Michael Navin on Peek, a Game-Changer in Prescription Drug Shopping

Prescription drug prices can be confusing and stressful to navigate. One software company is striving to simplify the experience for its members. Peek utilizes technology to provide a transparent and first-to-market shopping experience for prescription drugs. The company, which has partnered with industry leaders like the Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drug Company and SingleCare, works by aggregating prescription drug cash discount options with a member’s insurance provider. Peek’s innovative process delivers a personalized shopping experience unlike any other in the industry.

In this interview, DocWire News spoke with Michael Navin, founder and CEO of Peek, who detailed his company’s mission, what differentiates it from competitors, the significance of their partnerships, and more.

To learn more about Peek and schedule a demo, visit their newly launched website, Peek Meds.

About Michael Navin

I have spent the last 26 years of my career working in the pharmaceutical industry, with a focus on reimbursement and coverage. I turned that experience into my own agency where we helped launch and commercialize hundreds of different medications. One of the biggest challenges that we faced while helping manufacturing partners do that was the restrictions that the PBMs and health plans would often put on new-to-market medications. Oftentimes, this forced the manufacturer to really be the single payer of their own drugs. So, what we were able to do was really create novel approaches to help manufacturers not just overcome the issue, but to create affordable access for the patients to be able to get the medications while using their insurance, often making that the best route for them to be able to get access to the drugs and for the providers to be able to prescribe them with minimal restrictions.

What is Peek’s mission, and what is the main challenge the company is looking to solve?

The mission of Peek is pretty simple. We want health care to be transparent, accessible, and affordable. We know that this market has had many secret prices and many misunderstood prices for too long, and it’s really time to bring something clear and transparent to patients and employers alike. Our hope is that this approach will translate into significant cost savings while still being able to get patients the medications their doctors prescribe.

What differentiates Peek from other companies?

I think what makes us different and unique is that Peek integrates members’ insurance, so the specific insurance for the member, but it also aggregates a multitude of different cash cards that are in the market today. I’m sure you’ve heard of GoodRx and others. It’s very confusing for the patients to understand what to use. Those companies are also in it for themselves. They have a cash card offering, and it’s a great service. It’s changed the market tremendously, but when you only have one to choose from, you don’t really know if you’re getting the best price.

At Peek, we integrate national card partners and aggregate the members’ insurance, creating not just a single member experience for themselves, but also a single spot so they don’t have to go to multiple different sites to see if they’re getting the best price. We believe that because of the differentiation of our technology, it’s like the Travelocity or Priceline of the pharmaceutical world. We’re giving patients something different and unique. They don’t have to jump to different sites to see if they’re getting the best price. We’re different because we aren’t beholden to one single company. We’re software, and that software works to the advantage of the member.

Your company has partnered with several industry leaders. Talk to us about these partnerships and how they can facilitate better patient care.

We have very exciting partners because, again, the partners we have, while they’re singularly focused, they’re also working toward the same mission around creating transparency and affordability. In our opinion, in order to be well-rounded, it’s important for us to work with national partners. For example, our first 2 national partners were the Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drug Company and SingleCare. What makes those companies unique is that, for example, the Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drug Company is primarily focused on generics and mail order. SingleCare provides generics, brands, and a pharmacy network that allows a patient to fill a prescription at a pharmacy versus a mail order.

On the insurance side, we’ve been working with some large groups. For example, if you’re an employer and you have a PBM and that PBM is part of your self-funding experience and they’re the ones who are involved in providing the insurance benefit for you, we are working with them to integrate that member’s information so that when you come on Peek, the member who might be part of a large PBM can simply integrate with Peek and get the insurance pricing information instantly. That’s where we’re working with PBM and insurance partners as well.

What are the next steps for Peek, and where do you see the company in 3 years?

The market’s been so fragmented for years, so it’s going to be a bit of a long road, but here’s how we see the next steps. Step 1 is introducing our app and our concept into the market. On December 4, we’ll be announcing and launching access to our Peek app. From there, we’re working with several pilot partners with small and large employers to overlay Peek into their existing benefit package.

As you may or may not know, often new benefits are starting right now and into January 1, 2024. What Peek will do is allow you to make your benefit work better for you because you can overlay Peek with what you currently have and get a better experience. Beginning in the first quarter of 2024, we’re going to be raising funds to continue to grow the business case, working with distribution partners to get more employers on board, report out the cost savings that Peek members will see, and basically best understand how the customer will use the service. As we do that, we’ll improve the technology as any other technology company does, but we’ll focus mainly on getting a launch out there and getting people to use the app.

Any closing thoughts you’d like to share?

Again, thank you for having me and putting this information out there. The main thing is we all know that health care can be affordable and accessible, but really it can’t be those things without information. C-suite executives have relied heavily on their brokers to achieve cost savings in health care, but the existing marketplace has too many hands in the cookie jar. What we want to be able to do as part of our service is to make sure that when we do work with a client, we can actually view their historical claims. We could let them know what they could save if they use a platform like Peek.

What we’ve seen in the existing pilots is that we’d have anywhere between a 20% and 100% cost savings on medication. What we mean by that is if you have insurance that has, let’s say, a $0 copay for a particular class of medicines, well that’s zero cost. Sometimes, people are paying for things they don’t need to be paying for. Conversely, if someone is using one of the cash card partners, they may not have to use any of their benefits and can save a significant amount of money by just going through the cash card partners. We did this recently with a group that had over $23 million in annual pharmacy spend, and by using Peek, the assumption is that by using Peek, the member and the employer would save almost $2.5 million in overall out-of-pocket spends on their pharmacy needs.

We see this as a game-changing technology. It’s very simple and easy to use, and it does not compete with insurance or PBMs. The goal of Peek is simply to make the process more effective for our users. We’re excited and looking forward to 2024.