The rise of the digital patient has been encouraged by equipping patients with the confidence to manage their own health and care using their smartphones. Patients are encouraged to book online appointments, order prescriptions, access their records and manage their own personal health. This transition has been supported by the noticeable trend in patient behaviours such as tracking steps, sleep, calorie intake and luxuriate in mindful meditation. These are all examples of how consumers are learning to take a more proactive role in managing their own health.
‘26% of the UK public would rather use health apps than visit a GP or hospital, and the usage of health apps has increased by 37% since the COVID-19 pandemic began.’ – Med-Tech News, 2020.
The Future is Now
As information technology continues to empower consumers, their role is shifting from being passive recipients of information to becoming active generators of information (Heinonen, 2011). Consumers are taking part in more online activities like online discussions, sharing knowledge and expressing feelings and emotions towards different brands. Similarly, this is occurring with patients talking about their health experiences with medicines, diseases, treatments and more (Martino et al., 2017). The benefit of these solutions is that thousands of patients can be remotely monitored at once. It has therefore, become more important than ever to engage with the patients true voice by analysing ‘real time’ patient insights using Pharma data collection.
Pharma Data Collection
Big Data is changing the way industries work by disrupting the status quo. The increased digitalisation of health records has made this possible.
How Pharma is evolving:
- Getting products to market quicker
- Better safety and product visibility
- Deeper insight to patient behaviours
Studying real-world evidence offers a powerful tool for manufacturers to prove the value of their drugs and is becoming increasingly useful as medicines become more personalised (Hirschler, 2018). Pharma data collection is an opportunity to reach a higher rate of patient engagement, user experience throughout the patient journey and create the path to better treatments delivered with empathetic connections.
Where next?
PatientMetRx is just that, the first social intelligence platform for Pharma.
Mission: To transform access to the voice of the patient by becoming the lead global source and supplier of structured intelligence on patient sentiment by medicine.
Driven by a passion to make positive social impacts using AI, ML and NLP to capture and analyse the voice of the patient from multiple social sources, mapped to a curated database of the full set of 130,000 regulated global medicines. PatientMetRx can also engage with patients for 2-way feedback through surveys, and via smart devices. Our launch data service provides a systematic real time score for patient generated sentiment tracked by medicine, delivered via digital dashboard. The Patient Confidence Score gauges how patients feel about their medicines over time with real time traffic light flags on performance at a brand/competitor/ therapy area.
Our entrepreneurial experiences crosses life sciences and marketing which helps us form the unique DNA of PatientMetRx, enabling us to put the patient voice at the heart of pharma’s marketing decisions.
We believe that Pharma data collection is the smart way to understand patients.
References:
Heinonen, K. (2011). Consumer Activity In Social Media: Managerial Approaches To Consumers’ Social Media Behavior. Journal of Consumer Behaviour. Available at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/260259691_Consumer_Activity_In_Social_Media_Managerial_Approaches_To_Consumers’_Social_Media_Behavior [Accessed 20 January 2021].
Hirschler, B. (2018) Big pharma, big data: why drugmakers want your health records, U.S.. Available at: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-pharmaceuticals-data/big-pharma-big-data-why-drugmakers-want-your-health-records-idUSKCN1GD4MM [Accessed: 20 January 2021].
Martino. I., D’Apolito. R., McLawhorn,A., Fehring.K., Sculco.P., Gasparini., G. (2017) Social media for patients: benefits and drawbacks. NCBI. Available at: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5344865/ [Accessed 20 January 2020].
Med-Tech News, (2020) Health app use increases by 37% during pandemic – survey. Available at: https://www.med-technews.com/news/health-app-use-increases-by-37-during-pandemic-survey/#:~:text=A%20survey%20conducted%20by%20digital,the%20COVID%2D19%20pandemic%20began. [Accessed: 20 January 2021].
