What you need to know about meaningful data and how to sort through the noise to find what really matters.

Data drives business decisions, but the problem is sorting out the noise from the useful data. According to Forbes, 95% of businesses cite the need to manage unstructured data as a problem for their business. On average, poor data quality costs businesses worldwide anywhere between $9.7 million and $14.2 million a year. At RxPx, we generate data insights daily that we pass onto our clients. Our data helps pharma companies better understand how their product is being used by patients and helps them empower the patient to manage their conditions. We tackle the problem of data overload by combining a patient centric approach to data generation together with asking the right business questions and getting the maximum value from the data we collect.

RxPx provides private social networks for patients and their circle of care. It is used by drug manufacturers worldwide to support patients with dedicated peer-to-peer communities. The app, as a source of emotional support, tracking, and peer reviewed information, has engendered the loyalty of patients who use it and improved their adherence. A RxPx case study of a pharmaceutical company that was aiming to retain 75% of patients in app found their expectations were exceeded with 92% of patients remaining in app and on therapy. The high engagement of patients with the app has provided rich data insights. Curatio research shows 86% of patients return to the app multiple times per month and 50% are in app on a weekly basis.  

Data Insights

The amount of data generated by patient users would be overwhelming unless you have somebody boiling it down to what is needed.  This is the responsibility of the data insights team at RxPx. The data insights team includes a data architect, a data engineer, a data scientist, a visualization analyst, and a business analyst. Their jobs are to help pharmaceutical companies ask the right business questions, develop the right indicators of performance, and develop the right dashboards that will give them quick insights into what’s going on in their community, but also the ability to drill down and find out what’s working and what’s not working. It’s a combination of listening to the clients, listening to the patients, and taking best practice expertise to understand what is your business question, how do you measure against it, and how do you define success.

Through the whole RxPx team, we consistently support our clients in helping them fine tune the success criteria for their objectives. In order to have the insights you need to know what business question to ask. For instance, if you ask, “Hey, how’s my community doing?” the answer may be “Good”. If you fine tune the question and ask, “How many patients have completed at least three training exercises in the last two months?” The answer that comes back is the numerical value of 25%, which is a much more insightful answer than “good”.

Patient Centric

The most valuable recipient of insights is the patient. If we give patients insights on their own data, then we’re helping the patient help themselves. The patient is given the opportunity to learn from their mistakes and be proactive. Patient data in turn informs the business question.  For example, if your business question is about improving adherence, then all you may want to look at is your medication tracking data.  But auxiliary patient data reveals that the contributing factor to the fact they’ve skipped medication was because they were having another issue go on in their life, maybe mental, social, or physical, that blocked their ability to take the medication. What could have been data noise turns out to be useful data because it reveals less than satisfactory adherence results may not be because of the medication.

We are making it easier for patients to access their data by creating a personalized report for each individual called My Health Report. The report is a PDF that tracks what the patient has been doing and can be delivered to their doctor. The doctor will be able to read the report and look at all the patients scores including medication, social, and wellness. It has the advantage of capturing situational information that happened to the patient since the last time they saw their doctor. For example, a patient may have forgotten that three and a half months ago, they had a bout of stomach flu and skipped their meds. Then for two weeks afterwards they were feeling quite lethargic but they don’t remember that because it’s been six months since they’ve seen their doctor. In the absence of data insights, all of these contributing factors are missed, which is a challenge for doctors to really know how the patient is being affected or not.

Meaningful Data

You have to personalize the data. Not only to the client and the drug but also to the individuals within the app that are going to benefit from it. Cleaning out the noise is insuring that the criteria and the objective you are trying to meet with the data is giving you the insights that you know you need to measure.  The right data and the meaningful data ties back to what are you trying to achieve.

To learn more about how RxPx can help build your return on health, book a free demo with the RxPx team. Please reach out at contact@rxpx.health.