From Hokey Pokey Care to Unified Patient Experience

Healthcare is in the midst of a transformation, the driving factors include economic necessity, social change, and the convergence of the biological and information revolutions. A growing amount of evidence shows that the more engaged a patient is, the more likely the patient is to have better health outcomes and experiences in their health journey.

The Context of Care

The AAMC recognized that "the pharmaceutical industry has an important role to play in educating and informing healthcare professionals about the availability, value, and proper use of novel medications and vaccines, new uses of existing products, and the new science that significantly bears on the therapeutic or economic value of products. Accordingly, creating platforms for appropriate scientific and medical interactions is essential.

Treating patients internally within the pharmaceutical business is a team effort. Secondly, external assistance from the pharmaceutical industry is welcome as long as clinical independence is not compromised and patients receive what is right for them and not what is influenced by third parties.

For the first point, we must develop a deeper understanding of what different departments and colleagues do in order to increase respect and open lines of communication across R&D, Medical, Commercial, Marketing, and Digital. Pharma organizations are hindered by siloed architectures, and their lack of collaboration sends a strong signal to their ecosystems.

Treating patients is a team effort

Second, as evidence has emerged about the influence of physician relationships within the pharma industry on physician practice, concerns about physicians' relationships within the pharma industry have continued to grow. In the United States and the European Union, a consensus has been reached that recognizes the importance of maintaining a strong relationship between medicine and industry, particularly in research and innovation, but is also mindful that industry influence on physician education should be regarded with caution.

Health System Course Correct

In the current system, clinicians and local public health agencies are responsible for creating and sharing public health data. For each patient, public health agencies ask clinicians to submit a detailed case report that includes information about the patient's medical history, symptoms, and demographics in addition to information about how the patient was exposed to various illnesses. While these reports can provide valuable insight into the disease's nature, clinicians' time is limited, particularly during crisis situations. To make matters even more complicated, there are substantial reporting variations across jurisdictions.

Increasingly, healthcare records are becoming digital, and as patients move from one healthcare ecosystem to another, their electronic health records must be easily accessible, discoverable, and understandable. For automated clinical decision support and machine-based processing, data must also be structured and standardized.

Since referring providers use different EMR systems, electronic medical records (EMRs) are insufficient for tracking and managing referrals. By optimizing referral management software, health systems can decrease patient wait times, increase network utilization, deliver happier patients, and deliver better patient care overall. Health systems must support referral and patient management through a consolidated and unified system in order to gain an advantage of care; everyone across the spectrum of healthcare should be using the same system to document the care of patients. It would save the primary care providers many hours a year filling out and signing endless forms and bureaucratic nonsense if a general care plan could just be drafted within the system. EMR use can be improved in primary healthcare settings by implementing interventions that focus on adding features to the EMR, including clinical decision support systems and customized referral templates, educational materials, or financial incentives to improve the quality of data and use of EMRs.

Everyone across the spectrum of healthcare should be using the same system to document the care of patients

The demand for advice and guidance is growing, and referrals for specialist care are now easier to manage with the e-Referral Service (e-RS). PALS (Patient Advice and Liaison Service) can also provide confidential advice, support, and information on health-related topics. Health literacy, advice, and guidelines must be integrated into all aspects of healthcare organizations, such as planning and operations, self-management support, design of delivery systems, support for shared decision-making, tracking and planning patient care, and facilitating access to community resources.

Healthcare's Transition from Reactive to Proactive: The Role of Informatics

The convergence of trends in health care, biology, informatics, and technology together with the associated social changes and economic imperative is driving a paradigm shift that may be the answer. Informatics has a role in most aspects of this. Informatics harnesses the power and possibility of digital technology to transform data and information into knowledge that people use every day. The below figure from HL7 provides a summary of the convergence of these trends and the likely results of disruption that will move us from reactive to proactive healthcare.

A Gentle Reminder: Science First

Clinicians are expected to provide safe, effective, cost-effective, compassionate care based on best practice and evidence, not on promotion. This professionalism is the foundation of medicine's agreement with society; it calls for prioritizing the needs of patients, establishing and upholding standards of competence and integrity, and offering society professional medical advice.

Building a Digital Core that Drives Impact at Scale

The new era of patient experience has started, and the transformation of the healthcare system into a patient-centric ecosystem is now enabled by progress in AI and smart algorithms. For example, the patient experience can now be improved across the cancer pathway through the following stages:

• Primary Care - Early diagnosis in primary care is enabled by digital tools, such as image sharing where appropriate, clinical decision support systems, teaching platforms, and counseling for clinical teams.
• Diagnostics - Remote reporting on diagnostics (including AI-enhanced diagnostics), shared care records, and diagnostic networks that enable securely sharing patient data from multiple providers to a single central location.
• Outpatients - Streamline digital pathways, such as appointment booking and reminders (mostly virtual), clinical team messaging managed through portals and remote platforms, and electronic prescribing.
• Treatment, surgery, and inpatient - Patient-reported outcome measures are used as an addition to virtual tests and pre-operative evaluations; digital sharing of treatment-related information.
• Community Services and Rehabilitation - Ongoing surveillance, including tools for tracking chronic illnesses and early relapse identification. using technology at home to keep an eye on things like vital signs, adverse effects of treatment, adherence to medication, and the usage of digital therapy.

Why should tools that can enhance patients' health be constrained to the past in a world where your doorbell can be connected to the IoT? We must demand more!

Offering solutions that benefit pharma brands, physicians, and patients all at once is essential for true closed-loop marketing. The collaboration between patients, healthcare professionals, and pharmaceutical companies supporting patients and their caregivers in making the best decision regarding their treatment must be enhanced.

Large-scale change in healthcare is both essential and inevitable.