AstraZeneca's "Big Data" partnership

Mark Lelinski, vice president of the global pharmaceutical AstraZeneca responsible for marketing management, explains how his company uses data to build customer relationship management at the heart of total healthcare costs.

In the past, the payment intentions of the payers, including patients, health care programs, medical and welfare managers, employers and the government, were never considered at the stage of product launch. They never ask themselves: "What do customers think of our products and alternative medicines?"

But in recent years, the willingness to pay has clearly become extremely important. The customer has the consciousness: "In reality, X product performance This way, I have to pay how much money;" Y product performance that way, I have to pay how much money. What is the comparison between the two? "as the two sides discuss more transaction dimensions, that is, a greater focus on unit costs and customer data, this ultimately makes the payer's position unbalanced in the dialogue." In Mark's view, the pay side's comparative study rarely focuses on health. To this end, AstraZeneca decided to change one way.

They found that the focus should be on the total cost of health care. Instead of just focusing on the cost of the drug unit, it is about the total cost of the patient, for example, the total cost of caring for diabetics, including diagnosis, outpatient visits and emergency visits. This opens up a whole new way of thinking: if you compare the medical expenses of the same patient group and the clinical data of the electronic medical record, this will improve the curative effect and manage the nursing cost. Why not work with customers? In the United States, prescription drugs account for about 11% of total medical expenditure and the remaining 89% per cent of the over-the-counter market, which is in line with the interests of AstraZeneca. Through collaboration, they have gained a broader and richer data environment, partnering to develop leading research tools and practical solutions.

So they took the plan to find partners. The two sides have always been very close to each other and have no intention of taking advantage of each other. When they submitted the idea to HealthCore1 and its parent company WellPoint, the idea was strikingly similar to theirs, and the two sides immediately announced their cooperation.

Of course, cooperation between the two sides initially encountered resistance from within. In some cases, AstraZeneca requires employees to try to think in a new way, especially in the research and development process, the timing of the payer's participation in advance to the development link, and the early elimination of the products that are not accepted by the payers, to avoid major losses after the listing. Of course, they negotiate with WellPoint at the personal drug level, but information transparency is a double-edged sword: Of course, it's valuable if they can support the price points they set, but sometimes it's bad for them.

Getting high-level support at the outset is the key to success. AstraZeneca's leadership recognizes that this is a long-term job: it may bring short-term benefits to the company and quickly become a winner. But if they are to have a big impact on businesses and industries, they have to deal with complex situations and rising costs. One example is the fact that they have invited a group of top biologists, epidemiologists, medical economists and programmers to set up a team of experts to study real illnesses, which are closely related to the close attention and support of senior management.

In the initial stage of cooperation between the two sides, Healthcore and AstraZeneca personnel on the operational level of contact, cooperation is very smooth. They are currently carrying out a series of collaborative studies and are about to complete their first cooperation project. Still, the two sides see it as a broader, industry-wide start, with the ultimate goal of being able to be incorporated into health insurance companies, medical welfare management companies, suppliers, employers, other pharmaceutical companies, and even governments. The breadth of this collaboration goes well beyond the pharmaceutical level: which diagnostics are effective and which are not? What medical devices should be used? In a hospital environment, which causes errors or high readmission rates? What are the key medical problems that need to be addressed in a local community? Through large data, AstraZeneca is gaining access to medical care that he has never known before.

(Responsible editor: The good of the Legacy)