Sponsored Insight
By Jennifer Fillman, Vice President & General Manager, Specialty Services, Cardinal Health & Dave Rosner, principal, Deloitte Consulting LLP
Meet Susan, a 40-year-old female actively managing Type II Diabetes. From her mobile phone, she can easily connect with her care manager to ask questions and receive reminders on her care plan. Her care manager receives daily updates, and reaches out to Susan frequently with real-time feedback and encouragement. Clinical data from hundreds of patients like Susan, is available to care providers and pharmaceutical companies, allowing powerful insights that can help improve treatments and outcomes, all conducted in a HIPAA compliant manner.
Patient engagement is going through a transformation, and scenarios like these are rewriting the way that patients and care providers interact throughout the treatment journey. As data becomes more accessible and technology advances continue, health care providers are in a position to make more informed clinical decisions and to create more personalized treatment plans for patients. At the same time, as the healthcare industry becomes increasingly focused on improving outcomes, there is a growing focus on driving better patient engagement.
This trend toward improved patient engagement is driven by three key stakeholders:
- Patients, increasingly engaged and informed, are requesting health solutions that are coordinated, convenient, customized, and accessible. Patients are using digital tools and technology to manage their well-being, and are starting to expect an “Amazon-like” customer experience when interacting with physicians, pharmacists and other healthcare service providers.
- Providers are interested in using health care data to gain deeper insights into the patient journey and to inform treatment decisions that lead to better outcomes — but accessing the necessary data and analytics is often a challenge.
- Pharmaceutical companies also want to understand the patient journey so they can develop effective programs to facilitate access to their products, drive medication adherence, deepen brand loyalty, and help improve outcomes.But like providers, pharma companies are often frustrated by an inability to access the insights they need.
Traditionally, patient services have been an offering provided only by pharma companies with specialty products or rare disease treatments. However, with the success of these services and the growing availability of technology and access to data, the market is shifting toward personalized, value-based treatment in all therapeutic areas. The demand for robust patient services capabilities is leading more bio-pharmaceutical companies to invest in building or outsourcing these capabilities. In fact, in a recent Deloitte study, 72% of clients indicated they have built or begun to build patient services programs.[1] And according to a patient study conducted by Pew, 76% of patients expect drug companies to provide them with tools and support services.
Cardinal Health offers a solution for pharma
Cardinal Health, a leader in delivering services to the specialty pharmaceutical industry, recognized that its pharma clients had growing interest in developing programs to support patients in their treatment journey — but they often lacked the analytics and insights to optimize these programs. To help address this need, Cardinal Health collaborated with Deloitte to develop ConnectSource, a new cloud-based patient engagement platform that delivers clear, consistent data reporting and actionable insights to guide the patient engagement strategy.
The ConnectSource solution is designed to deliver value-added services across the board. It was developed using Deloitte’s Patient Connect software platform, which supports the needs of healthcare providers and patients throughout the treatment journey. ConnectSource helps pharma companies to accelerate patients’ access to therapy by streamlining prior authorizations and appeals, and helps improve medication adherence by engaging and educating patients proactively.
Cardinal Health has also expanded its analytical capabilities to deliver an informed perspective on what the data means and how biopharma companies can use it to drive the success of their products. Through the ConnectSource platform, pharma companies can gain better visibility into treatment plans and have a better understanding of key issues, such as “When are my patients falling off therapy?” and “How can we help optimize patient outcomes?” In addition to sharing insights with pharma companies, patient data is shared back with the prescribing physician so he or she can use the knowledge to make more informed treatment decisions.
Through Cardinal Health’s work with Deloitte, they are able to offer access to clear and standardized reporting, which enable pharma companies to identify broader patient profile trends, improve the effectiveness of patient support, and gain insights that can support compliance with regulations. With these tools at their disposal, pharma companies are prepared to effectively engage at key touch points along the treatment journey, and ultimately support improved outcomes.
Want to learn more? We have recently talked about these capabilities on a webcast or visit our website.
[1] Deloitte research collected at Eye4Pharma conference in June 2016