Leveraging Technology to Engage Patients Differently

Gregory Leighton, RPh, vice president of clinical solutions and patient access for Asembia, discusses how health care technology can be leveraged for the benefit of individual patients.

Gregory Leighton, RPh: When you follow up with the patient, so they stay on therapy, how do you interact with them? Today, we're in a digital world. So, things such as chatbots, things [such] as text messaging, things [such] as unique mobile apps; they're all there, but when you look at a service, especially for a non-specialty type product, you really need to engage, and you need to think of the patient’s workstream, and you need to engage them a little differently in the fact that you don't want to disrupt what they do day to day. So, maybe you give them a tool that says to that patient ‘oh, we have a unique dynamic to a text message opportunity,’ maybe the patient would benefit from a chatbot interaction, where they want to be able to, in the middle of the night, get some more information from a patient, they'll be able to text into a service. Or maybe they'd like to manage their own cases, and we give them a unique portal. Thinking things a little differently to arm the patient—because a lot of them don't have time to go to a pharmacy to pick it up, or when they're in that pharmacy that pharmacists is probably spending [time] not only looking at their profile, they're also doing other things—so leveraging that technology ahead of time and tying into a specialty support service, and being able to connect all the different touch points will drive value. Ultimately, it reduces costs because the longer the patient stays on therapy and they have access to it, the longer they stay [on therapy].