Will you take your medicine? FICO says it can tell

Patients who don't stay on medication regimens are a common worry among health care professionals.

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Fair Isaac Corp. Fair Isaac Corp. Latest from The Business Journals Bluestem will be Top 50 MN public firm after IPO Fair Isaac raises outlook, cuts 200 jobs Fair Isaac CEO Greene received .8M in ’10 Follow this company and its FICO credit score can already predict what consumers will do when they open their wallets. Now, the company is betting it can predict what they’ll do when they open their medicine cabinets.

Minneapolis-based Fair Isaac (NYSE: FICO) is launching a product that health insurers and benefits managers can use to determine whether a patient will likely take his or her medication.

The company mined data provided by a pharmacy-benefits manager to create the so-called “medication adherence” score. To generate a particular person’s score, the firm can rely on data unrelated to health claims, such as driving records, history of paying rent and utility bills, and length of time living at a particular address.

“There are many indicators of whether you’re going to take your medication [that] have nothing to do with medicine,” said Fair Isaac CEO Mark Greene at a recent investor conference. “Many of these indicators speak to your stability and predictability as a patient.”

Fair Isaac is using public data, and won’t violate patient-privacy regulations, Greene said at the conference.

The company’s sales teams are already marketing the score, a spokesman said. The firm expects the FICO medication score will be assigned to about 10 million patients over the next year, and already is working on deals with potential customers, according to a New York Times blog post(which also includes some "risk factors" according to the data). The company has posted descriptions of the producthere.

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