TECHNOLOGY The first pilot of RxHub-the joint venture by three pharmacy benefit managers to facilitate electronic prescribing-kicked off this month. The pilot tests physicians' ability to access patient eligibility data electronically. A second pilot follows this fall, in which the additional functions of formulary information and patient drug history will be tested. RxHub will then be commercially available early next year.

Providing physicians with information so they can check patient eligibility, drug history, and formularies is one of RxHub's two main product offerings. This one is called Benefits Connect. Using Benefits Connect, technology companies can obtain eligibility and formulary information by patient from the PBMs and pass it along to the doctor's office in real time or batch mode. Making this information available to doctors, RxHub hopes, will improve patient care and administrative efficiency.

RxHub's other offering is Script Connect, a pipeline that routes prescriptions electronically from physicians to pharmacies. This channel eliminates the need for hundreds of relationships to be struck up individually between point-of-care vendors and pharmacies. The POC companies can sign up to use this routing mechanism, as can pharmacies.

Explaining these product offerings at a media roundtable sponsored by the Pharmaceutical Care Management Association in Washington, D.C., last month was a Phillip Rothermich, vp. of business development at Express Scripts. …