Webisodes

Video Transcript: Using Informatics for More Informed Product Decisions

Webisode transcriptions completed by third-party vendor. AmerisourceBergen Specialty Group assumes no liability for the accuracy of the content.

Gina: Brand planning. Sales and marketing. Payer relations. What role does improved data play in enhancing these key areas of your product strategy? Join us to find out. “In the Know” starts now.

Hello and welcome to “In the Know,” your source for insight and analysis on the issues that matter to specialty pharma. I’m your host, Gina Clark.

Today, we’re taking a closer look at the impact that accurate and timely product data can have on a product’s success. More importantly, we’re questioning how data that encompasses everything from distribution to utilization to patient adherence can be leveraged to make smarter product decisions. Two guests join us today to answer these questions and many others: Matt Johnson, vice president of strategy for the Specialty Group and Cory Shouse, director of financial systems development for AmerisourceBergen Specialty Group.

Welcome to you both.

Matt: Thanks.

Before we get into more strategic points about how data can be used to improve product performance, I'd like to get an overview of the current data landscape. What data is out there now?

Matt: The most common kind of data that’s out there right now is the product data that comes as a result of the transaction between the specialty distributors, specialty pharmacy and the end customer. This is data that’s typically transmitted via the electronic data exchange, or EDI, and it’s usually distinguished by its content, by the number that identifies it, such as A52 or A67 for specialty distribution data or A35 and A37 for specialty pharmacy data. Electronic data interchange (EDI) is the common standard and it’s kind of traditional and there’s really an opportunity I think to get information and decision makers answers more quickly by portalizing a lot of this data. That’s actually one of the major trends that we’re seeing right now, is the need for increased information getting in the hands of decision makers more quickly.    

And how are they currently using the data?

Matt: Well the product data is typically used by the brand managers and trade management people to really understand the product flow. However, there is also this need for more granular information and that’s something that people really want to understand. Not only that a product moved but in some cases why it didn’t move. And in those cases, we really can give a lot of extra insight based on our value-added services, both on reimbursement compliance and adherence, understanding where barriers might be in those two areas. Further, there are also a lot of ad boards that we can provide whenever some new event happens in the industry, we can have a lot of provider and managed care advisory panels that can usually get you an answer very quickly on those. But really the third thing that people are seeing is to aggregate all the information they are getting to make sense of it all. There is kind of an overflow of information right now for most manufacturers and it’s really a great opportunity to work with our Xcenda unit, which we acquired a few years ago, and help make sense of what’s happening in the market. 

What are some advantages of these current methods for collection and dissemination? What are some of the inherent flaws?

Cory: Well Gina, EDI has been around for over 20 years, and because of that there is a standard list of definitions and of elements available to the manufacturer. Since this is the case, manufacturers know what they are getting. The downside of that is manufacturers have to bring that data in and make information of it themselves. With large manufacturers, who have very responsive IT departments, they are able to bring that in and do it to themselves. But for emerging manufacturers or manufacturers who are new to the market, they don’t have that support. And a lot of them reach to out to companies like ABSG to help them deliver that data.

So now that we have a view of what has come to be accepted as the industry standard, what improvements can be made to this? How can product data be more accurately aggregated? How can it be distributed more quickly?

Cory: Well in the last couple of years, Gina, there have been a number of improvements in standards. The first started with the national provider and identifier. The national provider and identifier really helped providers make sure they get reimbursed for their claims. This is for manufacturers and payers and it allows them an identifier to help paint a picture of activity across all of their systems. Of course the hot topic in Washington right now is the national patient identifier. If you can imagine going into an ER and giving them your national identifier number and they are able to pull up your entire medical history even though you’ve never visited there before. Will the hospital be able to provide better treatment? Will they be able to provide adverse effects because they will be aware of other medications you’re taking or any other conditions you might have. This is going to be very interesting over the next year for how this unfolds. And the balance will be, how do you share information while protecting patient privacy.

So along with that is there a way that it can be distributed more quickly or efficiently?

Cory: Manufacturers are asking for daily, weekly and even real time information, and the technologies are there to do that. Of course the real problem is getting these systems in place and these identifiers in place that help make aggregation of data much more efficient.

Given some of these process improvements, what impact will this have on pharmaceutical manufacturers in the areas of brand planning, sales and marketing or payer relations? What actions can they take?

Matt: Well on the product side I think it’s a great opportunity to give not only a faster view but also a really comprehensive view based not only on our market share that we have and always being able to pull data from other sources and integrate that. In some cases that could be like pulling all the other EDI information and portalizing it like for our 3PL and direct distribution models. And now with the recent acquisition of NMR strategies we have the ability to track product movement on both sides of the ordering and give somebody a true North American view. On the services side, you know I don’t just want to give somebody insight to the reimbursement problems that a product might have but also a program that will help you encounter that problem and fix it. I think there’s a tremendous opportunity as well on the compliance adherence side where we have one of the unique places of alignment of goals in the channel between the patient, physician, manufacturer as well as the payer. You know, basically they keep a patient on their prescribed course of therapy. And you know, not only do we give you the program, but we give you the data as well to help you manage these things. And really, these things increase the efficiency of any manufacturer’s sales effort.

A lot of the concepts and examples you're describing seem fairly common in the business-to-consumer world. For example, we see portals with fairly complex data when we're talking about viewing stock portfolios online. What has inhibited the introduction of tools like this in the pharma industry? Why haven't we seen more informatics tools before?

Cory: Those consumers have a single banking account with a single bank. If you can imagine a consumer having five different accounts with five different banks and a consumer trying to bring that information together and make sense of it, that’s essentially what pharma is facing. As a product moves from manufacturer to a clinic or pharmacy, there are data points along the way, so bringing that data from all those different sources together is one of the real challenges with informatics.

Without revealing too much, how are you able to overcome some of these obstacles that have previously hindered similar projects?

Matt: A lot of times when you’re doing a technology project, a lot of the ingredients are the same, it’s money, people and time. But when differentiators are having the right vision and the right execution and really starting out with this space, we have done a really good job with our partner, our sister company, AmerisourceBergen Drug and their true URX platform. I think that they were able to provide two really important things, the visions and most importantly for us, the money, and we were able to handle the execution on the people side of it and that’s been really well received.

Cory: TrueVRX is ABC’s first portal for generic manufacturers. We allow manufacturers to log in every day and see updated information. You’ve got something called a backward allocation report where a manufacturer can essentially log on, enter how much product they want to move through the pipeline, and the report will actually tell them which distribution centers they ought to be moving that product through. We also provide weekly sales data and pricing information, so a lot of the manufacturers have information at their fingertips versus the traditional EDI format that’s just a flat file.

What has been the response from manufacturers to-date?

Cory: So far it’s been really really strong, really really positive. Obviously that’s been well received but generally our approach is probably a little bit different at ABSG than some of the traditional design houses and IT shops out there in that we don’t really come at you with A, a canned platform of B, something that’s either a whiteboard or custom project. We really believe in doing the same thing in informatics that we do on the product moving side which is to provide efficient cost effective solutions. We tend to leverage a lot of existing technologies, and configure them to solve unique problems as opposed to just trying to come up with a completely different dead-end technical solution that’s purely custom, and those tend to be very expensive and hard to improve or modify, and that’s been very well received so far.

What do manufacturers want for future state applications, and how is ABSG responding to these requests?

Cory: As we noted earlier, many manufacturers are looking for timely information. Data from a lot of the third party data brokers to data aggregators is sometimes a month behind. So by the time a manufacturer gets that data the market is already changing. So what we’re trying to do is put data in the hands of the manufacturers on a daily, weekly, and even real time basis. The other thing that we’re seeing is manufacturers want to see their data integrated into the pipeline view. An example is, there are sales territories, so we’ll bring that data into our systems and allow them to see the sales through the pipeline via their own sales territories. The third thing that we’re really seeing is around fee for services. Fee for services has been around some time now in the pharmaceutical distribution space. But the metrics to it that a manufacturer wants to see to support those fees for services is critical.  

What concerns do you have for progress of informatics tools in the near future?

Cory: Well I think it’s important to remember that it’s not a technology problem. So often many times we like to focus on the technology, but in this case it’s not a technology problem. I think it’s going to take a continued introduction of new standards, an adoption of those standards and make an investment in the right places. At ABSG, we’re actually investing in our clinical data warehouse, where we’re actually bringing key critical data in from oncology practices where we actually aggregate and make information from it. It’s those types of things that will be important going forward.   

More optimistically, what opportunities do you see for this type of informatics over the next few years? What external factors are contributing to the need for these tools?

Matt: Well we’ve been hearing for a long time that there’s going to be an amazing revolution in healthcare IT, and I think in some ways we are helping to lead that with our EMR data in oncology. However I wouldn’t expect any radical changes any time soon, it’s not like tomorrow we’re going to wake up and have every oncology practice have an EMR. That said though, I do think we’re going to see an intensification of a lot of the trends that we’ve spoken about already. First really being the need for faster information in the hands of decision makers. The second really being the need for more granular information, especially nowadays in a volatile market where there’s always changes happening. Sometimes people even need to have a quick ad board that gets integrated in with their regular data as well. Lastly though I really think that the big need that’s out there is for cost effective solutions that help people put all these different data threads together, and help them make sense of the entire market. 

Gentlemen, I see we’ve run out of time for our discussion. Thank you for being part of today’s program.

And thank you for joining us—we’ll be back soon with another, all-new webisode. Until then, if it’s on your mind, it’s In the Know.

Close Transcript