Contributed photo / Pictured left to right are EirSystems Co-founder and Vice President Ryan Seaberg, Chief Medical Officer David Seaberg and Co-founder and CEO Tyler Seaberg. EirSystems, founded in 2018, won a ChaTech Early Innovator Award during Startup Week's Spirit of Innovation event in October.The technologies that track and secure online financial transactions can be applied to prescription drugs, making those processes safer and faster for physicians and patients, says Tyler Seaberg, co-founder and CEO of EirSystems.
"The biggest thing of blockchain is that it was created to allow for a trustless exchange," says Seaberg, who co-founded the medical technology startup with his brother Ryan Seaberg. "It was a way for allowing for a transaction to occur and be placed on a ledger so all parties can verify that the transaction occurred."
Tyler Seaberg, a Baylor School graduate, became interested in cryptocurrency and online financial exchanges while studying biology at Macalester College in Saint Paul, Minnesota. As he learned more about the blockchain technology that controls the cryptocurrency infrastructure, he saw a new use for blockchain in the medical field.
The Seabergs' new company is introducing an e-prescribing and medical platform designed to streamline the medical prescription process for patients while ensuring all transactions are handled appropriately and legally.
Using blockchain and secure contract technology allows all parties to ensure any online transaction is applying a set of business or regulatory standards that everyone has agreed is acceptable and legal. This not only can be used to make prescribing medicine easier for doctors and patients, but also can be used to help stem abuses of the prescription system that have contributed to the opioid addiction crisis in the United States, Tyler Seaberg says.
"We feel like we can capture a market that is mandated and needed," he says, "but also to address some of the problems and provide a solution that will save doctors time and money, and will improve patient care."
Tyler Seaberg calls the company's PAGR Prescriptions system "the Venmo of prescription history" and says the system is designed to allow for a secure connection between doctors, pharmacists, federal drug enforcement agencies and insurance companies in a way that can streamline the process for patients while ensuring that all transactions are handled appropriately and legally.
EirSystems, founded in 2018, won a ChaTech Early Innovator Award during Startup Week's Spirit of Innovation event in October. The company is securing the necessary regulatory approval to introduce the PAGR Prescriptions system in March 2020.
For now, the company is made up of seven full-time employees, including Seaberg's Macalester College classmates, some of whom are still in school.
EirSystems is also a family affair that goes beyond the co-founder brothers. The Seabergs' father is one of several physicians and other professionals who are advising the young company as it looks to shake up the way medical records and drug prescriptions are processed. Dr. David Seaberg is former president and chairman of the board of the American College of Emergency Physicians, and former dean of the University of Tennessee College of Medicine in Chattanooga.
"(The way drugs are prescribed is) just very inefficient when we are entering 2020," Tyler Seaberg says. "What we're doing is creating that trustless exchange of information for health care data, which has much more stringent laws that for any kind of financial transaction.
"But by using the blockchain, you can ensure that all parties are a trusted user and are a verified physician, pharmacist or drug enforcement agents."