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The complexity of demands on market access groups has increased in recent years, with the introduction of new therapies targeted at smaller populations and higher bars from payers and PBMs.
Now pharmaceutical manufacturers are increasing. According to the IQVIA Institute, the prescription abandonment rate in specialty drugs alone is 27 percent, or $76 billion annually. This eroded revenue has led manufacturers to increase their focus on the complex patient journey.
As a result, manufacturers are finally owning the patient travel technology stack. Their willingness to absorb painful system integration cycles has led many patient support services to conclude that technologies should not and cannot be relegated to single patient support providers. The lesson was learned the hard way, following a series of 2-3-year cycles where manufacturers are required to switch hub and copier providers, disconnect their mission-critical systems from the vendor du jour, and rework with the new one.
In the years leading up to the Covid-19 pandemic, drug manufacturers went back and forth between discovery and extraction in their patient support efforts. We expect the same trend in 2023, although with a greater technological focus. Inflows are driven by new patient journey categories (eg gene therapies), the impact of Covid on HCP and patient behaviours, and of course the proliferation of new software solutions.
What will happen?
1. Rolling out the patient journey technology stack: Pharmaceutical manufacturers continue to bring Patient Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software under their own roof. For example, manufacturers who have to rely on their central CRM are slowly moving CRM in-house, often while maintaining the same contractor. Expect Salesforce to remain the dominant player.
2. Patient service teams demand technology stack flexibility: With new types of therapies coming to market (eg, gene therapies), manufacturers are accelerating their hunt for flexible technologies that support different use cases. Consider the example of a family whose loved one has been prescribed gene replacement therapy. They must identify the treatment center, then coordinate travel, post-procedure support and other patient services. The right technology combined with a friendly user experience eases the whole family’s logistical and emotional rollercoaster.
3. Manufacturers uninstall patient support apps: According to a 2021 study by Heady.io, 79 percent of consumers will abandon a transaction when forced to download an app. This trend is reinforced when dealing with very sick patients. As one Pharma exec told us: “A patient has stage-4 cancer and we’re asking them to download an app?!?” Additionally, the app’s user experience is now readily available as a template for mobile Safari and Chrome. This frees the manufacturer from the need to invest in app development and allows them to focus on value-creating moments along the journey.
4. Mobile is dead Long live mobile: In our survey of 50 patient-facing brand sites, 82 percent of traffic came from mobile browsers as opposed to desktop. Additionally, as Twilio notes, SMS open rates remain sky-high. In short, patients and caregivers continue to shop on mobile — not just at the store, but at the doctor. Drug manufacturers should be there. The bar has been raised for the patient navigation experience when apps struggle. Web 1.0 microsites with forms to fill out struggle to “convert” users. Additionally, SMS-only interactions will be replaced with beautiful, templated interactive mobile experiences that require no coding.
5. Increasing patient journeys focus on “value creation moments”. Value-creating moments on the patient journey can include activating copy cards, electronically signing consent forms, speaking with case managers, or tracking and receiving shipments. Today’s patient rejects calls from unknown numbers, prefers texting over any other form of communication, and avoids app downloads at all costs. Therefore, manufacturers must accelerate the adoption of technologies to support specific transactions or moments that avoid the greatest speed bumps for patients.
6. APIs disrupt the patient journey. As tools become patient-journey native and become more interactive, pharmaceutical manufacturers are gradually replacing forms like DocuSign and Adobe signatures with API-enabled native flows that are better tied to the corresponding steps in the patient journey: HCP referrals, Copay card activation, etc.
7. Digitization of ePrescriptions, and patient referral and registration forms will continue. By 2023, we will see 40 to 80 percent of forms sent by physician fax. This is not only a huge efficiency opportunity for manufacturers and their software providers, but also an opportunity to shorten time to treatment through faster data collection and benefit validation. Cycles.
What will not happen in 2023:
1. Artificial intelligence will not replace hub agents. Yes, AI is making its way into patient services, most notably with Infinitus Systems replacing benefit verification calls with AI. However, our beloved patient care industry is still struggling with more basic functions. It will take time for AI storms to materialize in our part of the world.
2. Digital therapeutics and patient support technologies are not yet integrated. While these two categories may seem like siblings, they are actually second cousins twice removed. Given regulatory hurdles, varying procurement budgets and org-chart teams, pharmaceutical manufacturers will continue to purchase digital therapies and patient support platforms from a variety of vendors.
3. “Digital” is not yet fully integrated into the pharmacy business and patient support service groups, which often continue to “transfer” this knowledge to a different part of the organization. This continues to be a missed opportunity to use digital as a major lever in the business and evolve its culture towards digital innovation.
What we are very happy about
The most exciting news is that we are seeing manufacturers including technology interoperability requirements in the Hub and Copay RFPs. This means that manufacturers are taking ownership of the patient travel technology stack, knowing that the sands will continue to shift.
About Yishai Knobel
Yishai is the founder and CEO of RxWare (formerly HelpAround). Prior to RxWare, Nobel was Head of Diabetes Mobile at Agamatrix, maker of the world’s first smartphone glucometer. He also served as an officer at Microsoft Startup Labs in Cambridge and in the elite R&D unit of the Israeli army. Nobel received his MBA from MIT, and a BA in Psychology and Computer Science.
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