PhRMA Foundation Awards 3 Trainees for Papers on AI in Managed Care Pharmacy

The PhRMA Foundation announced today that three papers will receive $5,000 Trainee Challenge Awards as part of a Journal of Managed Care & Specialty Pharmacy (JMCP) themed issue on artificial intelligence (AI) in managed care pharmacy.

The PhRMA Foundation, a 60-year-old nonprofit that supports early career researchers through grants and fellowships, partners with scientific journals like JMCP on Challenge Award competitions to amplify the voices of promising scientists publishing on timely research topics.

“Artificial intelligence is rapidly reshaping how health care information is analyzed and applied to inform decision-making that directly affects patient health,” said PhRMA Foundation President Amy M. Miller, PhD. “The PhRMA Foundation is proud to recognize talented early-career researchers working at the forefront of developing, applying, and validating AI approaches to advance the responsible and effective use of these tools to support better patient care.”

The September themed issue includes nine papers offering useful insights on the implementation of AI in managed care pharmacy. The PhRMA Foundation’s expert review panel selected three articles to receive the Challenge Award, recognizing the trainee first author for their paper’s innovative contributions and implications for future AI research and application.

The three winning Challenge Award papers:

• An Ontology-Informed Framework to Harmonize Electronic Health Record Medication Data for Managed Care Analytics and Artificial Intelligence Applications, Haowen Hsu, Gabriel Gazetta, Chi-Hua Lu, and David M. Jacobs
• Comparative Performance of Large Language Models for Appraising Bias in Real-World Evidence Studies, Chijioke M. Okeke, Regina Nechi, Javeria Khalid, Ibraheem M. Karaye, J. Douglas Thornton, and Ismaeel Yunusa
• Navigating Uncertainty Matters: Evaluating Large Language Models for Drug-Drug Interaction Identification, Adeleine Tilley, Brian Murray, Kelli Henry, Xingmeng Zhao, Yanjun Gao, Kaitlin Blotske, and Andrea Sikora

Read about why these papers were selected in the issue’s introductory letter.

About the PhRMA Foundation

The PhRMA Foundation is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that fosters biopharmaceutical innovation and value-driven health care by investing in the frontiers of research. The Foundation catalyzes the careers of promising researchers through competitive, peer-reviewed grants and fellowships in the fields of drug delivery, drug discovery, translational medicine, and value assessment and health outcomes research.

About the Journal of Managed Care & Specialty Pharmacy (JMCP)

Incepted in 1995, the JMCP is the official peer-reviewed journal of the Academy of Managed Care Pharmacy. AMCP is the professional association leading the way to help patients get the medications they need at a cost they can afford. AMCP’s diverse membership of pharmacists, physicians, nurses, biopharmaceutical professionals, and other stakeholders leverage their specialized expertise in clinical evidence and economics to optimize medication benefit design and population health management and help patients access cost-effective and safe medications and other drug therapies. AMCP members improve the lives of nearly 300 million Americans served by private and public health plans, pharmacy benefit management firms, and emerging care models.