SINGAPORE: Pharmaceutical companies are increasingly forging alliances with hospitals in the Republic to gain a closer connection with patients. This is as digital health tools - such as wearable trackers, apps, electronic health records, patient portals and other emerging technologies - continue to drive healthcare’s focus away from treatment to prevention.
More and more patients-turned-empowered-consumers are taking control over their own health data and choice of care. This indirect mode of boosting business is in line with “beyond-the-pill” business models of drug-makers, analysts said, and provides an opportunity to understand patient needs and foster new avenues of revenue.
According to Mr Mohit Grover, Life Sciences & Healthcare Leader, Deloitte South-east Asia, the impetus for pharma companies to move towards patient-centric integrated healthcare solutions arises from the realisation that medicine alone is often not enough for patients to achieve optimal clinical outcomes, and a beyond-the-pill business model can be a valuable new source of revenue.
“In recent times, collaborations are increasing at the point of delivery of care, as existing models of healthcare are under serious pressure,” added Mr Grover. In November last year, Changi General Hospital (CGH) and Baxter Healthcare (Asia) announced a partnership to set up a joint facility within the hospital by 2017, to enhance patient care through compounded medication capabilities and innovations that will enable a new model of care delivery extending beyond the hospital into the community and at a patient’s home.
Medication compounding, according to a CGH release, is an important part of individual patient care and refers to preparation of certain customised medication into final form before being administered.
Such partnerships, said British-Swedish AstraZeneca, allow it to work closely with patients, healthcare professions, regulators and those who pay for healthcare to understand their needs and build insights early in their research and development programmes.
“In line with our strategy to push the boundaries of science, we work with hospitals in Singapore in the areas of patient care, as well as in providing scientific and disease education by leveraging our core competence in our therapy areas, such as cardiovascular, respiratory, diabetes and oncology,” said an AstraZeneca spokesperson.
The potential areas of collaboration between pharma companies and hospitals, noted Mr Abhijit Ghosh, pharmaceutical leader, PwC Singapore, are largely around developing creative support programmes, providing educational as opposed to marketing materials to patients and, at times, to enable patient access to drugs. The fear, however, concerns such partnerships potentially leading to hospitals prescribing more of partner pharma companies’ medicines, causing the cost of medication to increase, while further compounding the general lack of trust among patients, insurers, healthcare providers and medicine manufacturers.
“It is imperative to ensure there are adequate safeguards to avoid prescribers from only recommending specific brands, even when they do not compare favourably to other alternatives in terms of costs, effectiveness or risks. Proper governance and mitigations must be in place to ensure such partnerships foster a smarter, sustainable and seamless healthcare ecosystem,” said Mr Ghosh.
Moreover, after several widely reported cases of pharma companies being penalised for paying out bribes to doctors to prescribe their medicines, regulators today are extra vigilant on proposals seeking permissions for such alliances between drugmakers and healthcare providers.
Drug manufacturers, as a result, are walking the extra mile to establish their drive for transparency between them and healthcare professionals.
For instance, from January next year, GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) will discontinue the practice of paying healthcare professionals to speak on its behalf for prescription products or disease areas, to avoid conflicts of interest between the company and doctors. It will also stop providing direct financial support to individual doctors to attend medical congresses.
“Our partnership with the hospitals is centred on supporting medical education. The ultimate goal is to foster a balanced, unbiased medical education environment that drives improved patient care and clinical outcome … To meet society’s expectations it’s important that we are transparent about how we interact with doctors,” said Ms Dipal Patel, general manager, GSK Pharmaceuticals Singapore.
With more than 50 pharma companies heavily vested in the Republic, with their regional headquarters, manufacturing and research operations based here, leveraging Singapore’s integrated healthcare system and pro-innovation environment is logical, according to industry experts.
“Pharma companies will pilot and implement integrated healthcare solutions to significantly scale such models across the region … The regulators can play a key role of being a catalyst for increasing such collaborations by putting emerging patient needs and the growing consumer sentiment at the centre of their policy making,” said Mr Grover.
However, he said sustainable beyond-the-pill services still remain uncharted territory and the industry lacks leadership and collaboration to deliver tangible patient outcomes and viable business models.
Read the original TODAY report here.
- TODAY/av