The University of Texas Health Intelligence Platform (UT-HIP) has been issued a $23M contract to support the Texas Pharmaceutical Initiative aimed at impacting prescription drug access, pricing and outcomes for Texans.
The Texas Pharmaceutical Initiative (TPI) is a bipartisan $150M Texas legislative initiative, House Bill 4990 (88R), to rethink how prescription drugs are acquired, distributed, prescribed, and dispensed in the state of Texas. The TPI, housed within Texas Health and Human Services (HHSC), issued a two-year, $23M contract to UT-HIP in July 2025 to provide consulting and advisory services, analytics, market research, and clinical domain expertise to create a set of recommendations and define practical steps to address the TPI’s legislative intent. The effort is managed through cost centers at UT Austin College of Pharmacy and UT Health Houston School of Biomedical Engineering, and led by Mike Johnsrud PhD RPh and Rick Peters MD. The UT-HIP TPI Project analytics team is under Kristin Richards PhD RPh from UT Austin College of Pharmacy, the supply chain team is under Ryan Roux PharmD from UT MD Anderson, and the clinical workgroups are under Lynn Crismon PharmD former Dean of UT Austin College of Pharmacy and Ben Bobrow MD former Chair of Emergency Medicine at UT Health Houston McGovern School of Medicine.
UT-HIP will be recruiting expert team members from across UT campuses to address twenty-five plus workplans and twelve plus clinical workgroups. This collaboration presents a unique opportunity to profoundly affect prescription drug access, pricing, and clinical outcomes for Texans and has the potential to have multi-state and national effects.
