It’s always really exciting to see and hear and be a part of these conversations to see
what’s happening in digital technology data as we apply to healthcare and it transforms
our experiences in that space and in particular the journey toward personalized
healthcare. And again digital, technology, data these are going to be key drivers. They
are key drivers of the changes that we’re seeing and the improvements that we’re
seeing in healthcare. However I want to talk a little bit about the fact that when we talk
about the journey toward precision healthcare or personalized healthcare a lot of the
things that are really the foundation to that and the starting point are really non-
technical insights. And it’s the need to really understand patients as people first, as
human beings and understanding what their life is like on a daily basis in order that we
can apply the right technologies and innovations to meet their needs. And if we don’t
understand them on an individual basis, we’re at risk of creating solutions that are
really cool but might not necessarily solve for their needs and their values and help
them have that better health outcome. So again I’m Amy West I’ve been in the
pharmaceutical industry for over 20 years now. I’m with Nova Nordisk. I’ve been there
for 14 years and I’m going to share my point of view on the journey toward
personalized healthcare based on my experience in the pharma space. And Nova
Nordisk, we’re a pharmaceutical manufacturer just like many other companies out
there and from a pharmaceutical manufacturing standpoint our core focus is focusing
on the science. We have to get the chemistry right as it relates to our
pharmacotherapies and making sure that our clinical endpoints are meeting the safety
and efficacy requirements in order to deliver safe and effective products to the market.
And that focus is never going to change. It shouldn’t change. However, when we look at
statistics around adherence rates and compliance rates with pharmacotherapies we
know that only 80% percent of prescriptions that are written are filled, and of those
that are filled, only half of them are used in an adherent and compliant way. And those
statistics have not changed for decades. And that’s despite the fact that we’ve had
tremendous innovation and improvements in our pharmacotherapies over these
decades. So that says to me that we know that medication alone is not enough to solve
the problems in healthcare. And so now, we’re all excited about the promise of
technology, digital data, to help improve those statistics. And we’re all kind of rushing
to see how can we use and apply these innovative technologies to improve the stats
that we’ve been seeing for quite a while. And it’s a very exciting place. There’s a lot of
promise. We’re already seeing it happen. However, we run the risk of chasing shiny
objects at times and going after things because they look like there’s a lot of cool stuff
going on, but it isn’t really solving the problems of our customers and for the business.
And when we look at data that shows that 80% of what influences a person’s ability to
engage in their health and wellness sits outside the clinic setting, things like everyday
life, and what we’re calling the social determinants of health, and we saw some
conversation about that earlier, but it is, it’s these factors around where you live. Are
you in a rural community or in an urban community? What is your family makeup?
What does it look like? What is your financial status? What is your education level? Do
you have access to healthy food and to transportation? These are the things that play
an overwhelming role in a person’s ability to get access to a doctor, get a diagnosis, get
a prescription, and have a good or a bad health outcome. And in pharma, we haven’t
really paid a lot of attention to that. And so it’s like we’ve got to now really focus on
combining the science with the technology with the human experience in order to get
to a place where we’re able to deliver that personalized healthcare. Because if I’m a
person, let’s say I’m a woman who has — a mother of three kids, I’m single, I’m trying
to, you know, manage two jobs, keep food on the table for my children, my car just
broke down, and there’s no way I’m going to get to my doctor’s appointment because
life is getting in the way. There’s just no way for me to be able to take care of my health
and wellness in this situation. And again, this is about everyday life affecting me and
how it affects me, affects other people, all of us differently. So we’ve got to better
understand our customers more holistically, so that we can then understand how do
we apply the right technologies, the right digital, the right data components, plus the
science to deliver that personalized healthcare journey. And there are a lot of different
ways that we can think about understanding that and being able to better understand
our customers more holistically. But based on my experience, I’d like to share
something that’s been very effective, and that is looking at other industries that are
very focused on customer experience, looking outside of pharma, looking outside of
healthcare, and looking at companies who spend a lot of time, money, and resources to
invest in identifying, tracking, monitoring, and measuring a customer experience and
what people value. And when I look at a company like Disney, they have a very good
reputation for understanding the customer experience, very different from the
healthcare industry. And they’re a company that believe that investing heavily in the
customer experience is an economic asset and not an expense. And I would say in
healthcare and in pharma, we haven’t necessarily had that mindset. But understanding
that customer experience is a missing gap in a lot of, I think, our opportunities to
improve health outcomes. And a couple months ago, I had the opportunity to attend a
Disney Institute training. And I don’t know if anyone here is familiar with that or has
ever experienced that program. But it is a part of a larger curriculum that they have
called Disney University. And it is all based on how to understand, improve, and
optimize the customer experience for people who are engaging in Disney properties.
And everyone who is an employee of Disney, they call them cast members, from the
CEO all the way down to custodial staff, engage in this training. It’s like a six-month
program. And in the training that I took, it was really interesting because they actually
have some very good, real tools that you can use to start to better understand what a
customer’s expectation is, what their needs are, what their interests are, and then how
you can optimize against that. And one tool in particular I thought was really
transferable to the space that I work in, in pharma, it’s called the Dimensions of
Service. And it’s literally, it’s a mapping tool where you’re literally mapping out in a
linear pathway, a progression of a specific experience at a Disney property. And if you
were looking at maybe one of the theme parks, you would have a sort of a linear map
with big circles identified that would represent obvious touch points. Things like getting
to the park and parking your car, getting in at the entry point, getting into the park,
then getting to different destinations that you’re interested in, whether it’s a ride or a
restaurant or some other entertainment aspect. And they mark them with red, yellow,
or green to indicate positive experience for green, negative experience for red, and
yellow for neutral. And they plot these, but in addition to the obvious touch points,
they start to look at what they call the micro moments. So what’s happening before,
between, and after you get to those big obvious touch points of engagement? And
what does that mean? And what is that experience like? What is the person thinking,
feeling, doing along the way? And how can they intervene in those places to make sure
that every step along the way is a positive experience? Or if it’s a negative experience,
what can they be doing to make it better and improve it and turn it from a red to a
green? And from a pharma standpoint, we all have patient journeys or customer
journey maps, very similar. And I would argue that we all probably have very similar
maps in that we all have the big circles of obvious touch points. Getting to a doctor,
getting a diagnosis, getting a prescription, going to the pharmacy. We know — these are
obvious touch points. We know them. But what we don’t know is what lies before,
between, and after. And those are the areas where things like the social determinants
of health, everyday living come into play. And that’s the area that we need to get
better about understanding because if we don’t understand the things that are either
preventing or getting in the way of you to get to the next obvious touch point, we run
the risk of not being able to move the needle on these statistics that we’ve seen over
and over again that are leading to poor outcomes and poor quality of life. And so how
do we dig into those micro moments? And to me, that’s also where we have a huge
opportunity to apply the technology, the digital and the data to start to create more
understanding of the individual along this continuum and along this journey. And that
is a great pathway to get us to a more personalized healthcare model for all of us who
are in this — all of us, because we’re all patients at some point in time. And so, as you’re
attending the conference and thinking about the work that you’re doing in your space,
whether you’re in the startup world or you’re in the pharma space or in some other
healthcare entity, think about how can we better understand those micro-moments
before, between, and after, where we can apply our science, the technology to create
that individualized, optimized experience for our customers. And as we’re moving
forward in this space, it’s going to be critically important that the science is not going to
go away, the technology continues to emerge, but let’s make sure that the solutions
that we’re providing are going to solve for a real problem and deliver real value for our
customers. Otherwise, we run the risk of creating solutions that aren’t really solving
real problems for our customers. So that being said, I would like to close it out with a
quote from Walt Disney, who had said “we aren’t going to design for ourselves, we’re
not going to build for ourselves. We know what the people want, we need to build for
them”. And so with that, I would argue that the journey to personalized healthcare
requires a combination of the science, the technology, but also understanding the
human experience to get that optimal outco