Awareness and recognition, presentation and diagnosis, treatment selection, brand selection and access, switching and persistency. Those are the phases of the patient journey as practiced by many companies. And that’s a good patient-centric journey to follow, but is there something missing?
According to the Industry Healthcheck 2014 report, 85% of respondents agree that patient-centricity is the best route to future profitability. And many companies are adjusting their strategy to focus on that patient journey.
Through mobile applications, drug conversion and medication adherence programs, and patient portals, pharmaceutical companies are working to provide content that guides the patient through a journey.
But it’s important to remember that each patient is unique in how their condition changes over time.
Healthcare providers and pharmaceutical companies must align to communicate to the patient the right information at the right stage of disease progression.
As a pharmaceutical organization you must become that information concierge. You must help facilitate the conversations between the patients and HCPs.
By enabling the patient to self-advocate and educating the HCPs on therapies and pre and post therapy wellness services, you can become this facilitator.
This is what will gain favor and access to the those hard to see HCPs.
So let’s look at some best practices and examples of how to effectively educate, enable, and facilitate…..
Ensure your key message meets the needs of the patients at each specific point in their disease progression. If you have a prostate cancer patient recently diagnosed, offer him support through a patient advocacy network. If the patient is beginning radiation or chemotherapy treatments offer informative content developed by compatible POLs as well as recipes for meals that will alleviate nausea.
Janssen Healthcare has created several “Care4Today” programs. These programs provide support that extends throughout the entire patient journey.
Their mental health solutions provide support for both the healthcare team (staff, administrators, and implementation managers) and patients from diagnosis to ongoing management. They offer patient and facilitator workbooks and videos, web and mobile tools, reminder services, and outcome analysis. Their objective is to educate everyone that’s a part of the journey to reduce relapse and re-hospitalization.
Their orthopedic solutions provide patients management programs for people undergoing orthopedic surgery. The education content is designed to help patient recovery at home and improve patient outcomes.
Janssen has plans to launch a heart health solution including a technology platform, support center, personalized exercise program, and education curriculum. These support services also include mobile health manager apps for family members to monitor medication adherence, a reward program to allocate charitable donations based on adherence, and reports that track medication schedules
Understand that a strong inbound strategy is necessary to drive engagement with patients, and this cannot occur alone. Healthcare providers and pharmaceutical companies must align to provide the best care and support to the patient.
In the case of Bayer’s drug, Xofigo, they decided on a micro-approach. They focused on 41 comprehensive cancer hospitals across Canada. They implemented a key account management approach. Bayer also developed workshops to educate the entire treatment team from HCPs to hospital administrators on radiation safety and technology. Work with these HCPs to deliver the content required for patient support.
Enable patients to self-educate about impending condition experiences before they occur.
Deliver an FAQ sheet. This should contain information on common questions asked by patients of the disease. It should also contain a list of questions the patient should ask to the HCP during their next visit.
Shift from a marketing mindset to that of a facilitator of helpful information. You no longer market and brand your drug, you connect patients and caregivers with information that helps and heals.
An example of fantastic patient-centric content can be found on Genentech’s Rheumatoid Arthritis site. Every piece of content on this site is written with the patient in mind. In fact, most of the content is written by actual RA patients. You can read each of their bios under the “Meet the Experts” section.
Patients can find how-to videos on cooking with RA, daily inspirational quotes published by patients, community polls requesting input on future site development, expectations around lifestyle adjustment, healthy tips and advice for staying productive. There’s an “Around the Home” section that provides advice on setting up the kitchen, fashion tips, and easy to use household tools for RA patients. The site also provides content for the families and caregivers as well as doctor discussion content.
Every “offer” on the site is educational in nature. The only form on the site does not lead to drug information, rather it offers a treatment tracking journal.
This helpful content also extends to their brand site. Their use of infographics provides perspective around the condition.
Develop healthy living communications that educate both patients and caregivers on proper diet, exercise and medication consumption. These communications should be very specific to the disease of the patient as well as the disease stage of the patient.
Exercise and diet restrictions will vary by disease and condition stage and this communication must be adjusted accordingly.
Also consider a medication notification form. This form should allow patients and caregivers to set-up alerts for medication email reminders and track medication adherence in a format that can be easily shared with the HCP.
Apps are a fantastic way to deliver interactive content that promotes healthy lifestyles and medication adherence.
Bayer has an app to help MS patients manage meds.
Novartis’ oncology division produced a few apps too, such as My Acro Manager to help patients with Acromegaly track test results, medication updates and improve their knowledge of their condition.
Medication adherence apps and a tool to track symptoms from HIV treatment are among Merck’s apps.
Many of these apps are also utilized by HCPs. In fact over 50% of healthcare apps are accessed by HCPs. Top apps include HCP tools and medical reference guides.
These apps serve several purposes:
They provide the sales organizations with a value-based offer
They empower the patients and HCPs to self-educate and become their own advocate
They capture the interaction with the app. These companies are collecting that important insight to better service their audience and drive the direction of their content creation.
Patients expect more from their healthcare experience – movement toward consumerism (applying the Amazon experience toward healthcare)
Although the end to end experience, we’re all not their yet – patients, consumers, providers – but as health innovations increase and advance, just like any adoption cycle, we anticipate the same for the overall healthcare experience
By starting with the first steps of address a connected patient experience, with a likely scenario that its by brand or product right now, we also can start to hypothesize about how all these brand experiences can intersect in the future.
A patient doesn’t think “How can this product help me”, they are looking for the answer to “how can I get better/healthier” overall. This leaves the opportunity for us to look at how we can connect the overall healthcare experience all together. Just imagine a world where your health experience connects the dots from your provider, the prescriptions you by, the retail OTC products you purchase…if this experience can be stitched together to deliver you healthier life options, how attractive is that overall?
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