- Boehringer Ingelheim announced a five-year partnership with California health system Sutter Health around digital, mobile and data-driven health offerings, starting with a project aimed at “personalizing medical care to the patient’s unique needs and preferences.” As our system of care becomes more consumer-directed and value-driven, the customer experience is becoming increasingly important to all players.
- Mobile revenue accounted for 38% of Everyday Health’s total Q1 revenue. CEO Ben Wolin said: “Some recent reports have suggested that pharma companies are hesitant to market via mobile channels. That is obviously not what we are seeing or experiencing. It’s not something we expect to see going forward.”
- The growth of high-deductible consumer-directed health plans is one reason consumers are feeling more pain around costs. Another is that prices are simply skyrocketing in a few critical classes, such as hep C and cancer. As a result, the number of Americans who took medicines worth more than $50,000 annually rose 63% last year to 576,000, according to a report from PBM Express Scripts.
- Big consolidation in the cards among insurers as Aetna aims to capitalize on Medicare’s shift to value-based reimbursement: “Aetna, Cigna (CI), Humana (HUM) and Blue Cross and Blue Shield plans are aggressively trying to replicate and compete with the success of UnitedHealth’s fast-growing Optum business, which has seen quarter after quarter of double-digit percentage growth from consulting and providing technology services to doctors and hospitals implementing population health strategies.”
- And MobiHealthNews looks at what an Aetna-Humana/Cigna mashup’s digital offerings would look like.
- An economist looks at the costs of cost-sharing on patient health, concludes that “charging sicker patients the same as healthy ones for the drugs and preventive care they need ultimately costs more.”
- Nice plug for Monique Levy’s groundbreaking Digital Disconnect study in the lede to a great (if depressing) piece about the low ceiling on pharma digital marketing jobs.
- Independence Blue Cross is trying out a digital pillbox designed to flag nonadherence.
- A lawsuit over provision of off-label information, which FDA prohibits, has industry policy peeps in a tizzy. DC types have long angled for a confrontation with the FDA over off-label info on free speech grounds, and the Amarin suit. Should Amarin win, it could greatly constrain FDA’s power to regulate promotion.
- Here comes the consumer diagnostics market – a startup is marketing a crowdfunded $200 “hockey-puck sized disc” that measures body temperature, heartbeat and blood pressure when pressed to the forehead.\
- A prominent venture capitalist says the hottest area for pharma-centric digital health investment is in “helping them modernize their marketing.”
- The number of certified PAs has jumped 36.4% since 2009, top 101,977, as providers and health systems seek to address increased patient volume resulting from the ACA.
