Value Added Services Europe

Sep 17, 2013 - Sep 18, 2013, London

Become a health provider and add value beyond the pill

Are You Keeping Well? Prioritizing Prevention through an Integrated Approach

Pharmaceutical companies are perfectly placed to leverage their knowledge and resources to influence patient behavioral change. Putting the right incentives in place is critical to ensure investment for long-term prevention.



Pharma companies need to be asking - where on the spectrum from drug supplier to complete health-solution provider should we operate—and in what specific therapeutic or disease areas? In order to develop such solutions which may include anything from diagnosis and prevention and wellness activities, to treatment monitoring and follow up, pharma companies will need to form deeper, more involved partnerships with provider organizations than they have in the past.

Incubating new business models

One company that is pursuing a strategy to broaden its role in the health-care value chain is Janssen. In 2010, they set up Janssen Healthcare Innovation with a view to exploring and incubating new business models that will accelerate the transformation of J&J and Janssen from a traditional product-centric company to a broader healthcare company offering integrated solutions.

By uncovering the root causes of the wide variations in outcomes across patient populations and care delivery sites, value-based health care has significant potential both to improve the quality of care and to lower costs. Pharma companies are well placed to deliver better outcomes, be it through transformational medicines or value added services supporting medicine optimization and beyond. Their deep disease area knowledge, broad access to a wide range of key healthcare stakeholders and insights into their needs can be brought to bear to optimize overall healthcare delivery, not just specific therapeutic interventions.

 Integrated solutions that improve adherence to an existing medication could have as much impact on health outcomes as introducing new medicines".

Marco Mohwinckel, Global Head of Integrated Care Solutions at Janssen Healthcare Innovation (Johnson & Johnson), speaking to eyeforpharma ahead of his presentation at The Value Added Services Conference, states that the most impactful initiatives are those that focus on integrating care. “Integrated solutions that improve adherence to an existing medication could have as much impact on health outcomes as introducing new medicines. We have recently launched Care4Today Mobile Health Manager in the UK, a digital tool that reminds patients to take their medication, refill their prescription and show up for appointments. It can be downloaded for free, works on all phones and is for all patients on any medication. At the same time, we are launching solutions that engage and educate the patient, drive behavioral change, enable better care coordination, optimize clinical workflows and collect and analyze real world data”.

“For instance, our Care4Today Mental Health Solution is a new community-based program designed to optimize the care pathway for patients with serious mental illnesses (such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder). This program supports healthcare teams to deliver consistently high quality care and enable patients to live well with their condition. This leads to a reduction in the incidence of relapses and rehospitalizations. Lack of adherence to prescribed medications can put patients at risk of serious symptomatic episodes, but even patients with schizophrenia who are otherwise motivated to adhere to their medications may be impeded by lack of access to medicines and high quality care in a fragmented health­care system. The program is currently being deployed in the UK, US and Germany with excellent results.

Integrated healthcare ultimately means taking a patient-centric approach, understanding the real needs across the care continuum and offering solutions that combine more precise diagnostics tools, with tools that enhance adherence to medication and drive behavioral change with the view of preventing the reoccurrence of an event”.

Key components of the Care4Today Mental Health Solutions program include:

  • High Quality Educational Content: Patient and facilitator workbooks and videos supporting psychoeducation
  • Technology: Web/mobile tools for patients, staff, and administrators
  • Infrastructure: Reminder services, implementation, training support, and outcomes analysis

 

Transitioning to value-based healthcare

Competing in a value-based environment will not be without its challenges. As health systems increasingly focus on a comprehensive range of factors that affect health outcomes—drugs, medical technology, health information, care management, care delivery—the role of orchestrating and managing all these inputs will only grow in importance. 

“Let’s start by enabling patients to be a resource in their own care, instead of passive recipients of often inconsistent and not always cost-effective services. To that effect, we should partner with healthcare providers to help them deliver higher quality care more efficiently”.

The transition to value-based healthcare will require continuous experimentation and innovation with novel solutions and approaches to healthcare delivery, though not all of them need to be high-tech. “Whilst novel technologies can of course play a big role in optimizing healthcare delivery and patient experience, simple practices like checklists to ensure established protocols are followed by all staff can make a huge difference”.

“We see huge opportunities to improve healthcare and are willing to play our part. The journey ahead of us is long and we need to be mindful that any behavioral change, let alone system change, is not a quick-fix. For instance, any investment in prevention whether its primary, secondary or tertiary care prevention requires a longer-term focus; and work is still needed to  ensure the right incentives are in place for payers, healthcare providers and industry alike to take that longer-term view”, concludes Mohwinckel.


Marco Mohwinckel will be speaking at Value Added Services, London, September 17-18, 2014. For more information on his presentation, click here.



Value Added Services Europe

Sep 17, 2013 - Sep 18, 2013, London

Become a health provider and add value beyond the pill