Measuring Patient Outcomes

Shivani Patel, RPh, SVP, Clinical Operations and Technology, Asembia, discusses how technology is being used to help measure patient outcomes.

Shivani Patel, RPh: There's several ways that technology is being used to measure patient outcomes. First and foremost, we're finally measuring the outcomes. There's tools out there that are allowing for pharmacies to follow up with patients, see the progress of their therapy, talk to them about the effectiveness of their therapy, and they're able to take those analytics and derive customized solutions that are specific to that patient.

So, I would say the first step has been that, finally, we are measuring it. Just like anything, like doing your bank account, knowing how much money you have in the bank will help you determine how you could manage your budget. So, I think just like that, the first step is knowing how to measure that information.

We have developed a technology that is focused on patient therapy management, which allows the pharmacies that are treating their patients to follow up with the patient at select intervals, determine if they should be treated on an aggressive path or a less aggressive path, depending on how often they're taking their medication—Are they commonly nonadherent? Are they a patient that has a high risk, has certain risk factors?—and that's allowed pharmacies to take control over their patient care, and improve the outcomes.