Barcelona 2015

Mar 24, 2015 - Mar 26, 2015, CCIB, Barcelona

Your Customer is in Charge.

How to be a Value Innovator

A value innovator must assure their therapeutics are delivered to only those who will be the greatest beneficiaries, identifying critical gaps and developing collaborative solutions to ensure and demonstrate treatment success.



The focus of life science innovation is broadening beyond the therapeutic; it increasingly involves algorithms, devices, and sets of services that provide higher confidence that value will be provided to the patient in terms of clinical outcomes and quality of life, and to the health system in improved population health and economics.  This is a new category of life science innovator we term the ‘value innovator.”  The first step for any company wanting to be a value innovator is to have a deep and profound understanding of the problem they are addressing – not the biological problem, but the entire context for the therapeutic solution.  This requires understanding the current standard of care, what it’s delivering, its current shortcomings and all the facets affecting patient care. We talk to Jeff Elton, Managing Director, Accenture Life Sciences, on the expansion of pharma’s role in recent years to value-delivering partners, with services forming a critical component.

Analytics-Driven

“Insight is the first critical component to being a value innovator and this is informed by real world data and analytics insights. For example, why do diabetic patients only interact with health professionals or interactive tools three percent of the time they are managing their disease state; why do 20 to 40 percent of first diagnosed diabetics not initiate therapy; why do 40 percent become non-adherent after their first eight months on treatment?1 Understanding what is really happening with the patient along their care journey is key, both from a clinical perspective and an emotional perspective.  That understanding brings us closer to answering the question – what could we be doing to change that outcome?” explains Elton.

Analytics address another care challenge: identifying patients and patient populations most likely to be beneficiaries of a therapy or therapeutic management approach. It is estimated that up to 95 percent of the variability in patient drug response may be due to genetic differences, according to American Family Physician. Tailoring treatments based on specific biological factors, or "biomarkers," that indicate whether a given drug will be effective for a particular patient can significantly enhance response rates and outcomes while reducing costs associated with unnecessary or ineffective treatments.

Facilitating Adherence

The objective is to identify how we can accommodate for the gaps in the delivery system.  For example, how do we make it easier for patients to manage their disease, identifying barriers to adherence and predicting those who are most likely to not adhere, pre-empting this from happening with support services such as remote monitoring".

A value innovator will be a service syndicator that creates groups of partners who will collectively help deliver the best possible patient outcomes for diverse  patient populations being treated by different providers and regional systems.

One area of immediate opportunity is to improve therapeutic adherence, patient engagement,and ultimately, predictable positive outcomes for multiple chronic and chronic-acute diseases. Elton elaborates: “The objective is to identify how we can accommodate for the gaps in the delivery system.  For example, how do we make it easier for patients to manage their disease, identifying barriers to adherence and predicting those who are most likely to not adhere, pre-empting this from happening with support services such as remote monitoring, etc. All therapies require something from the patient, whether it’s lifestyle modifications, motivation etc., and services can enable this by assisting in the accomplishment of goals, day-to-day-support, counselling, peer support etc.”, adds Elton.

Demonstrating Outcomes

New technology can help payers and providers to address several major care challenges—such as compliance and chronic disease management—but can also demonstrate the value achieved and validate the outcomes delivered. “This is hugely important especially when a therapy is transformative and ultimately curative, that we can back this up with a value dossier to validate the outcomes delivered”, says Elton.

Future Trends

Becoming a true value innovator will involve substantial investment in the enabling infrastructure required to make progress in improving outcomes and removing unnecessary costs to the system. “The different range of potential partnerships and approaches are just beginning to form.  Companies like Philips, working with salesforce.com, are now providing remote monitoring infrastructure to health providers.  Others, such as Merck and Medtronic are investing in companies to create an ecosystem of monitoring and analytic solutions around highly focused patient populations, such as those with Chronic Heart Failure.   Elton notes, “Accenture is advancing new capabilities for advanced analytics and integrated services enabling our clients’ care management services and new business models to be deployed, scaled and evolved more rapidly and confidently.”

Elton adds that “predicative analytics enables life science companies and their provider partners to anticipate and take proactive actions on issues such as non-adherence with unprecedented precision. This is an analytics-driven capability, leveraging the latest tools, facilitating the fast, efficient and effective deployment of services. Increasing consumerism will also change the rather removed relationship that life science companies have historically had with patients, with the expectation that patients will have an ongoing relationship with their services providers. This is a seed change, the focus and intent of the value innovator will be almost solely on ‘their patients’ – having the relationship and the responsibility for outcomes and value over the long term.  Overall, we anticipate also seeing a deepening of pharma’s beneficial influence as they work with patient populations across a broader ecosystem”.

Providing high-quality care collaboration services offers the potential for pharmaceutical companies to assure their innovative therapeutics and the full depth of their disease insights are delivered to patients as effectively as possible, drive as much value to the health system as possible, and establish mutually beneficial collaborative partnerships. It will also allow pharmaceutical companies to play a critical role in the shift to value-based healthcare delivery that is taking hold in most major world markets in partnership with their payer, provider and patient customers.


1. Source: Verispan/McKesson



Barcelona 2015

Mar 24, 2015 - Mar 26, 2015, CCIB, Barcelona

Your Customer is in Charge.