You know You best – The meTrics Innovation

In the healthcare world, which is where I make my living, the people who develop drugs and deliver health services such as rehab or mental health counselling know a great deal about the specific effects, effectiveness and clinical value of the treatments they are offering. What they know less about, often despite their best efforts, is the broader quality of life of the people undergoing those treatments. We call that “the missing measurement.”

I have thought about this missing measurement a great deal over the years. Why is it missing? I think the reason comes down to the difference between quantitative and qualitative – our system seems to be better at measuring than we are at understanding. And so if someone is doing better in the one area we are measuring, we might assume they are doing better overall, and that might not actually be true.

My company provides a superior evidence-based drug formulary that powers prescription drug plans for Canadian organizations – companies, associations, unions. We decide, in other words, on which drugs work best, which work almost as well but cost less, and which do not work well enough. And while drug effectiveness and cost must certainly inform those decisions, surely the quality of life associated with taking the drug must also factor in. So I have always believed. But it turns out, nobody appears to have done a good job of measuring this. In the pharmaceutical sector, and across the broader healthcare sector, the tools that exist have always measured the effects of a treatment related to a specific symptom. So, by way of example, we might know that a particular drug is clinically effective, but, it makes the patient sleepy. What we don’t know is how being sleepy affects that patient’s quality of life. Until now.

Enter meTrics?. Yes, it is a play on the words “my metrics.” My company, Reformulary Group, began working with the Psychometrics Centre at Cambridge University in the U.K. a few years ago to develop two health surveys to measure, basically, how people feel. The first survey is specifically about quality of life, looking at the psychological, physical, social and environmental factors that affect life quality. The second survey measures productivity, which of course is related to quality of life – you can’t have one without the other. It looks at traits such as morale, stress management, fulfilment, stamina, pain management, as well as overall productivity.

meTrics is something of a game-changer in a couple of ways. First, healthcare professionals can use the information gathered for something extremely important. In addition to simply telling them how one individual patient might be doing in their life, meTrics can tell doctors or researchers or drug benefit plan designers how hundreds, or even thousands of people are doing on one specific drug or treatment. We might find out, for example, that most people taking drug ‘A’ for a specific condition enjoy a better quality of life physically and psychologically than people taking drug ‘B.’ That is incredibly useful information. Or, we might find out that people undergoing physiotherapy are doing better than people taking a drug for joint stiffness or pain. Imagine how valuable it would be to know that.

The other real innovation here, in my view, is that anyone who wants to can now go to the platform and assess how they are doing, how they are feeling. This might just be a source of interest, a diversion, for them. And that is fine. But it might also be extremely useful. I had a conversation recently with a woman battling severe arthritis. She had been in the process of moving, and her arthritis flared up. With the help of meTrics, she was able to confirm that the flare-up was a result of the stressful move, and not a worsening of her condition. And armed with that information, she was able to get her life back under control.

I want to be clear. meTrics doesn’t tell you how you are feeling. How could it? Only you know that. What meTrics does is provide useful validation of how you might be feeling, and maybe provide clues as to why you are feeling that way. The meTrics motto is “You know You best.” And for the first time, the people who know best have access to a platform that can provide them, in real time, with tools to assess how they are doing in terms of quality of life, and maybe also why.

In my next post, I will look at some of the ways in which meTrics is already being put to use. Stand by.