Over the past decade, our understanding of the root causes of nonadherence has evolved dramatically. Where the pharmaceutical industry once believed that cost and forgetfulness were preventing patients from sticking with their prescriptions, we now understand that a multitude of psychological factors influence short-term decisions and long-term habits alike.

At HealthPrize, we’ve spent the past seven years applying gamification and behavioral economics to the heart of the nonadherence issue. Our application now puts these cutting-edge techniques in the hands of pharma brands.

But even the best tool can be ineffective if used incorrectly, so our account services team offers their deep expertise to HealthPrize clients to ensure every aspect of the platform is applied as successfully as possible.

We sat down with Lara Noel, HealthPrize’s Director of Client Services, to find out how their hands-on approach delivers amazing results for pharma brands.

Lara Noel, Director of Client Services

How HealthPrize Partners With Pharma Brands

Lara is quick to point out that the account team’s goal is to work alongside the marketing or product manager from start to finish. They have all worked in pharma for years, in some cases for decades, and they fully understand the regulatory challenges involved in rolling out a new platform like HealthPrize.

The process generally proceeds in three phases:

1. Project planning
2. Content creation and approvals
3. Performance analysis

Project Planning Phase

In the earliest days of a project Lara’s team works to understand the exact review and approval requirements for their client. These can vary widely from brand to brand, so it’s vital to get a clear picture of what hurdles will need to be cleared prior to launch.

The planning phase also includes development of a project timeline and detailed project plan, which will drive all ongoing work.

Content Creation and Approval Phase

Lara’s team remains involved with the day-to-day execution of the platform rollout, creating and securing client approvals for all of the educational content that the HealthPrize users will encounter. This can include everything from quizzes, surveys, and daily tips to contest rules, FAQs, privacy policies, and terms of use.

“We also align visually with the client’s branding, colors, and fonts,” Lara said. “That way it feels very seamless when people come from the brand site to our platform. It’s designed to be an extension of the brand.”

Performance Analysis Phase

Once the platform is live, the account services professionals stay heavily involved by providing detailed reports on all aspects of its performance.

These reports include:

• Weekly summaries of engagement activities within the platform as well as refill activities.
• Monthly reports on the various ways that patients are being driven to the branded HealthPrize platform.
• A broader 6-month program report comparing the platform’s performance to benchmark data. This report also includes gap day (days with no medication on hand) analysis showing whether patients are refilling their prescriptions more efficiently than they were before they started the program.

It’s a considerable amount of data, all collected “to ensure the client is informed about behavioral change before and after a HealthPrize platform implementation,” Lara told us.

The first time they go through this process, Lara and her team take their time and proceed carefully. When clients are ready to rollout HealthPrize for additional products, however, each of the three phases goes much more quickly.

Benefits For Brand Managers

Many of the diseases that the account services team works with are what are known as “silent killers,” diseases that exist in patients without noticeable symptoms. They aren’t obvious, so patients don’t feel compelled to adhere to a prescription regimen.

In these cases, the only way to truly solve the adherence problem is through education, a core component of the HealthPrize platform that’s missing from standard reminder applications.

“If you could get forty extra minutes to communicate with your patient every month, what else could you teach them to help them want to take their medication?” Lara asks. “With HealthPrize you get the opportunity to keep teaching, and they hear you.”

In addition to helping with these particularly challenging diseases, HealthPrize offers pharma brand managers a highly targeted space to communicate with their audience. Users on the platform are always patients, which means messaging can be uniquely targeted in ways that aren’t possible on a more generic marketing site.

Helping With the Heavy Lift

Addressing nonadherence isn’t a simple task. “It’s a heavy lift,” Lara admits, “but one that’s always worth doing.”

Pharma marketers play an important role in the healthcare ecosystem. Once a drug has been formulated and released to the market, marketers can provide tools that help patients use the drug as prescribed so they get the optimum outcome.

HealthPrize and its account team are eager to help pharma marketers succeed in this role, because as Lara so aptly puts it, “The brand’s success is HealthPrize’s success.”