Innovators 2016: Services

PM360’s Innovations Issue, established five years ago, serves as a comprehensive guide to our readers, providing a glimpse at the year’s most cutting-edge: Companies, Divisions, Startups, Products, Services, and Strategies.

Here are our picks for the most innovative services of 2016, which include compelling offerings that help the industry tackle new challenges.

Advocacy Launch: Discovery USA

discovery-usa-worldwide

Advocacy Launch

Discovery USA

Cary Slisz, Business Development

advocacy@discoveryworldwide.com

Discovery USA’s unifying vision is Better the World. To embody this, the agency believes in helping the industry live its vision of improving the lives of the patients and communities they serve beyond product development. Advocacy is becoming recognized as one of the most effective ways to do this. But throughout the industry, advocacy has often been built by adding undefined responsibilities to an existing role in the hopes that if advocacy initiatives were started, the strategy would follow. This often led to wasted time and resources.

In 2016, Discovery USA formalized its unique structural development process, Advocacy Launch, to help companies efficiently and effectively determine what advocacy could look like in their organizations, and how advocacy can most effectively serve the needs of their brands, corporate vision, and of course, the communities they serve.

The Advocacy Launch program involves the early engagement of key stakeholders from all departments to explore perceptions of advocacy, generate insights, build excitement, clarify advocacy goals, and identify and gain broad alignment on the most effective way forward. A roadmap is developed through a customized series of interviews and surveys, live meetings with project leads, and working sessions with multidisciplinary stakeholders to set up—or shore up—an organization’s internal advocacy structures and overarching strategies.

Clients have found that investing in Advocacy Launch has prevented regulatory challenges, assured reasonable and shared expectations, and built a broad base of support for advocacy throughout the organization. In addition, this has created more engagement with internal stakeholders and ultimately helped clients be more successful at launching advocacy programming such as public policy initiatives, access initiatives, infrastructure development programs, needs awareness, and social responsibility.

BeLive: Sudler/Pfizer

belive_sudler_pfizer

BeLive

Sudler/Pfizer

Luigi Cardone, Latin America Director, luigi.cardone@sudler.com

Chris Duffey, EVP Global Director of Creative Technology, chris.duffey@sudler.com

Fibromyalgia patients, like others with chronic pain, lack objective measures to characterize the nature of their pain and associated symptoms, creating a significant challenge to pain management. The Pfizer Lyrica team and Sudler/TeamPfizer identified and created a way to solve this key need among people with fibromyalgia: BeLive, the first custom-made wearable, mobile platform, and promotional campaign was developed to track pain intensity, anxiety, sleep quality, and activity for Lyrica patients—all in real time. Lyrica patients can now use BeLive to take greater control of their condition with a better understanding of pain, its patterns, and the constellation of parameters it impacts.

BeLive allows Lyrica patients to gain measurable insights into the management of chronic pain by tracking: Intensity of pain (0-10), intensity of anxiety (0-10), and the quality of their sleep (1-5). Activity—logged as steps and distance—and length of sleep can also be tracked. The mobile platform also allows a visual record of all measurements to be viewed and shared to show patterns and triggers between different entry data points.

Google, McKinsey, and Wharton called the offering “Innovative” in their book Pharma 3D: Rewriting the Script for Marketing in the Digital Age, and to date, hundreds of Lyrica patients in Brazil and Mexico are using BeLive with great success to better manage and understand their pain. Recent statistics show 2,458 days of activity, 8.1 million steps tracked, 67,000 minutes walked, and 4,865 self-reported scores.

The BeLive program is giving many a new understanding of their condition and a new resolve for taking greater control of their pain through better self-knowledge through self-tracking with technology.

Chat: StayinFront

stayinfront

Chat

StayinFront

Ken Arbadji, Vice President Sales, North America

KArbadji@stayinfront.com

To address the real-time communication challenges among field reps, StayinFront introduced StayinFront Chat in September. This messaging feature allows users to collaborate and share information and strategies with colleagues across the organization—no matter where they are—in real time.

A more efficient approach to communication than email, messaging apps are an easy way for members of an organization to communicate without having to go through an inbox, and they are particularly useful for sales reps, who often need to get information back to the home office quickly.

Available in the latest release of StayinFront’s cloud-based life sciences CRM solution, StayinFront Chat simplifies communication for these reps. It automatically manages users and creates channels for territories, teams, districts, and regions. Context awareness provides users with immediate visibility of relevant channels as they navigate through StayinFront TouchRx and ensures important messages are not missed.

By allowing for greater collaboration among team members, StayinFront Chat harnesses group knowledge and speeds delivery of information. By receiving important and timely information about healthcare professionals, prescription writing trends, or office visits—as well as sharing successes and challenges with team members—sales reps are better informed and better equipped to execute winning sales strategies.

The platform enables the communication of important information—including files and photos—in real time from within the CRM system. Previously, users could only communicate with other sales reps or the home office via email, phone call, or a separate messaging app. StayinFront Chat allows easy back-and-forth communication between all users in an organization, enabling them to get quick answers for immediate problems and issues, and disseminate pertinent information with the swipe of a finger.

HubExpress: CoverMyMeds

covermymeds

HubExpress

CoverMyMeds

Carma Nabavi, Business Development Executive

BusinessDevelopment@covermymeds.com

CoverMyMeds is a leader in electronic prior authorization (ePA), assisting providers and pharmacists in completing prior authorization (PA) requests for any medication and all health insurance plans online. In 2016, the company launched the HubExpressTM program to improve the prescribing experience for specialty products. HubExpress focuses on improving PA submission rates and outcomes by providing a bank of PA experts that can save requests that would have otherwise been abandoned due to a traditional call center-based hub model.

The traditional hub model mostly consists of manual work, including data entry and numerous calls to all involved. Due to lack of visibility into the PA lifecycle paired with activities-based revenue, the hub can create frustration for the provider by reaching out frequently and not being able to thoroughly answer questions. This frustration may make the provider switch to another drug or not prescribe it again, due to the perception that it is too difficult to get approved by the payer.

Conversely, HubExpress PA experts have full visibility to the PA lifecycle. They have the ability to see how stakeholders are interacting (pharmacy, provider, payer) and where they are in the PA process. Instead of making unnecessary calls, the PA experts at HubExpress can pinpoint the exact moment a request needs help, so they are providing valuable feedback to the provider and pharmacy. The HubExpress solution helps reduce the prospect for abandoned scripts and also increases transparency on behalf of the patient in the pharmacy.

Coupled with CoverMyMeds’ core solution, the program has increased prescribing by 43% for drugs traditionally known to have patient access issues.

Managed Services, powered by ExaLink: Deloitte & Touche LLP

exalink_deloitte

Managed Services, powered by ExaLink

Deloitte & Touche LLP

Guy Merritt, Advisory Managing Director

gumerritt@deloitte.com

Life sciences companies rely on data. The amount of data large organizations need to process as part of their operations—from government program data to commercial contract data—has been growing exponentially, the result of acquisitions, product launches, and extended third-party agreements. To remain competitive, many life sciences companies are updating their legacy systems, moving to new, more powerful platforms, migrating their data to the cloud, and even outsourcing to third-party managed service providers.

Deloitte & Touche LLP has built a hybrid platform and managed services solution, called ExaLink, which combines big data analysis and a cloud delivery model to provide life sciences manufacturers with real-time insights into their commercial activities.

For example, performing a complex government pricing calculation for a drug can take the better part of a day on a legacy system because of the way the data is structured. With newer technologies, analysts can perform multiple calculations simultaneously by leveraging the elasticity of the public cloud, which can reduce processing time substantially.

Life sciences companies’ abilities to pivot when circumstances change is critical. They can’t afford to be held back by legacy enterprise systems. Not only have these systems become slow and unwieldy as the volume of data increases, but the cost and resources required to maintain them are no longer viable. With the Deloitte’s managed services operations, powered by ExaLink, life sciences companies are able to effectively handle their pricing, claims, contract, rebate, and chargeback data—and provide the kinds of insights they need to stay competitive. In addition, this cloud-based, device-agnostic system can marshal data in real time to help them anticipate and manage risk, as well as identify transformative business opportunities.

Pharmacy APIs: PokitDok

pokitdok

Pharmacy APIs

PokitDok

Bill Haber, Senior Director of Business Development

bill.haber@pokitdok.com

PokitDok is a cloud-based API (application programming interface) platform that powers healthcare interoperability to improve the business of health. In May of 2016, PokitDok released a set of Pharmacy APIs designed to open up pharmacy data. Through these three new APIs, PokitDok gives brokers, employer groups, physicians, EMRs, and digital health innovators a consolidated view of patient prescription plans, qualified formularies, in-network pharmacies, and related financial information. PokitDok’s Pharmacy APIs are currently deployed for Medicare Part D and Medicare Advantage plans. Access to commercial pharmacy benefits is available for certain groups such as employers, brokers, and health plans. The APIs consist of:

Pharmacy Plan API: Reveals a member’s pharmacy plan name, premium, deductible, initial coverage limit, and co-pays for each tier—from lower cost generic drugs to brand name medications. Plans can vary in their drug coverage, and prices for the same drug are not always the same. PokitDok makes information available for more than 16 million Medicare Advantage Beneficiaries and 40.5 million people who rely on Medicare Part D Prescription Drug Benefit Plans.

Pharmacy Formulary API: Provides a deep dive into the member’s pharmacy benefit, including what drugs a patient is eligible for and how much they can obtain at one time. It covers tier level, authorization, step therapy requirements, and quantity limits. This API covers the economic components, including an estimated price and cost breakdown of who is paying what. It returns details about a medication’s out-of-pocket cost, total cost, and payment that insurance kicks in.

In-Network Pharmacy API: Provides location information of retail pharmacies, identifies available mail order institutions, and authenticates the dispensing pharmacy as being covered by insurance, giving patients an informed choice for prescription fulfillment.

Pharma-Konnect: Advice Personnel

pharma-konnect_advice-ny

Pharma-Konnect of the Pharmaceutical Advertising Division

Advice Personnel

Matthew C. West, Director

mwest@adviceny.com

Advice Personnel, a 32-year-old recruitment firm, has created an entire strategic service solely dedicated to recruiting top talent in the field of pharmaceutical and healthcare marketing/advertising. Its Pharma-Konnect strategic service breaks the typical recruitment mold by doing much more than merely finding a job for someone in our industry.

Pharma-Konnect carefully screens candidates by understanding their individualized stories and considers all opportunities before representing them. The company then makes connections based on employee experiences and areas of expertise. But Advice Personnel’s Pharmaceutical Advertising division also goes one step further. Through Pharma-Konnect, the company provides constant counsel, mentorship, and education. Candidates often go back for information, career mentoring, and encouragement.

The company’s three-year-old Pharmaceutical Advertising division is led by Matthew West, who has two decades of experience and expertise in talent acquisition in pharmaceutical advertising. And while the division was already successful, the launch of Pharma-Konnect earlier this year has lead to exponential growth. Since Pharma-Konnect was rolled out, the division has exceeded client and candidate placement by approximately 30% and it is projected to continue on this trajectory in 2017.

Additionally, candidates have also expressed their happiness with the process. One recently placed candidate says: “The service that was provided made me feel as if they fought for me. They are genuine and honest. It felt more like a career coach and advisor than a headhunter, which is so unusual in using a recruiter. I made a career connection for life. They understand the pharmaceutical industry and it is because of this, they made me feel like I was connecting with experts.”

Reltio Data as a Service: Reltio

reltio

Reltio Data as a Service

Reltio

Ramon Chen, Chief Marketing Officer

ramon.chen@reltio.com

Reltio’s cloud-based modern data management Platform as a Service (PaaS)—a 2015 selection in the PM360 Innovations Issue for Products—is used by companies ranging from pre-commercial SMBs, to the top 10 healthcare and life sciences companies in the world. Reltio delivers reliable HCP/HCO, supplier/vendor, product data, and uncovers affiliations and relationships for a complete 360° view of R&D and commercial operations. Reltio includes built-in Data as a Service (DaaS) giving customers’ access to many of the leading third-party data sources including MedPro, LexisNexis, DMD, Darkmatter2BD, NPI, DEA, and Dun & Bradstreet. Business teams use this information through Reltio data-driven applications to get relevant insights and recommended actions for better sales effectiveness, personalized marketing, key account management, compliance, and more.

In 2016, Reltio Cloud saw tremendous success and recognition of its platform including a significant alliance with QunitilesIMS to offer QuintilesIMS’ OneKey reference data set seamlessly through Reltio Data as a Service.

But that is not the only improvement the company made to Reltio Cloud. Reltio also introduced Reltio Insights to seamlessly connect data—mastered and managed within Reltio Cloud—to Apache Spark, one of the most popular big data processing environments today. Reltio Insights also includes on-demand access to Apache Spark. This allows life sciences to bridge the gap between big data analytical insights and operational execution.

Reltio Insights offers:

  • Speed through faster correlation of accurate, up-to-date profile data with transaction data from multiple sources.
  • Simplicity through integrated on-demand traditional and sophisticated analytics.
  • Flexibility with automated updates of business model changes.
  • Visibility by closing the loop and updating profiles with results derived from analysis.

Systems of Care: LexisNexis® Health Care

lexisnexis

Systems of Care

LexisNexis® Health Care

Theresa Greco, VP, Life Sciences

theresa.greco@lexisnexis.com

Launched in September 2016, LexisNexis Systems of Care provides life science organizations (LSO) with an innovative solution to meet the industry’s evolving needs in working with integrated delivery networks (IDNs).

In recent years, the life science segment has been slowly migrating from the traditional representative-to-provider sales model towards a business-to-business model. Physicians have been losing influence as healthcare systems gain influence and take more control over drug formularies. As LSOs establish and evolve the various models targeted at IDNs, areas of critical need are:

  • IDN demographic and profile data.
  • IDN organizational and HCP affiliation and relationship data.
  • Key performance metrics such as number of procedures and diagnoses.

Drawing on the resources of LexisNexis Provider Data MasterFileTM and MarketViewTM solutions, Systems of Care is the only offering that can deliver accurate and deep data on:

1. Intelligence from 1B+ (1.2B) medical claims (MarketView)

2. 8.5M U.S. HCPs

3. 1M healthcare organizations (HCOs)

4. 2.7M HCPs to HCOs affiliations

5. 1,500 national IDNs

6. 67K parent/child relationships (#2-#6 from Provider Data MasterFile)

Through the inventive combination of IDN and its affiliation data with valuable medical claims data, Systems of Care drives actionable insights across an enterprise and enables LSOs to:

  • Optimize commercial efficiency with improved data for targeting and outreach efforts (sales and marketing efficiency) by identifying key target IDNs and related influencers and decision markers.
  • Increase market share capture by understanding key relationships across IDNs, GPOs, ACOs, payers, and healthcare systems.
  • Improve revenue growth by evaluating the potential value of IDNs.

TGaS Vendor Insights: TGaS Advisors

tgas

TGaS Vendor Insights

TGaS Advisors

Jason LaBonte, PhD, VP

jason.labonte@tgas.com

TGaS Advisors research shows that even the smallest biopharma companies will spend more than $100 million with key vendors over the next few years. TGaS saw the need to help companies access an industry-wide perspective on what best-in-class vendor service looks like, plus an opportunity for vendors to market their services directly to companies seeking outsourced expertise.

In April 2016, TGaS launched TGaS Vendor Insights, featuring ratings and recommendations from biopharma companies who have used the vendors to highlight the strongest performers in each area of commercial support. Just as people use TripAdvisor, Yelp, or Angie’s List in their personal lives, biopharma companies can use TGaS Vendor Insights’ online platform to find service providers who meet their particular project needs. Companies can also measure their own vendors against other options in the marketplace and, if they are unhappy with their current vendor, switch to a service provider that better meets their needs.

Additionally, the continuously updated directory of vendors and their product and business profiles helps companies stay up to date with the constantly shifting nature of the vendor landscape and avoid the lengthy “RFI” process companies often undertake when searching for new vendors. Usage Maps show whether suppliers support multiple functions or specialize in select areas, enabling companies to vet at a glance whether a vendor can deliver on their full list of services.

So far the platform has more than 1,500 vendors categorized across 80 areas of commercial support and more than 1,750 performance ratings contributed by more than 60 biopharma companies.

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