Dream team: Makers of the Rx Billing Genie app

The journey from pharmacy practice to healthtech entrepreneurship was, for Shelley Morgan and Nicola Sancho-Persad, a joy ride that saw many passengers hopping on to help them navigate and move forward. “People have been so lovely and helpful,” says Morgan, a part-time pharmacist at Palermo Pharmacy PharmaChoice in Oakville, ON, and CEO of Rx Billing Genie, an app that enables quick searches of insurance rejection codes or keywords, and then suggests the most suitable interventions. “It seemed like every time I mentioned what we were doing, someone would say, ‘oh you should talk to soand-so about that, let me give you his contact details.’” A pivotal moment came when Morgan, a firstgeneration Canadian whose parents emigrated from Jamaica, was invited last October to an online panel discussion on discrimination and racism, organized by the Canadian Pharmacists Association (CPhA). After hearing about Rx Billing Genie, one of the organizers gave Morgan the email and phone number of Tim Skelly, the association’s vice-president of business development and partnerships. Morgan promptly reached out to Skelly—a connection that led to a partnership between the association and Rx Billing Genie. Today, with the support and endorsement of the CPhA, the app counts hundreds of pharmacy users who have viewed the app more than 26,000 times over the past year. “When I looked at our numbers I was like ‘holy moly!’” says Morgan. “We’re really just starting out, so to see people using the app as much as they did last year has been so gratifying. Neither Morgan nor Sancho-Persad foresaw a future for themselves as healthtech entrepreneurs. Morgan worked in community pharmacy in Buffalo, N.Y., before returning to Canada where her varied career has included stints as a clinical pharmacist at the former Chedoke-McMaster Hospital in Hamilton, ON, and as a mompreneur behind the jewellery venture Zipsessory. But when, in 2019, one of Morgan’s two sons expressed an interest in developing apps, she signed up with him for a one-hour online bootcamp on coding for computer applications. When the bootcamp instructor challenged participants to think about workplace problems that bothered them and how an app could address those problems, Morgan recalled how frustrated she used to feel when doing the billing for a U.S. pharmacy earlier in her career. TACKLING A PHARMACY PAIN POINT “Getting the claims back from insurance and having to look up the rejection codes—that was one pain point that drove me batty,” she says. “So I started thinking about how an app could remove that pain point. That thought turned into determination after Morgan had a conversation at work with a pharmacy technician, who said she spends about 10 hours a month on the phone with insurance companies. Morgan approached Sancho-Persad, a pharmacy assistant and co-worker at Palermo Pharmacy. Would she like to team up to create an app that would solve a longstanding, time-wasting problem for pharmacy? “I thought it was a great idea and I was very excited to do it with Shelley,” recalls Sancho-Persad, chief operating officer at Rx Billing Genie. “Because Shelley and I are so different in terms of our strengths, we complemented each other. That helped to get the app done a lot quicker.” Before switching to pharmacy, Sancho-Persad had trained as a research paralegal. For her, reading insurance manuals and diving deep into details were “easy breezy.” By comparison, Morgan was more of a big-picture thinker and driver. The two hired an app developer who took the massive volume of information they had loaded into an app spreadsheet and created the appropriate relationships between the data points. By November 2019, the app was ready to go. Launched initially for Ontario users, but now expanded to include pharmacists in Alberta and British Columbia, Rx Billing Genie lets users search for an insurance rejection code or keyword, then provides an explanation for the rejection, as well as the appropriate intervention code to use when resubmitting the claim. A “Genie’s tips” section on the intervention pages provides helpful advice to avoid getting another rejection. Users can add notes for themselves on these pages. The app also has information sections on COVID-19, authorized vaccinations, early refill rules and glucometers. “We’ve been getting feedback from pharmacy users in B.C., which is really helpful for us,” says SanchoPersad. “And now, we’re focusing on expanding this for the rest of Canada." More than two years after Morgan and SanchoPersad launched their app—while continuing to work in pharmacy—support and interest from the pharmacy community keeps on coming. Many users have reached out to thank them for creating the app. A number of pharmacy technician schools have invited them to come and talk to students, and they’ll soon meet with the dean of a pharmacy school. “I’d love to see this in the hands of students so that even before they leave school they can integrate it into their workflow,” says Morgan who, while building a new business, has also written a children’s book inspired by her 12-year-old daughter (see sidebar). The goal, say Morgan and Sancho-Persad, is to have Rx Billing Genie on the mobile device of every pharmacy professional. “And we’re truly honoured that so many people are helping us get there,” says Sancho-Persad. “We’re so grateful to be part of such a supportive community." An author with a cause Between being a community pharmacist, a techpreneur, and a wife and mother to three kids, (ages 12 to 17), Shelley Morgan somehow also found time to coauthor a children’s book—one that addresses important social issues. Set to launch this February—in time for Black History Month— Beautiful Just Like Me: Real Princesses of Colour shines a spotlight on the lives and accomplishments of real Black princesses, and reinforces positive attributes such as being beautiful, strong and a champion. Illustrated by Morgan’s coauthor Donna Cornibert, the book builds on both of the women’s experiences growing up as girls with Black heritage in a mostly white world. “Representation matters, especially when you’re a young girl,” says Morgan. “Growing up in Sudbury I was one of five Black students in a school of about 100. And through conversations with my 12-year-old daughter, Simone, I know that she doesn’t see herself represented in mainstream media.” As they were working on the book, Morgan and Cornibert reached out to two of the Black princesses in the book—Princess Keisha of Nigeria and Princess Sarah Culberson. Culberson is an American who grew up in a foster home and found out later that she is the daughter of a paramount chief in Sierra Leone, a blood tie that makes her a princess. The two royals met over Zoom with Morgan, Cornibert and two of Morgan’s kids, Simone and Xavier. “When we explained that [our] vision was to help young children of colour to see themselves as beautiful, smart, caring children, they agreed with our vision and offered to support us via social media posts, et cetera,” Morgan recalls. “We all found common ground being women of colour wanting to help the next generation.” Beautiful Just Like Me comes with a companion journal, merchandise to match the attributes reinforced in the book, and a teacher’s guide “We have had it vetted by two elementary school teachers,” says Morgan. “Our goal is to reach out to libraries and school boards in order to get our project into the hands of young children, because representation matters.”

Dream team: Makers of the Rx Billing Genie app

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