Two-thirds of respondents in the Accenture survey cited improving patient outcomes as their company’s number one objective for patient services.
The vast majority of large pharmaceutical companies plan to increase their investment in patient-centric capabilities such as remote patient monitoring and medication delivery over the next two years, according to an Accenture survey of 200 pharmaceutical executives.The survey found that 85 percent of respondents said their organizations plan to ramp-up their spending on patient centric capabilities over the next two years.This increased focus on patient centric capabilities comes at a time when only half (51 percent) of the respondents rate their organization’s patient centric capabilities as being robust, with 46 percent citing little improvement in these capabilities over the last two years."We envision patient service technologies evolving in several ways. To be sure, there will continue to be a mass of innovation in health care IT which impacts patient services like cognitive computing, big data, virtual reality, and wearables and sensors," Tony Romito, managing director with Accenture Life Sciences, told eWEEK. "But market leaders will be those who figure out how to best enable a truly connected experience across these technologies, from clinical trial use to compassionate use through commercial use." Romito explained to do this effectively there needs to be an emergence of an enterprise-grade patient platform that can form the backbone of the patient interactions, services and technologies, and be interoperable with new innovative technologies as they continue to evolve. Two-thirds (67 percent) of respondents cited improving patient outcomes as their company’s number one objective for patient services.While 62 percent of respondents identified themselves as the head or lead of patient services or the patient experience, 73 percent of respondents do not view a single function as having primary responsibility for patient services in their organization.Romito also noted mobile is increasingly playing a role, particularly through the Internet of Things, meaning connected devices."As an example, our research showed that 68 percent of the respondents expected to expand their service offerings in areas like remote patient monitoring," he said.More than three-quarters (81 percent) of respondents said that their companies rely on healthcare professionals to make patients aware of their services, but less than one in five patients (19 percent) is familiar with these services.In addition, nine in 10 (91 percent) of the companies surveyed expect to offer six or more types of patient services within the next two years, up from the 73 percent that offer six or more types of patient services today.The top areas where companies plan to improve the focus include benefit coverage and access support, with respondents citing a 100 percent investment increase, health counselor services participation (a 77 percent increase), and adherence program management (a 73 percent increase).Most of the executives surveyed (40 percent) cited an inability to precisely measure the impact of patient services on outcomes, which they cite as their primary objective for offering them.
- eWeek