Latin America Awards 2015

May 7, 2015 - May 7, 2015, Miami

The eyeforpharma Latin America Awards recognize those in the pharmaceutical industry who are driving pharma forwards not just with higher short-term profits, but with better customer innovation, value and outcomes leading to longer-term success.

Customer-Centric Innovation Showcased at eyeforpharma Philadelphia Awards

See who is on the winners list at the recent eyeforpharma Philadelphia Awards.

Winner of The Most Valuable Patient Initiative: Novartis and INVIVO Communications; Helio App



"At first a trickle, then a flood." And so it is for customer centricity in the pharma industry. So, if you can increase momentum at the source of innovation then this process can be accelerated. And that's what the inaugural eyeforpharma Philadelphia Awards, held on April 7th, were designed to do. We wanted to recognize the innovations of our colleagues to reduce opposition to new ways of thinking, and to bring people together to spark ideas.

While we celebrated people and projects across five categories there was one common theme, customer-centricity.

So, who were the winners?

 

Winner: Most Valuable Patient Initiative
Novartis and INVIVO Communications; Helio App

Novartis and INVIVO Communications were celebrated for their collaboration on the Helio App (now re-branded as Volari COPD) - a disease and lifestyle mobile app that supports patients through tracking disease information and motivating them through on-going treatment.

This type of project has of course been attempted many times, but most initiatives have failed to maintain user engagement beyond the short-term. Gamification has been tried before as a way to sustain user engagement, but Helio’s designers took a more intelligent approach personalizing triggers to individual patients based on their inputted information. HCP’s and patients were also involved early on in the creation process in line with human-centred design principles.

Following pilots in Brazil, Spain and the Netherlands, they now have ambitions to scale to 10 more countries in 2015, with plans to reach into other therapeutic areas too. The potential to scale was a quality praised by judges, Dwayne Dixon of Alcon stated, “This has the makings of being transformational for how chronic disease can be managed in the future.”

 

Finalists in this category

Bristol Myers-Squibb submitted a project, similar to Leo Pharma’s internal education project, entitled ‘Who Are You Working For?’ while Roche took a promising step towards patient-centred clinical trials with the implementation of their ‘Patients Insights Practice’ project, which ingrains the consideration of patient perspectives as a fundamental first step for trial design. UCB were also a runner-up with their Live Epilepsy Advocate Social Q&A, a tool to connect epilepsy patients with mentors.

A notable shout-out goes to Kathi Sitek’s Pill Pouch, who constructed a box for medication with compartments so that her mother could easily differentiate between similar looking medications.

 

Winner: ‘Most Valuable HCP or Healthcare Initiative’
Discus Analytics; JointMan Clinical Population Health Tool

The JointMan Clinical Population Health Tool at first glance seems like a standard patient management tool, but it has an interesting twist… Once data is collected from patients it goes into a central repository, where it is anonymized and opened up for use in future research. The data can also be used to advance peer-led best practice amongst healthcare professionals, with the tool allowing doctors to share and evaluate each other’s treatment decisions.

Judges praised this thoughtful multi-faceted approach, with Mike Moran at GSK saying, “This was a very innovative project that appears to have a great deal of upside in the future for healthcare providers and patients alike coping with RA. Well done!”

 

Finalists in this category

A project from the other finalists (which also included projects from Onyx, Bayer, Shire and Radius) that may speak generally to the evolution of the US healthcare market came from IMS Health and Purdue Pharma. They developed a database of hospital networks with new 'influencer' metrics to help profile important IDN's. As the US provider landscape continues to consolidate and companies seek better information to develop their KAM strategies, this sort of support could become increasingly important.

 

Winner: Most Impactful Emerging or Global Initiative
Boehringer Ingelheim; ‘School for Intrapreneurs’

Boehringer’s ‘School for Intrapreneurs’ project seeks to address the unprecedented demand for innovation that pharma faces across all functions. A hindrance to meeting this demand, other than the sheer volume needed, is the traditional resistance amongst colleagues and management that discourages radical thinking.

But in contrast to the approach taken by JHI, Boehringer Ingelheim won this category with an internal accelerator set centrally within an existing company structure. The Boehringer Ingelheim 'School for Intrapreneurs' in effect provides a sheltered nursery for new ideas; employees can apply to join the incubator and receive coaching to finesse ideas and pitch for support.

Judi Georgitis, GSK said the project "reflects strong interest in developing in-house talent, which can be a competitive advantage. A great way for cross-pollination across global regions within the organization".

 

Finalists in this category

Runner-up, Leo Pharma, also proposed a cross-functional education initiative, ‘Engage for better Patient Care’, that seeks to educate employees throughout the company on patient-centricity. Alcon were the other finalist with a patient-focused key account management strategy. At a time when most pharma within the domestic market are still struggling to clearly articulate their KAM vision, Alcon impressed judges with their clearly articulated value proposition.

 

Winner: Customer Innovator Award
Lisa Banks; AstraZeneca

Also taking a human-centered design approach, Lisa Banks of AstraZeneca earned the Customer Innovator Award in recognition for her leadership in the development of mHealth App Me & My COPD through deep consideration of provider and patient needs.

This research identified poor adherence and clinic attendance as challenges to the COPD population, so under Lisa’s direction, the team developed an app that would collect data to improve the ability of the patient to self-manage their condition. Making adherence visible helped patients remember to take their medication, while the burden of clinic visits was reduced through an app design that reacted to patient data to only recommend visits when needed.

Jessica Kuzmick at Bayer praised Lisa’s recent work both as an individual and as a team leader, saying, “I loved the teamwork internally and externally exhibited in identifying patient needs and in developing this patient adherence program. This is a ground-up initiative, but the innovative spirit is evident throughout. Truly digital health solutions are in their infancy, yet it looks like you got this one off to a fast start. Congratulations! This is an innovation the patients will truly benefit by.”

 

Winner: Lifetime Value Achievement Award
Diego Miralles, Global Head of Innovation, Janssen Pharmaceuticals

Janssen Healthcare Innovation set a precedent in Barcelona when they became the first company to win across two categories, and flying in the face of accusations of favoritism (hint: we favor the innovative!), JHI did not stop hogging the limelight in Philadelphia.

Winning in a new category, founding member Diego Miralles, MD. Global Head of Innovation, Janssen Pharmaceuticals picked up the ‘Lifetime Value Achievement Award’ for his work for setting up the unit. Diego joined the industry over 13 years ago, after beginning his career as a medical practitioner and researcher. He was instrumental in setting the ambitions for the JHI program, which has seen early success in creating innovative solutions for mental health and mobile adherence apps.

 

The state of innovation

It was clear across the categories and projects that mobile technology was used as a common enabler for innovation. But while pharma’s experiments in this space have previously mainly been concentrated towards patient support services, it was interesting to see the beginnings of integration of multiple stakeholder needs into app design. This was obvious in JHI’s work, which sought to target benefits to providers and patients from the outset, but also in other projects such as Jointman’s innovative approach to opening up data to improve research and HCP practice.

Another unifier was that most submitted initiatives involved some form of cross-functional effort, which shows the adoption of the idea that customer-centricity should be embedded in every layer of an organization, not just those that have direct customer interactions.

We also saw a more intelligent approach being built in user design, for example with the flexibility that the Helio App displayed towards individual patient needs. As we see continual movement in the provider space across the US, it will be interesting to see how this approach manifests itself in provider technologies too. We saw the beginnings of this thinking with IMS’ IDN profiling tool, but of course, the real step here will be in developing services that can deliver meaningful value to many types of customers.


To review the eyeforpharma Philadelphia Awards finalists brochure, click here.



Latin America Awards 2015

May 7, 2015 - May 7, 2015, Miami

The eyeforpharma Latin America Awards recognize those in the pharmaceutical industry who are driving pharma forwards not just with higher short-term profits, but with better customer innovation, value and outcomes leading to longer-term success.