Unveiling the Power of Patient-Centric Data Solutions: An Exclusive Interview with our Head of Product
20/03/2024João Gomes, Head of Product at Promptly, is a seasoned professional with a strong background in biomedical engineering. He earned his master's degree from the University of Minho, specializing in this dynamic field. With over a decade of experience in the technology-driven healthcare and outcomes sector, João has honed his expertise by working with renowned health institutions such as the Mayo Clinic and Porto Oncology Hospital, as well as industry leaders like Cerner and pharmaceutical companies. His diverse experience and deep understanding of the intersection of healthcare and technology make him a valuable leader in shaping innovative products that drive positive impacts in the healthcare industry.
João Gomes, Head of Product
Unveiling the Power of Patient-Centric Data Solutions: An Exclusive Interview with our Head of Product
Introducing the interviewer
Could you elaborate on your experience in this field?
Having worked my entire career in the healthcare field, across many sectors in different geographies, I was able to start understanding the gaps that exist in accessing data and how fragmented and siloed it is across hospitals, solution providers and even patients.
My experience in Cerner provided me a lot of knowledge regarding complex digital implementations across health systems, and how unbalanced the infrastructure and digital maturity of hospitals can be across the network. Combining that knowledge with my own experience of working with data and research in both two very mature and research-oriented hospitals (Mayo Clinic, IPO), as well as the constrains I saw accessing data when working in the Pharma field, positioned me in a place where I am able to understand how to provide concrete and actionable value, via our digital solutions, to both data suppliers and data seekers.
What data solutions does Promptly Health provide as an end-to-end Real World Evidence solutions provider?
It is surprising how only 1% of all health data points are currently being collected in health systems. And the reason why this happens is because the 99% of the data left sits at patients hand, that we as a society fail to collect. That is precisely our first value position, through our Promptly Collect product, which is longitudinally enrich clinical data-sets with patient-reported data.
Secondly, healthcare data is siloed, fragmented, and in best of scenarios only partially structured. This severely impacts research when hospitals or life-science companies need to look at data to simply understand if a given intervention (eg drug) is providing a positive impact on the patient. A very tangible example was COVID vaccination and how difficult it was sharing the information for tracking security and effectiveness.
Promptly second product - Promptly Analyze - is precisely the result of a curated process that aims to ingest data from source system (eg. Pharmacy data at a hospital, claims data at an insurer level), to then harmonizing all data to a common standard model, so that regardless of the source system, a given procedure “ABC” is always tagged the same way, facilitating data quality, querying and analysis. Finally, we provide partners with a RWE portal where outcomes of care (clinical, cost and patient) can be consumed in real-time, helping key stakeholders with decision making.
Promptly Collect
How does Promptly Collect differentiate itself from traditional methods of patient data collection, and what unique benefits does it offer to healthcare organizations?
Promptly Collect is centered around patient-data, making it a highly effective solution to collect the necessary data-points towards the patient timeline. By focusing on accessibility and user engagement, we are able to achieve high conversion rates, hence providing healthcare organization with a longitudinal augment of their existing data.
Can you elaborate on the omnichannel patient engagement approach and how it enhances the scalability and efficiency of data collection programs?
Remote patient data-collection poses various challenges, namely patients’ average age, degree of digital maturity and variability within cohorts. Intersecting digitals channels and tailoring those who best suit a specific population allows Promptly to scale and seamless collect the data points needed, while improving patient experience and engagement. By combining User Research and iterating over our own data, we tailor the best approach in order to drive engagement and retention. One tangible outcome of this strategy is the increase in engagement rates, exceeding 20%, achieved by combining Interactive Voice Response (IVR) with text messaging.
In a world with increasing concerns about data security, how does Promptly Collect ensure the privacy and confidentiality of patient information while capturing data at scale?
Healthcare is surely one of the most regulated areas when it comes to data security, privacy and compliance. Having worked with top-tier life science companies as well as the best-performing NHS systems in Europe, we put data security at the top of our priorities.
All of our data-exchange is submitted to prior authorization from partner institutions, and all data we collect is previously consented by patients.
Promptly Analyze
What sets Promptly Analyze apart as a one-stop-shop data analytics platform, and how does it simplify the process of deriving real-world evidence?
Traditionally, delivering RWE is a very long and complex process for both sides (hospitals and life sciences). While hospitals have in their possession most of the raw data, they lack the Human Resources, IT capabilities and sometimes the scientific knowledge to prepare their data for concrete outcomes analysis. On other hand, while life sciences have the knowledge and the funds required to drive these studies, they have very little to none access to data and face long and bureautric processes when attempting to conduct any RWE study. Promptly acts as “broker” between the two, setting up hospitals on a data and infra-structure level to be ready to make their aggregated data available for research, while simultaneously is able to direct life-science companies to those partners who might have the data they need. Analyze is the compilation of all this work, where both partners and clients can have access to curated data, in a real-time environment, while ensuring privacy and security.
Can you provide insights into how Promptly Analyze assists healthcare professionals in understanding the impact of treatments on patients and facilitates comparisons with outcomes from other organizations?
Access to data within organization is sparse and difficult. Promptly Analyzes focuses on providing healthcare professionals with tailored analysis, from a clinical, management and financial standpoint. By intersecting and harmonizing clinical data (eg treatment) and patient data (eg PROM), Promptly ANALYZE generates real-time insights that allows professional to understand the effect of a given treatment (eg: drug, device) on a given treatment pathway, or to compare outcomes of care at organization, institution and provider level.
Integration of Promptly Collect and Promptly Analyze
How do these two platforms synergize to create a seamless workflow from data collection to actionable insights, and what advantages does this integration offer to healthcare institutions?
Our ultimate goal is to provide actionable data to key stakeholders at our partnering institutions or clients. This is a complex but necessary step, which includes longitudinal enriching of data (Collect: PRO data), data ingestion, harmonization to a common standard (OMOP) and finally visualization. While Promptly Collect has been designed to seamlessly integrate with partners source systems and enrich datasets with patients reported data, Promptly Analyze is where all pieces come together and we are able to effectively demonstrate the value to our customers after all data completes its journey.
Are there any specific use cases or success stories where the combined use of Promptly Collect and Promptly Analyze has resulted in tangible improvements in patient outcomes or operational efficiencies?
Among other programs, Promptly is successfully running a nationwide program on cardio-metabolic diseases and combining its both products. Firstly, by directly engaging with patients undergoing treatment, we are able to continuously capture data at patient-level which provides additional but valuable data-points regarding the effectiveness and perceived value of the treatment. Simultaneously, combining this data with key clinical outcomes, we are able to 1. provide better visibility of the patient pathway and facilitate the access to data by the clinical team; 2. Maximize patient engagement and participation in their treatment, hence improving outcomes and 3. Provide real-world and aggregated data (RWE) demonstrating the benefits of each therapeutic intervention, allowing both providers and suppliers to negotiate based on value and not on volume.
User experience and adoption
From a user perspective, how intuitive is the interface of Promptly Collect and Promptly Analyze, and what steps have been taken to ensure a positive user experience for healthcare professionals?
When implementing healthcare solutions, namely patient-facing ones, we must always consider accessibility guidelines. All of our interfaces follow a careful process of user research and user validation, and are built on top of international standards such as WCAG. Additionally, every quarter we conduct user interviews and we collect patient and professional feedback regarding various topics, including interface navigation.
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