CCS is a leading provider of collaborative care programs and home-delivered medical supplies for those with chronic conditions, specifically diabetes. Pulse 2.0 interviewed CCS chief technology officer Richard Mackey to learn more about the company.
Richard Mackey’s Background
Could you tell me more about your background and role at CCS? Mackey said:
“I am the chief technology officer at CCS, a company redefining chronic care management by combining medical devices and supplies with comprehensive patient education and coaching, all in one platform. I specifically lead the technology organization at CCS, including digital strategy, analytics and enterprise infrastructure. My 20-plus years of experience managing technology at various leading organizations — including a strong focus on agile transformation, business analytics and digital innovation — have enabled me to consistently and effectively improve organizational efficiencies and accelerate growth.”
Unique Approach To Chronic Care Management
Can you tell us how your company uniquely approaches chronic care management? Mackey shared:
“At CCS, the team I lead has played a mission-critical role in our efforts to defragment the care experience for patients living with chronic diseases. Together, we’ve helped transform CCS from a 30-year-old, traditional product supply focused company to an innovative, end-to-end chronic care engagement platform — integrating predictive models, medical supplies, pharmaceuticals, education, coaching, and more to optimize outcomes for those living with chronic diseases, while also reducing total costs of care. After serving individuals for 30 years, CCS is now utilizing its relationships, experience, and data – all on one platform – to create a new era of home-based, patient-centered chronic care management.”
Challenges Faced
You launched an AI-powered predictive model this year. Can you discuss what makes this model unique, and the specific patient challenges it solves for? Mackey acknowledged:
“We launched PropheSee in 2024 – an AI-powered predictive model that improves therapy adherence for people living with diabetes. This new model from CCS proactively identifies patients most at risk of stopping usage of their continuous glucose monitor (CGM). The capability drives personalized interventions targeted to individuals, improving patient outcomes and lowering total costs of care.”
“Utilizing PropheSee, health plans and risk-bearing providers can realize savings of up to $2,200 per patient per year from an increase in CGM adherence and better glycemic control. With PropheSee, we’ve realized 85% accuracy predicting patient behavior three months in advance. Also, with the deployment of this new predictive model and the corresponding interventions, we’ve already observed increases in adherence rates among targeted, high-risk patient cohorts by as much as 50% compared to control groups. The increase in adherence resulted from tech-enabled, personalized interventions based on risk classification, along with the timely delivery of patient-specific information and insights that support long-term therapy adherence. We don’t just inform of a patient’s risk, we provide the service to support the patient in maintaining the care plan they’ve agreed to with their provider.”
Evolution Of The Company’s Technology
How has your business model evolved as a result of AI? Mackey noted:
“AI represents a new future for proactive and preventive patient care. We’ve already talked about the benefits of AI and machine learning models when it comes to improving CGM adherence, but another tangible example is how we’re utilizing these same technologies internally to drive operational efficiencies and productivity. For example, we are leveraging GenAI to summarize call interactions, replacing what was a manual task and saving 15-20% of time on average per interaction.”
Significant Milestones
What have been some of the company’s most significant milestones? Mackey cited:
“In 2024, we doubled down on evidence-based research to drive transparency and insight on best practice approaches to integrated diabetes care management. More specifically, we announced new peer-reviewed research showing patients living with diabetes who use a CGM device stay on therapy longer and have a lower total cost of care when they receive their supplies through a medical benefit, instead of a pharmacy benefit. The peer-reviewed publication in the Journal of Medical Internet Research Diabetes (JMIR) used a retrospective claims analysis to demonstrate that patients receiving their CGM through the medical benefit instead of a pharmacy had 35% lower average annual total costs of care and 23% higher device adherence rates. CCS also presented supporting research at the ADCES and ISPOR conferences.”
“In addition, CCS spearheaded a survey of more than 1,500 living with diabetes in 2024 to better understand and amplify awareness of the challenges being faced by these patients. The findings showed 57% of individuals living with Type 2 diabetes in the U.S. think GLP-1 weight loss drugs alone may be a silver bullet for helping achieve their health goals. Beyond GLP-1 weight loss drugs, a broad lack of focus on patient education and coaching for people living with diabetes was also highlighted in this report. Approximately one-third (36%) of respondents felt they did not have enough information provided when they were first diagnosed with their condition — or were first responsible for their own care — to help them effectively manage their condition.”
Differentiation From The Competition
What differentiates the company from its competition? Mackey affirmed:
“Our dataset is a massive competitive differentiator, and also played a pivotal role in the creation of PropheSee – our AI-powered predictive analytics platform. CCS’ dataset — which includes decades of deep, proprietary patient behavior data — paints a significantly more holistic picture of an individual’s health and well-being versus claims data, which is often delayed and not fully reflective of their journey. Also of note, patient-level Social Determinants of Health (SDOH) data and insights round out a more comprehensive view of each patient and empower healthcare organizations to proactively identify those most at risk of falling off therapy.”
“CCS is one of the first in the industry to successfully bring together patient preference, SDOH, and supply chain data in a way that allows for AI-based, machine learning predictive profiling of patients with interventions to better maintain therapy. Our ability to integrate the use of these data along with AI directly into established workflows is a differentiator. Earlier investments in data and modern tools/services to complement our proprietary platform have been instrumental in empowering CCS to build flexible AI-powered predictive models that drive positive patient change at scale.”
Predictions
What AI-specific predictions do you have? Mackey concluded:
“2025 will continue to be a big year for GenAI adoption in healthcare as teams move from pilots to production. I expect the debate for build vs buy with GenAI will heat up in healthcare this year too. The race to integrate Large Language Model (LLM) capabilities is also bearing fruit both for product companies and scenarios where existing applications and workflows take advantage of GenAI LLMs. GenAI is a particular area of opportunity in chronic care. These health conditions require ongoing management both in care and in lifestyle. GenAI is, by definition, an opportunity to reduce complexity. If we offer less friction between a person and their care, we make it easier for the patient to modify their lifestyle.”
“When it comes to chronic disease management for patients in 2025, the biggest areas of challenge where healthcare leaders should focus are:
1) Preventive care – proactively identifying patients at highest risk of adherence challenges (medical device adherence, medication adherence, and/or lifestyle adherence);
2) Personalized experience – engaging those at-risk patients with tailored communications that hold the highest potential to drive behavior change; and
3) Administrative efficiencies – these may not be visible to the patient but will speed up and streamline day-to-day efforts, while empowering clinicians to focus more on the patient, and less on technology and paperwork.
