Value Added Services Europe

Sep 17, 2013 - Sep 18, 2013, London

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Value Added Services Report 2013-2014

Prepare your organisation for the future with 'Beyond the Pill' services

Six ways to progress mHealth adoption

Michael Morgan-Curran is Global Director of mHealth and Diabetes Programme Director at The GSMA. A long-running advocate for the potential benefits of mobile technology in healthcare, he highlights the need for a unified effort in order for mHealth adoption to grow.



Michael speaks to eyeforpharma ahead of his presentation at the Value-Added Services Conference 2014 and provides us with six key steps the industry should urgently take to progress.

1) Develop a clear way to commission mHealth services

It seems an obvious point. In order for mHealth to take off, the products and services that make up the market need to be bought. However, Health Care Providers haven’t yet created a clear way for mobile health services to be procured. “There really isn’t a clear guidance on how to commission services,” says Michael Morgan-Curran.  Morgan-Curran says “the pharma industry, with their extensive health economic experience in preparing new indication market access, can help support and in some cases lead providers in the commissioning process”

No one is going to offer clinically valuable services for free, says Morgan-Curran. “If it’s going to be sustainable, it needs to be profitable for all the stakeholders involved in delivering it".Pharma has come up against this problem recently, as companies seek to position services within their product portfolio, he points out.

2) Create interoperable standards 

As a plethora of new products come to market, the industry is handicapped by the fact that many of these products will not work together. “A key issue affecting mainstream healthcare and medication is the need to have interoperable standards,” says Morgan Curran. Being able to seamlessly transmit and exchange data is critical to widespread success, he argues. He makes the point that interoperability is important when implementing services at scale “We’re not talking low volume services. We want to be talking about large scale replicable services, easy to use by patients and consumers, that are able to aggregate individual and population data between numerous organisations; which may have very different platforms, etc. Interoperability and ‘Plug and Pay’ will ease technology barriers, future proof affordableprovisioning of services.”

3) Integrate mHealth in to the business model

There are two main areas where mobile health can fit in to pharma’s business model, says Morgan Curran. Firstly in supporting clinical investigatory programmes (whether phase three or four) and secondly in supporting patients who are on-brand.

“There are very clear patient and physician support services that mobile health can provide, focused on medication compliance  side-effect management, information exchange, data capture and analysis, remote monitoring, improving health awareness and self management, transition between medications and treatments, creating or supporting patient, patient/physician and physician communities and social media as a connector  ” explains Morgan-Curran. Another area mHealth integration to pharma business models, says Morgan Curran, is in supporting market access commitments and managing supply chain. Infastructure challenges affect the adoption and supply of new medicines for pharma and payers what to ensure that the right patient is getting the right medication and receiving its therapeutic gain. “Mobile health and digital technology is already something that payers are interested in,” says Morgan Curran.

Mobile health can significantly improve clinical investigatory programmes, through better managing patient reported outcomes. CRO’s are moving relatively slowly in adopting mobile technology, says Morgan-Curran, and not many are actually costing-in the use of mobile technology to collect data. “The benefits of using mobile technology can aggregate and analyse lots of data! In addition. You observe and record what’s happening to a patient in more detail during the days, months and years they might be in the study.” This is incredibly valuable to pharma because they can better understand the patient and products therapeutic profile, disease progession hence generating insights and data that will lead to stronger health economic proposition and a more impactful value dossier, Morgan Curran points out.

4) Build a revenue strategy

Pharma should absolutely be seeking to generate revenue from mHealth initiatives, thinks Morgan Curran.  “These services and initiatives do create value and improve healthcare outcomes. There’s a lot of data to substantiate that.” Pharma should stay well away from funding mobile initiatives in the same way brand teams pay for medical education services and under CSR conditions. The ‘healthcare gain' of mHealth services, which are deigned to create value to healthcare providers, patients and payers and enable patient, has to be paid for if the service is to be sustainable. The ‘healthcare gain’ should be clear and measurable, therefore generating a return for the business that reflects the value each programme/service creates.

5) Choose a target market

“The biggest opportunity at the moment is the consumer market,” says Morgan-Curran. “The rise of the wearable sector is driven partly because devices are incredibly easy to use and inexpensive.” As well as patients seeking to improve their health, he points out that clinicians are beginning to support the trend, as they want to see patients monitored effectively at a distance.

“The UK is different to most European countries in that we don’t see an awful lot of connected devices in the community. In France and Germany, there’s a lot more being used, where it’s funded through healthcare providers and insurance organisations.” There are signs of greater uptake further afield, says Morgan-Curran. “There’s definitely a groundswell of physicians offering support. Further, Diabetes UK and the International Diabetes Federation completely support the adoption of mHealth support, which is certainly something diabetes patients want too.”

6) Align expectations

Because mHealth is a relatively young and disparate industry, Morgan-Curran believes there is a misalignment of expectations between the various stakeholders. “It’s really important there’s very clear communication about what mHealth will deliver. Each stakeholder group has clear unmet needs that mobile health can satisfy. He advises that, “…we need to listen to these and create value for all stakeholders.”


Michael Morgan-Curran will be speaking at the upcoming Value-Added Services conference 17-18 September. He will be presenting on the GSMA Connected Living Programme for mHealth in diabetes as well as discussing the future of cross-channel healthcare.

 

 

 



Value Added Services Europe

Sep 17, 2013 - Sep 18, 2013, London

Become a health provider and add value beyond the pill