1. White Paper #1:
Precision Targeting
In this day and age, the consumer is “royalty” and companies need behavioral insights
about their consumption. The same challenges apply in tracking patient compliance on
medication or understanding shoppers’ trial and repeat grocery habits. Think of your POS
data, think of your e-commerce transactions captured in Google Analytics and Adobe’s
SiteCatalyst. Consider retargeting your consumer audiences leaving their merchandise in
the shopping carts, without ever checking out.
“Growing up” in healthcare analytics, I was lucky enough to be on the forefront of patient
claims data usage, back in 2001. Introducing unidentified, HIPAA-compliant patients’
medical and hospital claims data to healthcare companies to help them pursue optimal
precision targeting strategies opened many doors.
Just a few examples from an exhaustive list of applications:
• Medical device companies creating “one off” and “just-in-time” surgical implants
could more comfortably forecast their future supply and demand needs based on
historical device implant patterns of their key surgeon base
• Oncology outcomes data could be tracked, not only through clinical encounters and
self-reported instruments, but also through claim captures, showing the progression of
disease, therapy and management longitudinally
• And purely commercially, pharmaceutical companies selling injectables could now
reach well beyond facility in-flow data to assess optimal targeting practices
I was also lucky enough to learn in-depth medical and reimbursement coding and
combine that with disease, therapy and clinical insights to arrive at recommendations that
would allow companies to reach out to their targeting base online. I would help them tier
their physician footprint not just by deciling or quintiling, the traditional sales force alignment
way of working, but by several, previously unused parameters:
Are their physicians early adopters? Are they spreaders? Are they allegiant to one drug?
Are they focused on switching drugs frequently? Or on stability, and continuing medications
as long as they see that the patients fare well on them and are adherent? Are their nurse
practitioners and physician assistants active care providers with their own NPI numbers?
With this alternative focus came more precision. With the new Obama Care, the Sunshine
Act and the universal needs in the US for Electronic Health Records systems, these trends to
achieve accuracy and precision are likely to continue. Call it “Big Data,” call it “Non-
Personal Promotion,” call it “Meaningful Use.” Call me.
Precision targeting. For more information, contact The DataMine Inc.
Barbara R. Haimowitz, PhD | 646.207.5059 | BarbAnalysis1@gmail.com