Andrew Binns, strategy and planning at Ashfield Healthcare Communications, part of UDG Healthcare, examines the role of digital health in the pharma sector and the benefits it can bring.
Digital is finally making a big push into the pharma market. But can the two come together to truly create digital health and provide benefits for the end user?
A recent report from PushDoctor, a UK telemedicine company, shows that 58% of the 1,013 UK citizens surveyed have used some kind of health or wellness technology. Another report from healthcare marketing group Ipsos Health shows that 72% of the 131 primary care doctors interviewed in the UK, Germany and France have already used or recommended at least one form of digital health technology with their patients.
Of the countless benefits that digital health provides, it is important to focus on the following two areas; the ever-improving ability to track and manage the impact that treatments have on a person’s life and the advancement in communication efficiency for these individuals. By digging deeper into these aspects it becomes clear as to why digital is now intrinsically linked to today’s pharma world in the form of digital health.
Overcoming the persona
Understanding the impact that a treatment or drug has on a patient is essential to the future of efficient healthcare. Digitising the sphere does exactly that by allowing us to define, track and manage the impact in a variety of different ways. Some current options already include wearable technology, cloud-based data collection and simply self-reporting.
Paul Sonnier, Digital Health Strategist describes digital health as “The underlying lexicon of digital health is extensive and includes all or elements of mHealth, Wireless Health, Health 2.0, eHealth, Health IT, Big Data, Health Data, Cloud Computing, e-Patients, Quantified Self and Self-tracking, Wearable Computing, Gamification, Telehealth & Telemedicine, Precision and Personalised Medicine, plus Connected Health...”
Of crucial importance is the way that a patient is tracked systematically throughout the lifecycle of their treatment. This is a huge step forward from the previous approach of simply measuring data at two points: the beginning and the end. By understanding the patient at various stages it becomes possible to deliver a more personalised and contextualised treatment offering. As a result, a patient takes the form of an ‘individual’ rather than just another ‘persona’ generated from archetypes. By using digital health to segment patients at a granular level, we can ensure any deviances or niche behavioural changes are understood and taken into account prior to and during treatment.
Personalisation helps efficiency
By developing a more personalised understanding of the patient, it also becomes easier to offer relevant and appropriate treatments. The more customised the treatment, the greater the impact. Digital health allows the metric and measurement approach to be detailed and based on data, ensuring assumptions and presumptions are removed and insight-led decisions are made.
Big data is not the answer, it is the tool
However, while data collection and analysis is important, it is not the full answer. The collected data should be utilised to create stories that resonate with the patient in a real-world scenario. Big data is simply an abundance of information that needs skill and human integration to make it relevant.
The pharmaceutical industry is only beginning to realise the value of digital health. It provides information that marketers, communicators, healthcare professionals, patient advocacy groups and pharma can evaluate and use to engage with patients more effectively. The results will garner more effective patient treatments that will result in overall better patient outcomes across the board.