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Pharmaceuticals Shift Focus to Greater Patient Engagement

Patient Engagement VS. Digital Patient Engagement

According to Healthcare IT News, Patient Engagement at its core is a patient’s ability and willingness to improve their health, along with interventions (from provider, pharmas, etc.) to support such participation. Patient engagement has existed in clinics and hospitals for thousands of years, however with technology redefining healthcare, the term ” patient engagement” is being reassessed throughout all departments of healthcare.

Rather than patient engagement, leading industry experts are paying closer attention to “digital patient engagement,” or the information between a patient and healthcare professional mediated directly or indirectly by technology. Pharmaceutical companies are being disrupted with cutting edge technology that is helping patients become more empowered and knowledgeable about their wellbeing. According to the Capgemini Consulting Digital Life Science Market Web Watch, there was a 300% increase in digital initiatives from 2016 to 2017. 60% of these initiatives focused on digital patient engagement.

  • How Pharma Companies Plan to Improve Patient Engagement

    Pharma companies are moving away from “salesy” direct marketing tactics where the customer is led through a sales funnel and communication between the pharmas and patient is ended from there. Instead, Pharma leaders are focusing on inventing ways to improve a patient’s CDJ (customer decision journey), which recognizes that in a world where consumers are influenced by information, the process involved in making a purchase decision should be heavily invested in. For pharma companies, improving the consumer decision journey on medication means increasing engagement between the patient and the pharma experts.

    4 ways Pharma Leaders are Improving Patient Engagement

    • Patient Education & Training: Healthcare technology experts are working to make health education available at the patient’s fingertips by adding features such as: weekly health tips and wellness advice via text, information about different treatments so patients can compare side effects, and a place to easily log their symptoms and treatment results.
    • Medication Adherence & Monitoring: Cloud based applications such as iAdhere set up daily reminders for prescription refills, insurance, and lab testing. iAdhere sends daily medication reminders, preventing the patient from taking inappropriate or delayed doses. The solution also aims to maintain the patient’s treatment by sending prescription refill reminders.
    • Digital Clinical Trials: Without real world evidence, patients are skeptical of agreeing to medication suggested by the clinician, or even continuing medication. Pharma companies are working to improve the patient recruitment rate for studies by establishing corporate websites for clinical trial and building internal alliances between their digital marketing and patient recruitment teams. These alliances are leveraging the power of digital data, lowering costs and increasing the rate of patient enrollment.
    • Robust Analytics: Pharmas and Health IT leaders are constantly working to improve and optimize analytics to improve patient journey, satisfaction, and promote efficient spending. These analytics reveal behavioral information such as: patients expressing inconvenience of going to a pharmacy and filling prescriptions. Leaders are using such detailed data to improve adherence rates for patients suffering with chronic illnesses.
    • Innovative Marketing & Branding: With communication at the core of every buying decision, pharma companies are working to come off as more human and less as a sales machine. Advertising is shifting from TV to digital with online videos, social media campaigns, partnerships, and story telling the effectiveness of medicine. This type of marketing builds brand loyalty and allows patients to stay with a pharma company longer than a one and done sales pitch.

    Digital patient engagement is the future of healthcare. New and emerging patient engagement technology lies in the core of most successful American healthcare systems. Pharmas’ engagement strategies are helping care-seeking consumers to become patients and existing patients to become more knowledgeable about their health.