Imagine a time when prescription drugs made by all of the major pharmas can only sit on a proverbial shelf pleading weakly, “choose me, choose me, please choose me.” A time when there are no salespeople making the rounds of doctors' offices and leaving samples, no ads on television for prescription drugs telling the public that a particular one is the cure for what ails them.
If it sounds unbelievable, one has only to look at the most recent developments in mobile healthcare and its influence on companies like WellDoc and IBM through the Watson supercomputer Development Cloud program. It's also there in the results of a survey by Digitas Health, a healthcare marketing company.
According to the Digitas survey, “Consumer Mobile Health Impact Assessment,” 80 percent of patients who take their mobile device into the exam room are “more likely to switch medications.” When those patients with multiple devices are compared to users without a single device, 200 percent more patients were twice as likely to switch medications. And when doctors bring their mobile device into the exam room, 30 percent of them are more likely to have the patient switch medications. Nine out of 10 patients will take the doctor’s recommendation of a mobile healthcare app while only 66 percent of patients will fill their prescription.
[See also: mHealth — what's the hold up?]
Chris Bergstrom, the chief strategy officer at WellDoc — the only healthcare application that requires a prescription from a doctor — says patients are increasingly making a joint decision with their doctor concerning their treatment and their medications. There is “no marketing” in play, he notes.
BlueStar, WellDoc’s Type 2 diabetes application, already has payers, like those used by Ford Motor Company and Walgreen, reimbursing for using the app. Bergstrom says the application provides real-time coaching, support and education, so the FDA decided it should only be dispensed by prescription.
At present, BlueStar takes into consideration the patient’s medical history, current glucose readings and treatment regime as well as the current medications before dispensing its advice. But who is to say the next step won’t be a prescription application that recommends to both doctor and patient a different course of treatment or a different medication?
This is already happening. The MD Anderson Oncology Center in Texas uses IBM supercomputer Watson in the background to determine the treatment profile for some of its cancer patients, then sends those results to an iPhone.
As cognitive computing technology takes hold it will tilt purchasing decisions away from sales pitches and television advertising campaigns and toward more collaboration between patient and doctor.
Big Blue’s marketing materials are already pointing in that direction. IBM's Watson cloud services will allow users to Ask Watson in order to “offer advice to guide their purchase decisions.”
The question is, will Big Pharma sit still for this? Will they be content, like telecom service providers, to become a “dumb pipe,” unable to influence doctors or patients in their purchasing decisions, only hoping one of their products is recommended by a mobile application?
Certainly, corporate America is rife with examples of companies that didn’t see the handwriting on the wall. GM and the entire American auto industry scoffed at the idea of Japanese companies introducing small cars to America, and Kodak essentially said digital cameras were a fad.
But according to Geoff McCleary, vice president and director of mobile innovation at Digitas Health, Big Pharma is smarter than that. McCleary believes Big Pharma recognizes a change in the drug prescription purchasing model and that they are, in fact, figuring out how they will play in this new space.
[See also: Doc's, devices and data: How to sort it all out.]
McCleary told mHealth News that, based on conversations he has had, within the next year to 18 months drug companies will enter the market with healthcare applications of their own that most likely will, like WellDoc’s BlueStar, require a prescription. One may surmise that if they do enter the market with proprietary applications, those apps will help patients select the proper treatment from their own arsenal of drug solutions. At present most of the Big Pharma companies have some mobile apps, but they are logbook and encyclopedia-like and do not use intelligent systems.
The matter comes down to who will "own" the patient: The doctor, the drug company, or even a mobile healthcare application designer? Or it could be that in the digital age the patient is no longer up for sale, and we are witnessing another example of disintermediation in yet another giant industry, which in this case puts the customer/patient more in control of his or her own healthcare.
Ephraim Schwartz is a freelance writer based in Burlington, Vt. He is a recognized mobile expert and columnist, having spent 15 years as Editor-at-Large for InfoWorld, half of them covering the mobile space. Prior to that he was Editor-in-Chief of Laptop Magazine.
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