Glimpse into Digital Patient Engagement by Pharmaceutical Firms
Evolving patient centric healthcare system and emerging cloud based technologies are helping pharma companies to proactively shift towards patient engagement model from the earlier consumer and prescription centric model
Patient engagement provides opportunities of understanding areas of therapeutic need gaps, treatment adherence and monitoring, patient education and empowerment for better decision making leading to enhanced quality of patient care and improved health outcomes. Engaging with patients moves the orientation of the company towards the needs of the patients through obtaining real world evidence to develop personalized medicines, new product developments, raise their brand awareness, create unique selling propositions and marketing strategies
Major touch points for a pharmaceutical company for patient engagement are usually out- patients on devices and patient education tools. However, in the first scenario, patient engagement gets limited to patients who are using a device to monitor their health and companies who are into device enabled therapeutic options as diabetes, respiratory disease gets an advantage here. Most pharma companies hence engage the patients through patient education apps via physician approval
Few months back, Pharma major Lupin Limited launched “ADHERO,” a new connected smart device for metered-dose inhalers for patients with chronic respiratory diseases to track their MDI usage thereby helping in promoting adherence to therapy. ADHERO, developed with Aptar pharma is a bluetooth-enabled, reusable smart device with built in sensors which attaches to the top of a MDI. It can track patients on their daily medication usage and consumption patterns. Information is accessible to the patients via the “MyAdhero” app on their smartphones. The app is enabled to send reminders, provide health alerts based on factors like Air Quality Index (AQI) at the patient’s current location and enable visual analytics. Physicians can also access patient-related information and medication tracking data using the app or patient dashboard portal
Patient education initiatives are not new but companies have started taking the digital route with advancement of technology. Cipla’s Breathfree initiative, through its web portal as well as breathefree touch app, is a comprehensive source of patient information for respiratory care providing details on diagnosis, counselling and treatment adherence. Lupin’s AI-powered health chatbot named ‘ANYA’ for disease awareness helps patients get ‘medically verified responses’ on disease and treatments. ANYA is the first bot of its kind to be launched in India for disease awareness. Last year, Abbott launched a:care, a digital platform to bridge communication between patients and doctors for diabetes, thyroid and osteo-arthritis. The doctor gets access to various medical education documents and patient support service while patients can get educational health information and participate in games on the app incentivised with points which can be discounted on diagnostics or medicines from 1mg
Patient engagement has always helped companies to fully understand the market they are operating in and amalgamation of the same with digital technologies, data capture, advanced analytics and research is a sure way of competitive advantage and strategizing for the future
