Mapping The Impending Healthcare Disruptions Through The Patient Journey
And how healthcare brands can get ready for them
News broke last Thursday that Amazon has been granted wholesale pharmacy license for selling medical and other healthcare-related equipment in 12 states, which sent pharma industry stocks plummeting. Although the wholesaler license limits Amazon’s entry to the B2B side for now, analysts warn that Amazon is likely looking to enter the retail side and ship prescription drugs directly to consumers soon, a move that could severely disrupt the retail pharma market.
Looking at the big picture, we can see this as part of an emerging trend in the healthcare space, as various market sectors start to seek vertical integration as a way to provide a differentiated experience.
For example, over the past few years, CVS has been gradually expanding the MinuteClinic it operates within select stores for walk-in consultations and other basic medical services. Last week, the Wall Street Journal reported that the pharmacy chain is in talks to acquire Aetna, the third-largest insurer in the States, for $66 billion. If approved, this acquisition could potentially result in a more streamlined process for settling prescription bills and, more importantly, give CVS a distinct competitive advantage as Aetna customers might be incentivized to prioritize using CVS’s products and services.
Due to strict regulations and incumbent inertia, healthcare is an industry that has been comparatively slow to adopt digital technologies to cater to the shifting consumer behaviors, making it an industry that is primed for disruption. Let’s take a high-level look at the three main stages in the patient journey to map out the potential opportunities and challenges that emerging technologies would bring to healthcare brands.
Discovery & Booking
Similar to how the internet enabled on-demand services like Uber and TaskRabbit that digitized, respectively, the curbside ride-hailing and calling the local handyman services, a number startups are working to bring on-demand economy to healthcare. Startups like ZocDoc and DocPlanner have digitized the process of finding a healthcare provider and making an appointment. Meanwhile, upstarts like Pager and Heal are working to bring on-demand house calls to more patients who wish to skip a visit to the doctor’s office. In the adjacent wellness sector, there are apps like Zeel and Soothe that are turning massage into an on-demand home service. All these startups share the same end goal of making healthcare services more readily accessible and by establishing an online marketplace that matches patients directly to providers.
Looking further down the road, the the changing search market may also have a significant impact on healthcare marketing. According to eMarketer (paywall), US healthcare and pharma industry spent $930 million on search ads in 2016, which accounted for over 46% of their overall digital ad spending. With voice search and visual search on track to take over half of all mobile searches by 2019, it is important that healthcare brands take the initiative to configure their website to make sure the correct information would be served in these two new forms of search. (For more on this, check out this comparative analysis we recently published.)
Then of course, there is the Quantified Self movement that seeks to capture every last bit biometric data for personal health and wellness management. The movement has been gaining momentum over the past few years partly due to the advance in wearable technology, and as adoption continues to pick up, the data they collect will need to be put into good use. One way to do so would be to sync up with an analytics service powered by machine learning, which would offer recommendations for preemptive follow-ups whenever an irregularity is detected, therefore triggering a search for healthcare services or products. How healthcare marketers can find a way to integrate their brands into that data-driven discovery process without raising ethical issues will soon become a top priority.
Wearable adoption continues to rise, with smartwatches soon surpassing fitness trackers
In-Clinic Experience
Naturally, the kind of data-driven approach will likely spill over from the discovery phrase into the on-site experience and play a big role in diagnosis and testing. Beyond making people more alert to their healthcare needs and risks, the abundance of personal biometric data may also become a point of differentiation that influences their choice of healthcare providers. Soon, healthcare providers will need to update their patient record system to allow easy integration of personal health data so as to speed up the diagnostic process. Those who fail to make it easy for patients to integrate their personal data as a reference for diagnosis might risk alienating the patients and offering a comparatively subpar healthcare experience.
To that end, big tech companies are trying their hands at making this a reality. Apple’s CareKit offers an open software framework for developers to build apps that taps into the health data collected by wearables and enable users to track and, should they wish to, share their symptoms and medications with the care team behind the apps to gain better understanding of their conditions. Apple also reportedly considered buying a medical clinic startup Crossover Health as part of its push into healthcare. Previously, both Google and Microsoft have made attempts at creating an online platform for storing consumer health data. Google ran Google Health from 2008 to 2011 when it shut down due to low adoption, but Microsoft’s HealthVault has been in operation since 2007.
Beyond wearable data, immersive technologies like Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) will also play a major role in transforming the in-clinic experience. Already, we are seeing hospitals employing VR in educational and training programs for doctors and sometimes patients as well. As mobile AR starts to pick up, it will soon become a great tool for doctors to visualize internal diseases and explain treatment to patients. VR simulations are also seeing early success in treating mental disorders such as PTSD and phobias. On the marketing side, we have also seen examples like Zimmer Biomet, a company that specializes in manufacturing orthopedic medical devices, that used a custom VR experience to showcase their latest products at medical exhibitions.
Healthcare industry’s spending on immersive technologies nearly doubled in the past 5 years
Artificial intelligence and machine learning will also play an increasingly important role in shaping the healthcare experience. For example, Google acquired London-based AI firm DeepMind in 2014 and then took a leap into healthcare when DeepMind Health collaborated with the NHS to develop an app called Streams, which improves the detection of acute kidney injury through blood test results.
Together, $5.1 billion worth of VR and AR softwares will be developed for healthcare purposes by 2025, according to the estimation of Goldman Sachs. However, the demand is not nearly being matched by the content supply side, leaving the market space stagnant. In order to accelerate the employment of immersive technologies in healthcare, healthcare providers will need to invest more resources and seek partnerships with content creators to create immersive assets and experiences.
Post-Visit Services
Beyond what we already talked about in the beginning, Amazon’s looming presence could also prompt more pharmacy brands to explore innovative solutions to stay competitive. One easy way to do so would be to acquire one of the many startups aiming to digitize the prescription distribution. Convenience is a main selling point for digital pharmacies like Capsule, NowRx, and ZipDrug, which all aim to popularize home delivery for prescription meds and refills via user-friendly mobile apps. Personalization is another big trend that some digital pharma services are prioritizing. PillPack mails individual pre-proportioned packets of daily medications to the patient for easier day-to-day management while PillDrill uses RFID technology to monitor prescription levels and encourage patient adherence for taking their meds.
Moreover, we are also expecting to see the kind of personalized wellness solutions like Namaste New York cross over into healthcare sectors. Startups like VitaMe, Care/of, and Multiply Labs are already offering highly personalized solutions for vitamin and nutrition supplements. It is not hard to imagine how a similar model could be applied over-the-counter medicines, especially for those that deal with common ailments and allergies. Consumers also have more access to commercially available lab tests than ever before, and there are even several companies such as 23andMe and Ancestry DNA that are specialized in personalized DNA testing for tracing ancestry and mapping out health risks.
Similar to the way that physical retail is evolving to become either more experience-driven or more value-driven, pharmaceutical brands will need to figure out new ways to provide patients with personalized value offers and experience-driven patient care services, in addition to leveraging their retail and digital touchpoints to cultivate long-term customer relationships.
Furthermore, as we saw at CES earlier this year, healthcare is getting a strong boost from the recent developments in connected devices and machine learning, allowing medical device manufacturers to create smarter gadgets that work wonders seamlessly with mobile and wearable devices. In September, the FDA announced plans to launch a pilot program that creates a regulatory fast lane for nine top tech companies to accelerate the release of software and products within the health industry, which would no doubt further boost the healthcare tech adoption.
Beyond connected medical devices, another major development in connected devices is the quickening adoption of smart speakers like the Amazon Echo or Google Home. With their voice-activated interfaces, they provide healthcare brands a new way to offer continuing patient care and engage with customers at home. For example, allergy medication brand Zyrtec created an Alexa skill to extend its AllergyCast tracking feature from mobile app to Amazon Echo, offering customers a hands-free voice experience that encourages daily brand interactions. Startups like Ada Health are working to apply conversational interfaces to create a more intuitive and smooth healthcare experience.
To create better experiences for customers and stay relevant amidst impending disruptions, it is up to healthcare brands to take the initiative to explore the huge potential that emerging technologies will bring to market, adopt a data-driven approach within the ethical bounds, and start integrating them seamlessly into different stages of the patient journey.
