Analytics and Data Integration: Changing the Game for Digital Hubs

Supporting patients throughout the entire specialty therapy journey is essential to achieving positive health outcomes. More and more, data is what lies at the heart of this critical objective. As CareMetx’s latest report, The Evolving Landscape of Digital Hubs revealed, the ability to integrate data seamlessly, then analyze and report on it effectively is critical for manufacturers that rely on digital hubs to support their drug programs.

Beyond the Basics  

Most manufacturers partner with a digital hub provider to facilitate critical steps in the patient journey, such as ensuring patients can gain access to a prescribed therapy, and verifying that the patient’s drug is covered by insurance. The hub also serves an important role for providers, confirming that a prescribed treatment will be reimbursed by the insurer, avoiding later administrative complications. 

While a streamlined, efficient process can indeed improve prescription initiation rates, manufacturers often want to go beyond those basics. They want to ensure patients are motivated and equipped to adhere to the therapy correctly and stay on therapy for the prescribed period once they begin their first dose. Increasingly, they rely on hub data to help achieve these objectives. 

With access to the right data, along with actionable insights derived, manufacturers can better understand the barriers that regularly keep patients from starting or staying on therapy. This equips them to take effective steps that remove any obstacles to a successful health outcome. 

Data Integration: Putting it All Together 

Often, the sheer volume of available patient data and the number of sources that data might originate from can prove overwhelming. This can ultimately limit the usability of that information in a meaningful way. For that reason, manufacturers consider data integration to be a key criterion in the digital hub decision, and a key determinant of program success. 

While manufacturers regularly obtain data from sources like point-of-sale systems, they often also find value in integrating additional data streams from the hub provider. And when manufacturers outsource vital services like benefits verification and patient enrollment to a hub, they rely on the data collected by that hub to gain visibility into the patient’s experience, and to understand how and where they can improve it. Whether it’s data on benefit approval or denial, use of financial assistance programs, or rates of drug initiation, the ability to capture and integrate multiple data streams can largely boost a specialty drug program’s effectiveness.  

Yet, as leading pharmaceutical manufacturers and healthcare providers shared in this  2022 study of the digital hub landscape, hub providers vary significantly in the level of data they provide access to, and the degree of data integration they support. To leverage the market and commercialization data available from a hub program, both manufacturers and providers say they seek better access to data, and more consistent integration across the myriad of data sources involved.  

These needs are ranked high on the list of priorities surveyed participants shared in the aforementioned research, and data suggests these needs will only become more critical in the coming years. In fact, when rating the various factors that they believe will be most important when choosing a partner for their oncology drug products, pharmaceutical manufacturers rated hub data and analytics as the third most important consideration today—but the top consideration five years from now. 

Data Analytics: Drawing Insights from Information 

The ability to access and integrate data from disparate sources is crucial for a drug program’s success, but it’s just the start. Sophisticated analytics can help manufacturers derive insights from digital hub data and make more informed decisions that ultimately improve metrics such as drug initiation and persistence.  

Equipped with analytics in areas like patient enrollment, patient phone history, and drug dispensing, manufacturers can identify points in the care journey where there are gaps, delays or missed opportunities that should be addressed. They can also spot trends that signal a need for intervention and make necessary adjustments—optimizing the drug program to improve the patient’s experience and the drug program’s success.  

As pharmaceutical manufacturers shared in The Evolving Landscape of Digital Hubs report, the more detailed and granular the data a hub provider shares, the more useful it can be in guiding a drug program, and the level and type of patient support provided at various points in the journey. For example, if the hub program reveals that a high percentage of patients are discontinuing a therapy after the third month, the manufacturer can work with the hub provider to adapt the patient support program and deliver more targeted, effective interventions prior to the three-month mark. 

As a leading provider of digital hub services, CareMetx is committed to providing manufacturers with the data access, integration, and analytics they need to optimize their specialty drug programs and support patients throughout the care journey. By combining talented hub team members, a robust technology platform, a wide range of automated services, and flexible program workflows and data analytics, CareMetx provides customized digital hub solutions to match each manufacturer’s goals. 

To view more detailed reporting on manufacturer needs, download The Evolving Landscape of Digital Hubs.