
Invistics Case Study: Drug Diversion
Tom Knight walks through the history of Invistics Corporation, the company he co-founded to build software that detects drug diversion inside hospital and pharmacy supply chains. Speaking as part of MIT's Substance Use Disorders Ventures Program, Knight explains how diversion happens when healthcare workers or systems siphon off controlled substances before they reach patients, and how pattern-detection software can flag anomalies in dispensing data that signal theft or fraud. He traces Invistics from founding through its eventual acquisition, covering the technical challenges of building the detection algorithms and the business challenges of selling compliance software to hospitals. The talk works as a venture case study as much as a technical one, with Knight reflecting on what the company got right and wrong as a startup operating inside the healthcare system. It gives a concrete, founder's-eye account of applying data analytics to a persistent problem in hospital pharmacy management.