Why Pharma and Digital Health Companies Need an Education Strategy
Why Focus on Education Needs?
For the past year, I have been really considering the implications of widespread digital health adoption and what it would take. Now, I have two areas that I think will be needed, and I want to cover them in depth. The first one is the need to supply training and education for the medical workforce on digital health and training topics that need to be delved into at the minimum.
I feel that specific health organizations may help with this for their members, such as the AMA Digital Health Playbook on Remote Patient Monitoring, but I think more will be needed. Pharm and Digital Health companies will likely need to be the significant disruptors of this space to get health care professionals interested and up to speed on how to use digital health. My rationale for this is for several reasons:
Money - I am not going to bat around the bush on this. One of the primary reasons some companies will get a head start in this market is the bottomless pit of money some pharma companies have. As such, we have seen many digital health startups now partner with pharma. One of these items will be the need for finances to push education and training module creation.
They Make the Product - Factor in that most companies already have key opinion leaders, clinical trial sites, and early adopters in their connection, they can utilize these resources to develop educational materials to showcase to others.
They Have the Personnel and Experience - Again, Pharma has a lot of experience in getting the products to market and training and educating practitioners on how to use it. Digital Health is a bit different, though, so I think there will be a struggle with certain things, though.
Areas of Focus to Provide Digital Health Education
With that all said, the following eight areas are, for me, the most significant challenges that pharma and digital health companies need to invest in to ensure that when they launch their products, it will end up being used and not lead to problems down the road.
A More Detailed Breakdown
Educate Health Care Practitioners - This may seem obvious, but I feel it is one area that is not getting the attention it needs. My next article will focus on market-shaping for digital health, so I won't go in-depth here as much, but suffice it to say, I would say the majority of those in the health care space do not know what digital health is at this time. It seems everything I give a CE or presentation on digital health, and I get questions from my audience on why they are just hearing about this now for the first time. So, if you want people to use your product or service, they need to have a larger understanding of the nature of digital health at this time.
Prescribing Training - Ok, so putting drug, dose, how to take it, how many to supply, and refills come pretty easily when entering an order for a medication. How the hell do you prescribe an app or digital medicine or digital therapeutic? We are going to need some training on that.
Patient Education Techniques - I know how to educate a patient on medication. But how do I educate on a wearable, sensor, digital therapeutic? What do I go over? What are areas of focus? These are things that are going to take us back to square one. It's not just teaching how to use a glucose meter; we are talking about products that can work on a disease itself that may do a lot of work on its own that a patient isn't aware of, and neither are we!
Digital Health Product Information - So I know where to lookup drug information, get drug-drug interactions, tell a patient when and what to take their medication with multiple resources on the market. But what about digital therapeutics or other products? What resources are there? This is something that will need to be created.
Tech Support Knowledge - Well, what happens if my patient has a question about their app crashing, or the hardware flashing a funny green button? Is that my problem or your problem? I mean, we are talking about patients' health here; it's not like we can send them to the Apple Store or wait till business hours to address what could be a significant issue. Training on how to address these issues will be essential.
Best Practices - How do I keep up on all the data and alerts I am going to get? How should I use your product? A lot of health professionals learn from each other or read up on developments. So there better be some prep work on getting some best practices out there, especially if your product or service gets recommended in clinical guidelines (because then you know you made it big).
Privacy and Data Security - Did you see the big concern about Google and Ascension Health? No? Well, it's worth a read. I mean, we are hearing people are going to stop using Fitbit with recent news Google may acquire Fitbit. So, some transparency and clarity are in order to tell our patients, otherwise, they won’t use it. And that's going to be a new thing to add on why patients become nonadherent in the future I feel.
How Do I Get Paid? - So, if RPM and other services start being billed for, we'll need to train providers and staff on remuneration. This may also fall under best practices to take into consideration.
Well, that concludes my thoughts on what pharma and digital health companies need to get in order before they bring their products to market. I am already hearing about some experiences, where digital health companies show up with a new product/service, and can’t find health care professionals that wan to use it in practice, and I think these are some of the reasons why. As always, I welcome comments and feedback!
Next, I’ll talk about why market shaping in the digital health space needs some major work.