Mumbai: Debashish Roy, Director and Head, Digital and Customer Experience, Pfizer India interacted with Prabhat Prakash of ETHealthworld on the impact of digitisation in the healthcare industry and key considerations to address when integrating technology and digital solutions into the healthcare ecosystem to enhance patient experiences and outcomes. Edited Excerpts.
In what ways has digitisation impacted the healthcare industry, and how is digital transformation improving patient experiences?
The digitisation of different business processes and workflows has ushered in a new transformative era for the healthcare industry. One of the critical ways that digitisation has impacted the healthcare industry is enhanced assembling, management, and accessibility of healthcare data. With the introduction of online portals and medical resources, patients can now access a vast pool of up-to-date healthcare data. This allows patients to have insightful conversations with healthcare professionals (HCPs) and play an active role in their medical care.
With faster digital adaptability by patients and HCPs alike, healthcare has gone a notch above to make the life of patients easier and more comfortable by ensuring faster turnaround time to reach patients be it in consultation, medication, information, or allied support by the click of a button.
The government has also integrated digitisation into the healthcare industry through initiatives such as the Ayushman Bharat Digital Health Mission (ABDM). It provides a choice to individuals to access both public and private health services, where the healthcare professionals will have better access to patient’s medical history to provide a better health outcome.
The emergence of artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms and robust analytics solutions have proved to be transformative in helping healthcare professionals analyse large amounts of patients’ unstructured health data. This can foster more informed decision-making and support the creation of tailored and personalised medical treatments.
Therefore, digital solutions and digital transformation initiatives in the healthcare industry have significantly improved patient experiences. This advancement represents a shift towards a more effective, efficient, and patient-focused healthcare delivery process.
How is Pfizer contributing to public health through its digital initiatives, and what role does personalisation play in delivering healthcare services to a wider population?
We believe in creating breakthroughs for patients through science and innovation. On World Cancer Day this year, Pfizer launched a digital campaign to inspire cancer patients and encourage them to never give up their fight. A film that showcased the struggles and achievements of cancer survivors. The ones who have not just fought against cancer but have gone beyond to achieve greater heights in the field of sports.
Another endeavour towards public health awareness has been the ‘Badhte Raho’ campaign. A growth hormone deficiency (GHD) awareness initiative where the focus is to increase early diagnosis and access to adequate care for GHD patients. This initiative aims to transform the journey of patients with growth-related disorders and help caregivers by creating an equitable ecosystem in schools. Late intervention/late diagnosis were identified as the key challenges. Our school outreach campaign helped to create awareness among parents. Through this outreach, we were able to reach about 200 schools and touch approximately 2500 parents over six months.
One of the ways to help provide personalised healthcare services to a broader population is to leverage emerging technologies to gain access to valuable aggregate-level insights about specific unmet needs and patient experiences from anonymised data and segmentation techniques. This data-backed approach then helps to customise and provide tailored solutions according to a patient’s needs, behavioural aspects, and preferences, ultimately leading to better health outcomes and adoption while respecting data privacy.
From your perspective, what are the key considerations when integrating technology and digital solutions into the healthcare ecosystem to enhance patient experiences and outcomes?
Integrating digital technology and solutions into the healthcare ecosystem has indicated substantial potential for helping organisations improve patient experiences and overall outcomes. However, several key factors should be considered to optimise digital integrations and the benefits of digital transformation initiatives.
Healthcare systems typically consist of numerous different sources of data. Therefore, ensuring that these various systems and data sources are compatible, facilitates consistent and uninterrupted communication. This enables healthcare providers to access patient records more efficiently, refine workflows and business processes, consolidate medical records across healthcare providers, and more. Another critical consideration that organisations must consider is the scalability of the digital solutions being integrated. As digital solutions and patient requirements change faster than ever, organisations must be prepared to adapt to new technological advancements and innovations over time.
Integrating technology into the healthcare ecosystem must centre around patient empowerment and autonomy. This includes providing seamless access to other health-related data, providing them with educational and medical resources, user-friendly mobile applications to contact healthcare providers, dosage reminders, and more.
Privacy, security, and encryption are equally essential considerations in the digital healthcare industry. Healthcare providers must strictly adhere to security mandates and regulations to protect patients’ sensitive data and information. Furthermore, transparency and regular communication with patients about how their data is being used and protected can increase trust and certainty in the technology your healthcare institution is implementing.
Technology integration can substantially optimise patient experiences and improve overall treatment outcomes by promoting collaboration and patient-centric delivery of healthcare services.
Could you elaborate on some strategies that can be employed to engage healthcare professionals (HCPs) effectively and maintain a strong presence in the healthcare industry?
Pharmaceutical companies need to adopt new ways to engage with healthcare professionals. This can be accomplished by introducing personalised touchpoints in the user journey, upgrading the strategy based on user insights and consistently engaging through multiple touchpoints.
For instance, a virtual experience platform to facilitate improved outreach and collaboration amongst HCPs. Such a digital solution may consist of unique features and capabilities – including peer-to-peer interactions, live webinar streaming, push notifications, newsfeeds as well as modules to help healthcare professionals practice real-world scenarios.
This will also help understand the digital footprints and behaviours and content consumption patterns of HCPs. Which can be leveraged in curating a customised content strategy and a personalised experience for each of the HCPs. They will gain substantially from rich scientific knowledge sharing, interaction, seamless data management and enablement set-ups leading to increased patient outreach, retention, and loyalty, thus providing a learning and engagement hub for healthcare professionals.
‘Medical case series,’ a web-series style content platform to share relevant knowledge and bring about a transformational experience is also a great way to engage with healthcare professionals. Another great way is engaging HCPs through automated chatbots. BOT solutions act as an effective omnichannel strategy to deliver a stellar customer experience, enable wider reach, controlled delivery of content, and real-time analytics for continuous improvement and improved customer experience. This can effectively help in sustaining a strong presence in the healthcare industry.
How do you collaborate with external partners, such as technology companies or startups, to drive innovation and improve digital healthcare solutions?
We value collaboration with external partners to unlock new insights, gain competitive advantage, and democratise digital healthcare. Our process of identifying the right collaborators is initiated by participating in startup roadshows, industry conferences, and individually through various forums like NASSCOM events, etc. This provides us valuable opportunities to connect with potential partners and discuss the capabilities and functionalities of their solutions.
We prioritise technological tools that are flexible, adaptable, and innovative and align with our scalability objectives in the long run. This helps us efficiently identify partners that can effectively contribute to developing and optimising our digital healthcare solutions. Collaborating with skilled external partners helps us unlock valuable avenues and channels for innovation, thus allowing us to keep up with changing patient requirements and stay updated with the latest advancements in the healthcare industry. Effective collaboration with third-party partners is a critical component of transforming the healthcare industry.
Do you foresee any trends or advancements in digital healthcare shaping the industry, and how are you preparing to stay at the forefront of these developments?
The current landscape of the digital healthcare industry is constantly evolving. To stay at the forefront of these future developments and opportunities Pfizer embraces key trends and continuously makes strategic objectives for growth. We prioritise placing our patients at the centre of all our digital healthcare projects. We are utilising digital platforms to empower our patients to play a more active role in managing their health, thus further accelerating positive health outcomes and enhancing patient engagement.
We also plan to prioritise the growing needs of HCPs through customisation and localisation. Our digital transformation strategies are centred around an omnichannel approach that will allow us to leverage data to facilitate hyper-personalisation and deliver better engagements.
Another important aspect of our preparation for future advancements is forming collaborative relationships with third-party digital providers. These partnerships will enable us to enhance the efficiency of our business processes, scale our operations sustainably and stay ahead of the curve.
Data-backed insights are becoming an increasingly important step in communicating with patients. Integrating real-time data in our target initiatives over point-in-time insights will enable us to make more proactive decisions and provide patients with targeted interventions and enhanced experiences.
With a foray into the world of AI and behavioural science, we have launched a personalised nudge-based solution to drive winning behaviour among our customer-facing colleagues to shift the approach to meeting KPIs from reactive to proactive. Providing guidance and measuring outcomes in real-time will help us achieve sales force excellence and increase productivity.
By focusing on a 360-degree, holistic approach to patient experiences and outcomes, our organisation aims to remain at the forefront of emerging technological advancements.
As the Director and Head of Digital Innovation and Customer Experience, how do you prioritise a patient-centric approach in the development and implementation of digital solutions?
The development and implementation of digital health solutions is an imperative aspect of patient care and ultimate health outcomes. Therefore, several key factors must be considered to prioritise a more patient-centric approach while developing and implementing digital solutions.
Extensive market research and engagement with patients can enable pharmaceutical companies to gain valuable insights into the specific challenges they face during the healthcare delivery process.
User-friendly and straightforward digital solutions ensure that patients of all ages and technical proficiencies can engage with medical professionals without delay. Conducting regular usability tests with a diverse group of patients from different demographics can help optimise patient experiences during the implementation process.
One of the most crucial factors for developing and implementing an effective digital healthcare solution is prioritising patient data security and privacy. Third-party access controls, anonymisation measures, and data encryption tools enable us to bring transparency regarding how medical data is used, informed consent, and assurance that sensitive data is protected are vital to building patient trust.
Collaborating with healthcare professionals (HCPs) to understand their unique insights and perspectives is also crucial for building a digital solution that can be sustained and scaled over time. Once digital solutions have been deployed, continuous monitoring and patient feedback mechanisms should be implemented to track their effect on overall patient healthcare outcomes.
By adopting these key strategies and understanding these fundamental considerations, digital healthcare solutions can be optimised and leveraged to prioritise patient-centric approaches during the entire development and implementation process. This includes promoting continuous innovation, improving patient care, and contributing to continuous digital transformation over time.