Patient Centricity

“Patient Centricity” is the latest buzzword in the Pharmaceutical industry & has the potential to disrupt the way the industry works commercially. It would establish a partnership among practitioners, patients, and their families (when appropriate) to ensure that decisions respect patients’ wants, needs and preferences and solicit patients’ input on the education and support they need to make decisions and participate in their own care. Patient involvement was never so high before, and neither the industry was so eager to interact with patients individually. As the business landscape of Life Sciences companies turn into digitization of their existing assets, “Patient Centricity” poses a new opportunity in customer involvement space.

Patient Centricity solutions need to interact with all key stakeholders i.e. Hospitals, Doctors, Patients, Third Party Risk Assessors, Healthcare Portals, Patient Community websites; which in turn presents great opportunities for Business Intelligence & cloud-based CRM systems. The need for Social Media analytics (through text mining & sentiment analysis), Knowledge portals, Customer Data Management and Segmentation rules are essential here. Fully-integrated solutions featuring business intelligence applications, data warehouse software, document processing, data normalization applications, Natural Language Processing (NLP) technologies, and search indexing/query software are ideal fits for Patient Centricity.

Features of Patient Centricity from Sales & Marketing perspective:

• Social Media/Patient Portals/Online Patient Groups
• Patient Education/Guidance/Awareness/Adherence Support (Knowledge Management)
• Patient & Physician Engagement/Digital Health Management (Patient Affiliation)
• Patient Profiling/Segmentation
• Treatment Monitoring via Remote Health Monitoring
• Personalized Medicine/Treatments/Medical Advice

Social Media/Patient Portals/Online Patient Groups

Pharmaceutical companies have started using social media aggressively to market much better and reach out to a wider audience. While complying with regulations, leading pharmaceutical firms are trying to connect with patients and spread awareness regarding diseases and health issues. Companies are also increasingly allowing patients to access medical information on portals that was previously available only to doctors. 

     Benefits to Patients

    

• Access to information is vastly improved
• Patients have a chance of improving their self-management of conditions and clinical outcomes
• Latent needs of patients can be understood
• Better connection with the larger patient community and forums

Measures for Social Media Engagement

•     IMS Health Reach Index - Reach is a measure of the absolute number of listeners and the index is based on the number of people reached by each channel through likes, shares and re-tweets.
•     IMS Health Relevance Index - Relevance measures whether people found posts or content relevant and/or useful, and the index is based on the extent to which content is being shared and forwarded across social networks. Relevance increases reach is an indicator that a social media platform is growing.
•      IMS Health Relationship Index - Relationship is a measure of interaction - the back and forth of conversation - and a measure of company and consumer or patient integration. The relationship index measures the level of interaction between a company and those who post, reply or otherwise interact with the company’s postings.

Patient Education/Guidance/Awareness/Adherence Support

Pharmaceutical companies have tried to move from a traditional role of a drug provider to a more advanced role of a health monitor. As part of this, they try and connect to patients through numerous online campaigns and implement initiatives that boost patient adherence to drugs and treatment plans.

Benefits to Patients

• Patients gain a more advanced understanding of diseases and can start managing their treatment process better
• Access to drugs, treatments and physicians improves
• With the necessary guidance and support, patients are more likely to adhere to dosage and thus lower chances of hospitalization

Patient & Physician Engagement/Digital Health Management

One of the best ways for Pharmaceutical companies to understand the needs of patients has been to work closely with patient networks. To improve their research and understanding of treatments, companies are also connecting with physician networks. Providing patients with increased access to physicians and information has been a priority for the industry.  

 Benefits to Patients & Physicians

• Transparency in working and a better understanding of patient needs
• Data on the patient social networks can be used to facilitate better research and drugs
• Easier access to physicians and treatments
• High quality clinical advice and consultations
• Understanding physicians’ unique clinical, professional and personal needs. Enabling them to better advertise their services and expand reach

Patient Profiling/Segmentation

Practice of regarding particular patients as more likely to have certain behaviours or illnesses based on their genome, age, appearance, race, gender, financial status, age, ethnic background, psychological traits, cultural mores or other observable characteristics.

   Benefits to Patients & Physicians

• Classification of patients into segments
• Identification of common needs within the classified Patient groups
• Addressing to the generic needs of the classified Patient groups

Treatment Monitoring

Treatment Monitor app provides a framework for medical professionals to track treatments prescribed and medical devices used by individual patients and groups of patients across a practice.

    Benefits to Patients & Physicians

• Provides a consolidated view of patients by device, treatment, or study group
• Tracks expiration dates of medical devices
• Enables reporting on effectiveness of treatment
• Treatment Monitor provides a way to manage medical records and track patient needs related to devices such as pacemakers and insulin pumps
• Easy to view related patient information and drill down on the outcome of treatment and the requirements for maintaining devices

Personalized Medicine/Treatments/Medical Advice

With the advancements in biotech and genome technology, companies have started leveraging this data to provide more personalized medicine and targeted therapies to patients. Pharmaceutical companies have realized that a single drug/treatment may not work similarly for all patients and have begun to understand the value of customer segmentation.  

    Benefits to patients

• Patients get a much more personalized treatment that takes into account their reaction and response to drugs/therapy
• Effectiveness of drugs can be improved significantly
• Access to fellow patients within similar subgroups/segments 
• More specific and targeted clinical advice and consultations