication between providers and patients. As physicians become more acclimated in the field of mHealth, and are able to better guide their patients, we will start to see a true change in the future of healthcare. Rather than relying solely on office visits, physicians, who apply mHealth tools to their practice, will be able to easily monitor patients and engage with them wherever and whenever needed. And with this change will come a healthier American citizen and a robust mHealth market.