Creating a Digital-First Experience to Support Patient Compliance

By Kal Patel, MD, MBA, CEO and Co-Founder, BrightInsight

I recently had the opportunity to sit down with Nasdaq's Kristina Ayanian to discuss BrightInsight's mission to power digital health transformation with our scalable, regulatory-compliant, cloud-based platform.

Any sustainable company must create a great product, motivate people to use said product and then keep them using it. We help pharmaceutical companies with the latter, solving the question – once patients are using a particular therapy, how can pharma support them with digital solutions to retain that engagement? How can pharma support patients to take their medicine correctly and on time with features like reminders and data journals that monitor disease progression? With digital, when patients are not seeing the desired level of progress, they have their personal data to take back to their clinicians and possibly adjust their medications. We are building digital solutions that wrap around therapies to give patients a better experience and ideally, improved outcomes.

No Disease Too Rare or Common

At BrightInsight, we work with the top 30 biopharmaceutical companies to understand a particular disease, how a therapy works, identify a patient’s key pain points, and help develop digital solutions that address them. This delivers a better patient experience whether it’s a rare disease or a common chronic condition.

These digital solutions help patients manage complex diseases with innovative but complex medications and incorporate them into their daily lives. One example is treating atopic dermatitis, also known as eczema, which affects millions of people with more effective therapies coming to market. Our digital app helps patients onboard onto the therapy, learn how to inject themselves, track the progress of the intervention and how it’s working for them and deliver personalized adherence reminders.

Another example is treating macular degeneration. This condition impacts millions of people, generally an older population, who get an injection into their eye to prevent vision loss. Patients need continuous assessments because retreatment is necessary, but when that treatment is needed varies by person. We worked with Roche to develop an at-home vision test so a patient can use their phone to check their vision instead of having to go for regular, in-person check-ups.

We also work with CSL Behring on its Hizentra app for primary immunodeficiency disease (PI) and chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyneuropathy (CIDP), two rare, genetic conditions that require a patient to self-administer infusions sometimes more than once a week. This requires close tracking of the timing and location of infusion sites. The app supports the patient for a complex dosing regimen – regular blood tests are required until you determine the right dose. We can monitor and support the patient, clinician and caregiver in that process. In this particular case, we are seeing 70 percent therapy and app retention at 12 months, which means better patient outcomes.

Engaging with a Digital-First Approach

I live in California and travel frequently, flying mostly on United. About 90 percent of my engagement with them is through their app as it includes most of the features and support I need. If an occasion arises that requires a live person interaction, I can call. It is the same thing in healthcare - because patients are also people. Build a great digital experience, meet people where they want to be met, and back them up with human support, if needed.

Our digital health platform and disease management solutions are disrupting the marketplace by giving a digital-first approach to engaging patients and caregivers, supplying the right data and actionable assistance in a personalized way. We are moving away from a call center approach to fit how people normally look for answers. When you build a great digital solution that addresses the user and allows personalization, most people will get the support they need through the digital experience. That said, if there is a time that you need the extra touch of using a call center, then you have that option as well, so we are bringing it all together.

BrightInsight, in partnership with our biopharma clients, is building digital-first solutions driving real-world outcomes for patients. As in other industries, healthcare consumers expect - and demand – accessibility, support and convenience. Regardless of disease, demographic or geography, our secure platform enables biopharma to build compliant digital solutions to help improve health.

Dr. Kal Patel is the CEO and Co-Founder of BrightInsight, the leading global regulated digital health platform for biopharma and medical device companies.