Empowered Patient Podcast

Paul Howe, COO of Protega Pharmaceuticals, is focused on how abuse-deterrent technology can address the opioid crisis and the need for mandates for insurance coverage of safer abuse-deterrent formulations. The SentryBond technology was specifically designed for immediate-release opioids to make it difficult to manipulate pills for abuse via crushing, inhaling, or injecting. Protega partnered with software company Opus to offer a program that helps educate chronic pain patients, manage their treatment, and provides physicians with risk stratification data to improve care and reduce the likelihood of abuse. Paul explains, "Most importantly from our standpoint is to protect from the risk of misuse, abuse, and diversion, which is escalation from orally taking medications to crushing, inhaling, injecting, or smoking. Unfortunately, when that escalation happens, many times patients end up on illicit fentanyl and heroin through the black market. So what we're trying to do is stop that escalation through our abuse d