What You Should Know
- The Partnership: First Databank (FDB) is connecting its cloud-native ePrescribing network, FDB Vela, with Photon Health’s digital prescription marketplace.
- The Tech Infrastructure: FDB Vela provides a HITRUST-certified, cloud-based architecture built for 24/7 availability and full redundancy. This is specifically designed to mitigate single points of failure and safeguard prescription transmissions during network interruptions.
- The Patient Experience: Photon acts as a consumer-friendly marketplace, enabling patients to compare pharmacy options based on price, convenience, and availability before they arrive at the pharmacy counter.
- The Provider Benefit: The integration equips prescribers with real-time clinical decision support, workflow automation, and specialty prescription routing at the exact moment a prescription is written.
Consumerizing the Prescription Journey
Historically, the routing of a prescription was dictated almost entirely by the default settings in a hospital’s EHR. Photon Health flips this model by injecting consumer choice into the digital journey.
Through Photon’s marketplace, patients gain the ability to actively compare pharmacy fulfillment options based on actual price, location convenience, and real-time drug availability. By plugging this front-end marketplace into FDB Vela’s massive backend routing network, patients are empowered to make informed financial and logistical decisions before they ever step foot in a pharmacy.
“Prescription networks should exist to serve patients and providers openly,” said Otto Sipe, CEO and co-founder of Photon. “Our collaboration with FDB Vela reflects a shared commitment to modernizing ePrescribing infrastructure, expanding network choice, and delivering greater transparency across the prescription experience.”
The Cloud-Native Safety Net
Beyond consumer transparency, this partnership is fundamentally an infrastructure upgrade. The healthcare industry has recently learned hard lessons about the dangers of relying on single points of failure in data transmission. FDB Vela addresses this vulnerability with a highly secure, scalable, cloud-native architecture. The system is HITRUST-certified and features full redundancy to ensure 24/7 availability, safeguarding the flow of prescriptions even during broader network interruptions.
Simultaneously, the platform delivers critical, contextual data back to the physician. By surfacing real-time clinical decision support and workflow automation at the point of care, prescribers can see exactly what the patient will experience downstream, reducing the administrative burden of post-visit pharmacy callbacks.
