How Digital Companions Drive Pharma ROI in Challenging Times

The pharmaceutical landscape is shifting dramatically beneath our feet. With the US government recently demanding drug price reductions of up to 60% from major pharma companies or face potential reimbursement restrictions, the industry faces what CNBC calls "one of the most dramatic reshufflings of commercial pharma strategy in decades."

This perfect storm – innovation surging while margins tighten – creates urgent questions for pharma marketers, patient support teams, and innovation leaders. How do you maintain growth when prices fall? The answer increasingly lies in what happens after the prescription is written. When medication non-adherence wastes nearly $300 billion annually in US healthcare spending, closing that gap even incrementally represents massive opportunity.

Digital companions that support patients throughout their medication journey are proving their value through hard data. Users experience 17% better adherence across therapeutic areas and 37% improved refill persistence over six months. Some brands achieve up to 4:1 ROI through these platforms. These aren't vanity metrics – they directly impact market share, script lift, and patient outcomes.

As the competitive landscape evolves, three key metrics are becoming central to pharma success: adherence impact on lifetime value, conversion rates from triggered interventions at critical therapy points, and the cost-benefit analysis of human support versus digital automation. Brands that excel in these areas protect revenue even as prices fall.

Looking ahead, digital support isn't optional – it's a competitive necessity. The strongest pharmaceutical brands will be those that build loyalty through patient relationships, demonstrate measurable outcomes, and partner with platforms that scale engagement across therapeutic areas. When every script counts more than ever, how are you measuring what happens after the first prescription?

Ready to discover how digital companions can protect your brand's market share in these challenging times? Subscribe to Postscripts for more insights on innovations driving better outcomes for patients and pharma alike.

PostScripts Rx is not intended to constitute medical advice, nor is it intended to influence prescribing decisions or any other medical or clinical decision-making. All medical and clinical judgment and decision-making, prescribing decisions, and all related considerations remain exclusively the responsibility of providers and patients.

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome to Postscripts

Transcript

Speaker 0: 0:00

Welcome to Postscripts, the podcast exploring what happens after the first prescription. We cover the latest innovations in patient access, support, digital tools, HCP engagement and pharma marketing that drive better outcomes for patients. This podcast is for informational purposes only and does not constitute medical advice or should be used to influence any clinical decision-making. Patients should always consult their healthcare professionals. Welcome to the podcast. My name is Brian Carr from the Medisafe team and although any opinions are expressed here are my own and are not necessarily those of Medisafe or its partners. So right now we're seeing pharma getting a bit of a pressure cooker. Roi is crucial right now in a time of cost cuts, when we see the industry is a bit of a crossroads. On the one side, we're seeing innovation continue to surge with novel therapies, personalized medicine, data-driven targeting. On the other, we're seeing intense regulatory and market pressures that are squeezing margins and they're having shifting market dynamics. For example, just recently the US government under President Trump made headlines last week with its ultimatum in letters to 17 pharma companies that they must reduce drug prices for most favored nation status for all Americans, so that that could mean a reduction in prices by as much as 60 percent, or they could face broader access and reimbursement restrictions from the federal government. According to CNBC, this may trigger one of the most dramatic reshufflings of commercial pharma strategy in decades. So where does it leave pharma marketers and innovation teams, patient access and support leaders? Well, one thing's going to be clear the ability to deliver measurable return on investment and defend market share if there are tighter budgets. It isn't just important, it's really mission critical and, from my perspective, proven ROI really starts with proven engagement.

Speaker 0: 1:44

In the high stakes environment we're in right now, pharma companies are turning to platforms that deliver measurable impact throughout the entire patient journey. For years, medisafe have been stepping into that gap. We offer a full suite of really evolved digital tools, not just to support patients but really to empower industry leaders with the analytics, insights and outcomes that prove value and real outcome and impact for patients. At the heart of the solution is our digital companion. It's branded, scalable. It supports patients from their first fill throughout ongoing medication management. We drive adherence, engagement. Ultimately, we drive to clinical and financial outcomes for the entire ecosystem. For example, our data shows that users of Medisave can see, on average, 17% increase in medication adherence across therapeutic areas and we've seen 37% increases in refill persistence over a six-month period and some of our partners have seen up to a four-to-one ROI, depending on the brand portfolio and patient retention targets. And these aren't you know, forgive me, these aren't vanity metrics. These really do directly influence market share, script lift, long-term value and impact for patients. So let's take a bit of a closer look at some of the impacts we're seeing. When we talk, and you know, market leaders really now explicitly are starting to prioritize script retention as a proxy for long-term value. We're also seeing real-world evidence of patient impact to support access teams and digital companions really to power patient comprehension, adherence, engagement and longevity with brands. They are also looking for a reduced dependency on in-person HCP engagement. It's starting to be replaced with scalable digital tools. We talked at length in a previous podcast about AI voice agents and how that can really help on HCP engagement freeing them up from paperwork and other rote phone calls that need to be made by patient care teams and really free them up to do some of the human-to-human interaction.

Speaker 0: 3:37

We did see that the US Institute for Clinical and Economic Review, estimating inefficiencies and not inherence, can waste $290, $300 billion or more annually here in the US. You know that's nearly 10% of all national health expenditures. Really closing that gap, even incrementally, can help farmers reclaim lots of lost ROI. In the face of blurry margins and wins and discount pressures. Every fill is really going to start to come when prices drop, if that's a scenario that comes to the fore. When it comes to the forefront when the US administration's deadline they had set September 29 as a deadline to really have most favored nation status, although we may see that, I imagine, extend, whether through litigation or just in pharma companies coming forward and saying here's what they can do to reduce prices.

Speaker 0: 4:22

But when prices do drop, brands need to differentiate on patient outcomes. Consider a scenario where a first-to-market product builds early awareness but this price-reduced alternative enters the market under government guidance. Which brand do you think is going to win? The answer often lies who can support patient persistence, manage barriers, really show outcomes. And you look at digital solutions like Medisafe that have helped brands retain up to 12 to 20% more patients at those key inflection points in therapy by proactively identifying when disengagement trends are starting to come forward and really drive action to offset some of those trends. Well, they small percentage wins maybe, but in aggregate they really do protect revenue and business margins at scale and market share. So you know, for brand markers and innovation teams this next year could prove very challenging with some conventional business cases.

Speaker 0: 5:13

There are really three levers they are going to really start to lean into. One is the adherence, long-term value impact and lifetime value impact. By analyzing script duration, lift per cohort APIs like that, there definitely will be a value placed on interventions, conversion rates tied to triggered messages or nurse events that really come at critical points that have been identified by AI and other trending tools and digital platforms, such as MetaSafe, as the pivotal times to reach out, contact patients on their terms more than just on support team terms. Right, when and the ways that patients want to be contacted. Do they want to be called, do they want to be texted? Do they want to have an email notification? Doing it that way that you know is going to be most successful as a way to do it and you know the cost of complexity. That's going to be KPI. They're going to need to quantify support cost versus digital automations, behavioral coaching programs and those outcomes. So combining these metrics will really create a compelling internal narrative that these companies, with every dollar spent on support, improving patient outcomes and buffering against market share or revenue loss.

Speaker 0: 6:17

So the challenge there are digital solutions that you're looking at are they ready to scale? Medisave, for example, has over 13 million people who've installed the platform across multiple dozens therapeutic areas with engagement rates that really really rival most consumer platforms. You're going to want to make sure that if you're partnering with a digital vendor, they've got experience on engaging patients at scale. You know a typical Medisave user comes in, has multiple medications and is persistent for years, not months on the Medisave platform. Let's put it this way of the people who come in on a monthly basis, at least seven out of 10 are coming in at least once a day, often more than once a day because they're taking so many multiple medications. You know we see ourselves not only as a companion but really as an engine of engagement on the whole platform, whether pharma teams are looking to reduce drop-off or increase their speed, to fill, improve and enhance specialty onboarding for those rare meds that may take really complex titration schedules, or even to layer on behavioral insights. You want to get an ecosystem like Medisafe that really evolves with the brand's life cycle. This can be everything from launch planning to the loss of exclusivity strategy with patents. You know digital support it's really not going to be optional anymore. It really is a competitive advantage.

Speaker 0: 7:32

So, in conclusion, really I think what we're seeing with some of these trends is that pharma companies are always going to have their traditional KPIs, but they're also going to start measuring a little bit more of what matters after the script, right? So you know margins going to be under siege. Market dynamics are volatile. You're going to be measured by gross revenue, but also patient stay rates. You're going to hear about lower cost of access retention through loyalty. You're going to hear a lot more.

Speaker 0: 7:55

I think about that as a metric and finding those digital platform tools that give data flexibility to deliver on all of those is going to be key for pharma companies as they go forward. So regulators are continuing to reshape the playing field. You may see a surge in generics. The strongest allies are going to be that loyal brand loyalty and relationships not only with patients, but with HCPs and partners who know how to scale and impact and not just features. This is what we mean here at Medisafe by just delivering ROI and engagement that matters. I want to thank you so much for joining us on Postscripts. If you found this valuable, follow or subscribe for more insights on the intersection of pharma tech no-transcript.