eHealth - Social Business in Health

Life sciences companies have a window of time to frame their patient engagement strategies  (Deloitte Review, 2016,18) for operating in the new, customer-centered, digital ecosystem— or risk the new players keeping them constrained within the traditional pharma model. [...]
Changes in technology and the health care ecosystem are increasing the patient’s role in decision making and reshaping their expectations from health care companies and is driven by several factors, including patients’ ability to change their own outcomes based on behavior, financial scrutiny due to cost-sharing models that push more costs onto the patient, the industry’s shift toward evaluating out- comes to determine value delivered to the patient, and the availability of technology solutions empowering patients with more information and the ability to play an active role in managing their well-being.
We’re also seeing a broad “consumerization” of health care products, expanding the ecosystem beyond the traditional players of providers, payers, big pharma, and health care data companies to include retail giants such as Nike, Apple Inc., and FitBit, as well as thousands of innovative mobile-application developers. As such, patients need to be thought of and engaged as traditional consumers when it comes to their use of health care products and services. [...]

The explosion of research in the area of patient engagement further speaks to the need for timeliness on the part of pharmaceutical companies implementing and executing engagement strategies, and nonprofit and public sector organizations can play a key role in making this happen. [...]

With regard to patient engagement, there is emerging support for moving away from a reactive approach, in which coordination between stakeholders, therapy, and care is limited or ad hoc, to a proactive model in which engagement tools and support bolster both patients and health care providers.
The bottom line is that there are any number of ways to structure patient services within an organization; so if the current structure isn’t effectively supporting and executing the patient engagement strategy and therapeutic outcomes, alternatives and precedents should be considered.[...]
No matter where patient services resides, a common platform across the organization and its vendors is becoming increasingly important, and is an effective way to leverage data as a strategic asset. [..]