Multichannel Excellence

Oct 17, 2016 - Oct 18, 2016, London

Advance your multichannel strategy for valued partnerships with patients, HCPs and payers

Digitalization and Pharma, Opportunity or Irrelevance?

When it comes to pushing digital technology boundaries, pharmaceutical companies have been slow to adapt.



The pace of healthcare evolution and change is not slowing. This offers opportunities to pharma companies to positively support and ease the pain of transition and change and digital technology provides a means of fulfilling these opportunities.

Cost control and outcome-based care

Government and payors are creating and experiencing increasing pressure to manage costs, including the purchase and use of medicine. Being accepted and retained on formularies may be influenced by more cost-effective delivery and compliance processes, supported digitally. For example, sensors and personal dispensing devices can collect and analyse patient data and send it to a healthcare provider, via the cloud. This information provides the healthcare professional with objective, accurate patient data on compliance and outcome, as well as efficacy information.

Patient involvement

Day by day, digital technology is becoming an increasing part of patients’ lives. Communities, platforms, apps and sensors are finding their way into the management of our financial, leisure and shopping activities and evidence suggests that patients are increasingly comfortable in taking greater control of their health with help from digital technology. For example, a 2015 survey showed over 85% of patients feeling confident in their ability to take responsibility for their own health and knowing how to access online resources to help them achieve it1.The use of digital technology to support and manage our health and healthcare offers additional opportunities and patient expectations for digital intervention in these important areas of their lives are almost guaranteed to increase.

The desire and expectation of healthcare professionals to be able to engage digitally is also increasing. As the proportion of healthcare professionals who are Generation Y’ers increases, they create a community that is both more comfortable with and welcoming of digital technology. The pledge in the UK to offer Skype GP appointments by 2020 is an indication of this acceptance.

If pharma companies don’t do it, others will (and already are)

Companies such as Apple, IBM and Qualcomm Technologies are already moving into healthcare technology, engaging with patients through apps, health and fitness devices, online communities, and more. The volume of data these platforms can collect is almost unimaginable, providing opportunities to drive learning and insights previously unattainable. Equally, at an individual patient level, the advanced analytics employed can deliver support and input to clinical decisions.

The advent of new, independent digital information channels threatens to wrestle control of their own product data from pharma companies. Online communities, for example, share, discuss and pass judgement on products, based on real-time, personal experience. Pharma companies need to find ways of picking up and responding to this commentary on their products quickly in order to retain their authority and, potentially, their credibility.

Going digital’ doesn’t have to be ‘go big’

In fact, research around the world suggests that ‘starting small’ could be most effective. The key is starting with something the patient or stakeholder really wants. A 2014 study in Germany, UK and Singapore2 highlighted ‘finding and scheduling physician appointments’ as the area in which patients wanted most digital help. So, within three very different healthcare systems, most patients wanted the same thing – help with routine tasks in what is for them a complex and challenging environment.

Investment decisions in digitization need to be informed by a consideration of patient demand and the value created through delivery of the service, and like all organizations in all sectors, healthcare companies need to continually add to and improve their digital services to retain and increase patient demand and create increasing value.

Areas of digital opportunity

1. In any industry, the ability to have personalized interactions with stakeholders and customers is of immense value. Digital technology enables this through the delivery of integrated products and services. There are already many examples, WellDoc, for example, has launched a mobile app for managing type 2 diabetes and The American College of Cardiology has launched a Statin Intolerance app, which helps physicians to evaluate statin myopathy and then manage the patient.

The potential for creating integrated digital ecosystems, that constantly monitor a patient’s condition and provide feedback to the patient and stakeholders, will enable the continuous improvement of health outcomes.

2. As well as enabling deeper individual patient interactions, digital technologies also enable broader engagement via multiple channels. Pharmaceutical sales reps, medical science liaisons, and patient service teams can interact with physicians, patients and caregivers in person, via mobile phones, the internet, apps and social media. 24/7 virtual care will become commonplace and specialist apps already exist. For example, a US developed app gives new parents returning home with babies from an intensive care unit on-demand support and coaching from a neo-natal nurse.

3. By using internal PLUS externally derived data, pharma companies can drive commercial advantage by improving and honing their pipelines, products and strategies. At the most basic level, marketing and sales forces can use advanced analytics to understand prescribing behavior and patient profiles, whilst R&D teams can take advantage of advanced simulation and modelling techniques.

At Incite, we work with both patients and healthcare professionals and can help you to take full advantage of digital opportunities. We have considerable experience in the digital space, both within and outside the healthcare sector, so can bring sector specific experience and also learnings from other, more developed sectors.


About the Author

Ali Barnes is Principal at Incite Marketing Planning and has over 25 years of research experience, much of it spent in the healthcare field, working with patients, carers and HCPS. She has recent experience of working Opthalmologists, Haematologists, Neurologists Dermatologists and Endocrinologists and also Specialist Nurses and Payors in these areas. On the consumer side, Ali has mapped patient pathways for a number of healthcare categories across 33 countries.

Sources:

1. Ipsos in collaboration with The National Council on Patient Information and Education and Pfizer, 2015

2. The McKinsey Digital Patient survey, 2014.



Multichannel Excellence

Oct 17, 2016 - Oct 18, 2016, London

Advance your multichannel strategy for valued partnerships with patients, HCPs and payers