NarxCare-the system that inspired Kathryn’s gynecologist to part ways with her-is Appriss’ flagship product for doctors, pharmacies, and hospitals: an “analytics tool and care management platform” that purports to instantly and automatically identify a patient’s risk of misusing opioids. It has also gone well beyond merely collecting and retrieving records, developing machine-learning algorithms to generate “data insights” and indicating that it taps into huge reservoirs of data outside state drug registries to arrive at them. While the registries themselves are somewhat balkanized-each one governed by its own quirks, requirements, and parameters-Appriss has helped to make them interoperable, merging them into something like a seamless, national prescription drug registry. In the past few years, through a series of acquisitions and government contracts, a single company called Appriss has come to dominate the management of these state prescription databases.
