Marie Link

Marie’s Story

Marie Link is the oldest of five children; mother of three girls and dedicated to medication risk prevention. In 2011 Dr. Link was serving as a system medication safety officer at a large health system when her stepbrother Braxton died at the age of 28 from complications of prescription drug overdose. “This time was a wake-up moment for me. Here I am hired to protect patient lives and my own family is dying,” reports Dr. Link. Thus in early 2013, driven by a personal conviction and passion to reverse medication harm trends, Dr. Link set out to launch the company REMS Logic.

Dr. Link earned her Bachelor of Pharmacy from The Ohio State University in 2000, and a Doctorate of Pharmacy from the University of Kansas in 2007; graduating with a 4.0 GPA. She served four years on the SICP Section Advisory Group on Medication Safety and is serving her second year on the Section of Pharmacy Informatics and Technology Section Advisory Group on Clinical Information Systems, as the eHIT Collaborative Liaison. Things that excite Dr. Link are conversations about predictive data analytics, clinical decision support, health information exchange and getting better technology into the hands of clinicians who take care of patients everyday!

Facility

REMS Logic is a healthcare technology company specializing in REMS and drug risk prevention. The company promotes a proactive medication risk management model and better provider-patient communication to lessen the incidence of medication events and harm. The company provides expertise in healthcare technology development and optimization.

Significant Projects

Dr. Link recently participated in the October FDA panel on ‘REMS: Understanding and Evaluating Their Impact on the Health Care Delivery System and Patient Access’ and presented on ‘Inpatient Hospital Burden’ and ‘Effectively Communicating REMS to Influence Practice Change’. She also participates in the Pharmacy eHIT Collaborative contributing to the EHR guidance document titled ‘Electronic Health Record Certification: Making the Pharmacist’s Case to System Vendors by Practice Specific Settings’ which supports EHR certification and exchange of information from one EHR system to another.

Advice for Someone New to Your Specialty Area

“Get exposure and seek experience in the disciplines of medication safety, healthcare quality and risk management. Become familiar with leadership’s mission and identify ways that each discipline can contribute to quality objectives and overall hospital success. Understand that performance improvement and ‘best practice’ begin with small, incremental change that is improved over time and that remains dedicated to achieving the goal.“

ASHP’s Value to Members

“ASHP is an established and respected society known throughout the healthcare industry. ASHP drives success of important national pharmacy initiatives and is a group that all pharmacists should participate.”

“ASHP makes significant investments into each of its members; to keep them informed, to enhance knowledge, to collaborate with colleagues and to make each member feel like a valuable part of a team! I am extremely thankful for the relationships, experiences and knowledge gained through ASHP.”

“ASHP plays a pivotal role in raising awareness about the important contributions of pharmacists, fosters the growth of pharmacy practice and supports significant advancements to ensure continued strength and viability of the discipline of pharmacy far into the future.”