Transforming Patient Care Management: Q&A with Dea Belazi

Dea Belazi
CEO
AscellaHealth

During the pandemic, the healthcare industry had to embrace digital healthcare solutions to continue to serve patients. Ever since, these technologies have remained in use and being implanted across more and more of the industry. Dea Belazi, CEO of AscellaHealth, spoke with Pharmaceutical Executive about this trend and how it continues to impact patient care.

Pharmaceutical Executive: How is technology transforming personalized support?
Dea Belazi: Technology is profoundly transforming personalized support for patients. By integrating innovative digital health tools, organizations can enhance patient engagement, streamline communication, and improve health outcomes. At AscellaHealth, we take the benefits of technology one step further, combining these technological advancements with personalized support from dedicated Patient Care Coordinators (PCCs).

Our PCCs leverage secure mobile platforms to communicate with patients, providing tailored support when and how it's most convenient for them. This alternative communication method has proven to enhance medication adherence. By complementing the efforts of healthcare providers, PCCs ensure that patients receive the personalized care they deserve, regardless of geographic barriers or transportation limitations.

This connectivity supports the development of close, personal relationships with patients and caregivers, enabling access to seamless medical therapy management and concierge-level care and support. PCC’s play a pivotal role in this process, supporting therapy onboarding, implementing customized clinical protocols, and facilitating bi-directional messaging for optimal patient engagement.

Patients also benefit from enhanced access to essential information about their own health information, as well as self-management tools, such as medical records, medication reminders, and treatment plans. This enables patients to take a more active role in their healthcare decisions, leading to improved adherence to treatment and better outcomes.

Importantly, data is encrypted and secure, ensuring patients’ information remains confidential and protected to maintain the highest standards of security throughout the healthcare journey.This heightened engagement enables PCCs to track patients' treatment more effectively, identify potential challenges or barriers they may encounter and offer timely support and guidance to navigate through the issues, thereby enhancing the overall quality of care provided.

PE: How is the integration of Telehealth and remote patient monitoring streamlining patient care?
Belazi: Telehealth platforms enable patients and medical providers to connect virtually, overcoming geographic constraints, improving access to primary and specialty care and ensuring that patients receive the personalized care they need. The integration of telehealth and remote patient monitoring (RPM) streamlines patient care coordination, enhancing efficiency, reducing barriers for timely interventions, and speeding the retrieval of accurate patient data and information that helps to close gaps in care. Integrated technologies facilitate seamless communications among pharmacy, patient, and provider, allowing for more timely decision-making regarding individual patient needs.

RPM devices, such as wearable sensors and home monitoring equipment, allow healthcare providers to continuously track patients' health metrics. This real-time data transmission enables early detection of potential health issues and timely adjustments to treatment plans, helping to address potential issues before they escalate into serious problems and ultimately reducing costly hospital readmissions and emergency room visits.

This is especially important in remote or underserved areas where the burden of frequent appointments or the lack of nearby medical facilities pose obstacles in accessing care. Even in the urban healthcare landscape, there are challenges, including patient complexity and resource limitations, such as insufficient infrastructure and shortages of primary and specialty care. With global data documenting that approximately one in three of all adults¹ suffer from multiple chronic conditions (MCCs), accelerated access to care via telehealth and RPM overcomes the issue of limited availability of physician specialists who understand and are experienced with a particular condition.

Furthermore, the integration of digital technologies significantly improves access to therapy with enhancements to shipping medications directly to patients and contributing to the seamless management of their complex healthcare journey. Real-world evidence underscores the impact of these advancements, revealing expedited delivery times and increased medication adherence rates among patients receiving medications through digital channels. Patients benefit not only from enhanced convenience but also optimized healthcare outcomes that result from timely access to essential treatments.

PE: What impact are new technologies having on patient engagement?
Belazi: New technologies are having a profound impact on patient engagement by making healthcare more interactive, accessible, and personalized. Digital health tools improve the patient experience, offering streamlined and personal support that keeps patients engaged and elevates satisfaction with care.

For example, AscellaHealth’s mobile patient platform provides patients with reliable educational materials about their medications and treatment plans, enabling them to make informed decisions about their health. This proactive approach to patient education also relieves the burden on patients to search independently for disease-specific information or take on the overwhelming tasks associated with combing through the web and questioning whether the information is credible.

Digital tools largely overcome the need for in-person visits, clearly making it easier and more convenient to access specialized care and receive timely medical advice. Patients can also take advantage of wearable devices that provide real-time feedback and enable them to share personal health data with their providers. This facilitates better provider/patient communication and collaboration, with ongoing interaction that helps patients stay informed and motivated to manage their health.

PE: How are these new technologies impacting RWE and its usage in the industry?
Belazi: New technologies are revolutionizing the collection, analysis and utilization of real-world evidence (RWE) in the healthcare industry. Digital health tools, such as electronic health records (EHRs), mobile health apps, wearable devices and telehealth platforms, generate vast amounts of real-world data (RWD) that provide valuable insights into the effectiveness and safety of medical interventions in everyday clinical settings.

The integration of digital health technologies facilitates the collection of comprehensive RWD, which can be analyzed to understand how treatments perform in real-world scenarios. For example, telehealth platforms and remote patient monitoring devices continuously collect data on patients' health metrics and treatment outcomes. This real-time data enables healthcare providers to make informed decisions and tailor treatments to individual patient needs, ultimately improving patient outcomes.

The integration of RWE into the drug development process optimizes clinical trial design, improves patient recruitment, and enhances post-market surveillance. By leveraging RWD data, pharmaceutical companies can identify patient populations most likely to benefit from new therapies, leading to more efficient and targeted clinical trials. Access to the right data and statistical analytics are expected to significantly reduce clinical trial costs and deliver accurate results in the shortest possible time frame. This contributes to trial success, providing a reliable, consistent source of accurate data, intelligence and RWE/RWD that supports the evaluation of correct treatment protocols and aids in the selection of optimal investigators and sites.

RWE also supports regulatory submissions and payer negotiations by providing evidence of a drug's real-world impact on patient outcomes and healthcare costs, demonstrating the value of a therapy and securing market access and reimbursement.

Furthermore, RWE plays a key role in value-based contracting and reimbursement models, where payments are tied to the demonstrated effectiveness and value of a treatment. By providing evidence of a drug's real-world performance, RWE helps ensure that patients receive treatments that are truly effective and beneficial in real-world clinical practice.

New technologies are expanding the scope and utility of RWE, transforming it into a critical component of evidence-based healthcare decision-making. This shift is accelerating the development and approval of innovative therapies, improving patient outcomes, and ensuring that healthcare resources are used efficiently and effectively. By leveraging digital health tools and advanced analytics, healthcare providers and researchers can harness the power of RWE to drive innovation and improve the quality of care.

Sources

1. Hajat, Cother; Stein, Emma. The Global Burden of Multiple Chronic Conditions: A Narrative Review. Nation Library of Medicine. December 12, 2018. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6214883/