L-R: Dan Gandor, Rob Blazek, Yauheni Solad, Rachael Jones

Healthcare panelists discussed technology as a driver in improving collaboration among pharma, payers, providers, pharmacies, and patients at the MM&M Transforming Healthcare conference. Scroll down for a bite-sized roundup of their thoughts.

Dan Gandor, director, digital innovation and corporate program management, Takeda

It’s about thinking more broadly about the consumer and patient experience. If you want to fix the broader problem, you need to be thinking more broadly about the patient. Not just their time in the clinic or their disease state, or their interaction with our brand. That’s such a small proportion of their overall experience.

The one thing I think you need is a foundation of principles and values. Putting the patient first, fostering trust and not breaking that trust, which helps improve and keep your reputation, and then comes business relations. It’s this circular flow.

Rob Blazek, RPh, SVP, networks and analytics, Rx Edge Pharmacy Networks

Everything seems to be more focused on the patient now. When I graduated from pharmacy school, the whole idea was to get the prescription and get it out the door. That’s changing significantly. The retailers are less focused on the product and more on the service and what happens with the patient. Think about the acquisitions that are happening or the proposed mergers. CVS is looking to purchase Aetna, Walmart and Humana. That’s because these retailers know that it needs to be much less about the product and more about the patient and health.

Data has to be provided to practitioners in a way that they can deal with it and in a short interaction. The struggle, though, on the physician side is workload management: What are they expecting me to do? And how to get it all done.

Yauheni Solad, M.D., MHS, medical director, digital health, Yale New Haven Health

We have to provide a safety net for patients and care when it is needed most. At the same time, if they prefer not to provide certain information, they should be able to opt out. This is what is missing. I think we need a better system in healthcare to protect data, to be able to opt out, and to monitor what happens with the data after. We have to make ourselves accountable.

Rachael Jones, VP, commercial analytics insights P&L and client management, Anthem
If you can think about predictive models and getting ahead of them, saying ‘Let me advise you on the potential of opioid addiction’ or other adverse events, thinking like that, before the event happens, then you’re addressing two issues: one is the experience and the second is the cost and quality, hoping to stem the trend of an adverse reaction like opioid addiction.

The key is to go beyond the information into asking what is the desired action you want to have someone take. Information can be used for good and for not good if you’re not careful about it. Sometimes information is only seen through one lense. If you can expand the view to the holistic impact of the action, you might recommend a different course of treatment.