I called one of my specialist Doctor’s offices to send over my clinical data to my primary physician. After multiple failed attempts to coordinate the transfer of my data, I requested my Specialist Doctor’s office to send it to me and here was our interesting conversation:
Me: Could you please email me my data?
Physician office: Sorry, we can’t email. It is not HIPAA compliant
Me: (surprised and in no mood to debate) Then, How can I receive my data?
Physician office: We can fax you the information. Please give me your fax number.
Me: Sorry, I don’t have fax where I live
Physician office: (surprised) oh, where do you live?
Me: “21st Century” 🙂
This is just one such example of the current state of patient experience. Your patients are the same person who
Orders from Amazon in one click and informed of every single step via text, app notifications, etc
Enjoys personalized content recommendation from Netflix, Youtube, Tiktok, etc.
Engages in social media communities as a consumer and even as an influencer
However when it comes to Healthcare, a patient still has to deal with faxes, manually calling in to schedule appointments and no meaningful way to look at their data. As a patient my engagement usually starts and ends with the physician conversation. The experience of a patient from a Pharmaceutical company (Sponsor) is no different as well. I have heard stories from patients on how they were treated as a brand new caller every time they are called in a patient support helpline or to get medical information.
The million dollar question - Can a Sponsor or HCP really engage their patients like Amazon or Netflix engages their customer? Why should they and How can they do it? Let me explain this from the context of a Sponsor and most of this is relevant to a HCP as well.
So it all boils down to three important areas
Build an enriched patient repository
Leverage the data to engage and humanize the patient journey
Ultimately, improve the therapy outcome for patients
Build an enriched patient repository
In order to provide an enriched patient experience, Sponsors need to have an enriched patient data repository. Most of the sponsor organizations are stuck with legacy data warehouses (DW) and Master data management (MDM) systems to store basic information such as patient contacts, insurance or medication information. I don’t want to undermine the significance of a DW or MDM solution. They serve a purpose and still have a role to play in Enterprise systems, However modern day problems need a modern day solution.
For example, we need a solution that can go beyond and ingest, store and manage patient data including device generated data, clickstream data, barriers to health care, household information, financial challenges, etc. This will provide holistic information about the patient which inturn can be used to provide an enriched patient experience. On top of this, Sponsors can really build a patient repository that spans across brands, therapeutic areas and geography.
Leverage the data
Now that you have an enriched patient repository, our second objective is to take advantage of this data to engage customers where they are. For example, Sponsors can
Engage patient via proactive notifications for medication reminders, physician visits or even assign personalized training courses that can be taken via mobile app
Assign personalized care plans and tailored medication schedule that flows with patients lifestyle
Recruit patients for clinical trials & commercial therapies via personalized social media outreach and educating patients
How about automating all of the above at scale? Success of any therapy boils down to medication adherence and is better achieved by engaging patients via personalized and omnichannel communication. This is a win-win-win strategy for Patients, Sponsors and HCP’s.
Improve the therapy outcome
And throughout the patient journey, Sponsors can collect meaningful patient data (of course after taking their consent) to not only engage them, but also to predict therapy outcome and take proactive actions to ensure they complete their journey successfully. For example, sponsors can also identify the segment of patient population that have poor medication adherence or missed physician visits and reach out to them proactively. This way we can solve patient issues well before they drop out of therapy. This is significant both in commercial therapies as well as in Clinical Trials.
I know what you're thinking. This is all easier said than done and I completely understand. For someone who has worked in both Sponsor Organizations and Technology companies, I don’t want to sugarcoat your challenges.
Patient data is spread across hundreds of systems - multi platform (Legacy, Onpremise, Cloud, etc), multi vendors, etc
Unintegrated systems or point to point integrations
Lack of reliable data or inability to access data
No access to EHR and MHR data from Health care providers
Regulatory and compliance restrictions
And the list goes on…
However every great journey begins with baby steps and we need to have clear short term and long term goals. As every data scientist knows, transformational data projects don’t fail because of inability to analyze data, rather due to lack of reliable data. So focus on areas with available and reliable data and get quick wins and build a repeatable framework. Yes, this transformation will be a journey, but a journey that is well worth it.... ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subash Rajavel is the founder and Chief editor at xGenom. He has 15 plus years of experience in Health care and Life Sciences. His primary focus are Patient centric solutions, Digital Health and Next-gen Clinical Trial solutions.
You can reach him at subash@xgenom.com
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