inSPire 2026 Rewind; The Hub of Specialty Pharmacy | Part Two

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

A special thank you to our sponsors for this year's coverage of Inspire 2026

Your support makes our coverage possible. And now, a quick message before this episode begins.

SPEAKER_2 (0:11)

This episode is brought to you by HendrenAI.

Specialty Pharmacy teams are being asked to do more than ever before. Between patient outreach, refill coordination, prior authorizations, and the endless volume of phone calls, valuable clinical and operational time is often consumed by administrative work. At HendrenAI, we believe the people caring for patients should spend less time managing workflows and more time delivering meaningful outcomes. That's why we build AI-powered solutions designed specifically for specialty and infusion pharmacy organizations. Our platform helps automate repetitive phone-based and administrative processes, streamline operations, and improve the patient experience, while fitting into existing workflows.

HendrenAI is focused on a simple mission, turning human labor into software, so healthcare organizations can scale more efficiently while keeping patients at the center of care. To learn more, visit Hendren.AI and discover how AI can help your team work smarter, not harder.

SPEAKER_3 (1:20)

You are listening to the Global Network of Podcasters dedicated to the pharmacy profession. Welcome to the Pharmacy Podcast Network.

SPEAKER_2 (1:41)

It's that time of year where the Pharmacy Podcast Network's founder and CEO, Todd Eury, lands where the hub of Specialty Pharmacy hosts their annual meeting.

Introducing the Inspire 2026 Annual Expo. That's right, Specialty Pharmacy is evolving, and so is the name of its largest annual meeting. The NASP Annual Meeting and Expo got an upgrade. Innovation, networking, specialty pharmacy expertise, insights, research, and education come together to empower, educate, and connect our community. Live in National Harbor, Maryland, tune in as Todd roams the showroom floor, bringing you the inside coverage of this year's event.

Todd Eury (2:26)

Inspire 2026, we are here, a new event through the National Association of Specialty Pharmacy. John, it is so good to see you here in the booth, here at the NASP's booth. Being with HendrenAI, tell our listeners who are dialed into specialty pharmacy, what is HendrenAI, and a little bit of background on yourself.

John Boos (2:49)

Thanks for having me, Todd. So HendrenAI is a health tech company that is focused on pharmacy, health systems, and pharma companies, is our ICP. And three years ago, we realized quickly that there's an area for disruption within healthcare, specifically looking at pharmacies because I've been a pharmacist for the past 16 years, I've noticed everything is fragmented. There's so many point solutions. And in terms of being able to use technologies such as AI agents, voice AI, intelligent automation, is the reason why the company was started. And really what it is, is domain transference from the Amazons of the world and Facebook to healthcare, and how we can actually support productivity and being able to look at, for example, the staffing issues that we're currently experiencing, and how do we alleviate those staffing issues using technology.

So, I would say a pitch would be, HendrenAI is how we turn human labor into software, but at the same time not removing all the human labor, but really having the human laborers work with digital laborers to improve the net margins of those pharmacies, whether specialty or not, and being able to really improve productivity in ways that we've never thought before.

Todd Eury (4:03)

That's a really good, that's a good starting point, John. I've been asked over the years when we cover events of, hey, do you have a, do you have like a favorite? And it's evolved over the years, because when I started, it was long-term care pharmacy. So I felt like, I felt so much more comfortable talking about long-term care. And guess what? There are components of what's happening in long-term care that have spilled over into the evolution of specialty pharmacy.

And now specialty pharmacy has so many more components than any of the sectors that I work in, compounding community pharmacy and clinical trials. That's a whole other sector of pharmacy that people aren't really paying attention to. But specialty, when I think of the manual work, when I think of prior authorization follow-up and filling coordination and provider follow-up and questions and prescription statuses and watching where my order is, delivery, documentation, patient outreach, specialty is 16, 17, 20 things packed into what it is. And it also depends on the disease state because sometimes in the disease state, we have REMS reporting that we gotta send data back to the manufacturer and stuff. So in my opinion, my lack of knowledge of how AI is implemented, specialty seems to be a hotspot for the leverage and the implementation of artificial intelligent agents that know what's going on within each of those puzzle pieces.