Jason Steele, Director of Marketing and New Business Development, was recently featured in The Chronicle of Health Care Marketing.   The article centered on the importance of pharmacist counseling as part of achieving and maintaining patient adherence. Steele recently spoke at a biologics conference which was sponsored by the Strategy Institute.  “If a Pharmaceutical Marketer hopes to improve patient adherence to a particular medication and extend the duration of that adherence to a maximum period, the pharmacist must be involved in helping to initiate therapy”, Steele told the Toronto summit meeting.

Steele highlighted the pharmacist as an underutilized resource in the process of improving patient safety, adherence and monitoring. The article outlined the process of how STI’s SmartTechnology™ products and programs are distributed by physicians to patients and then redeemed at retail pharmacy.  “Counseling by a pharmacist on a first scrip is critical to achieving and maintaining adherence” Steele offered.  In traditional drug sampling programs, physicians distribute live drug samples to patients, and these patients often go home without a trip to the pharmacy.  As a consequence, the pharmacist isn’t kept in the loop which limits impact and future patient adherence.

Steele also described why traditional drug programs fail, such as the difficulty in measuring patient adoption numbers because of a lack of measurement tools and busy physicians who, at times, do not have sufficient time to educate patients.

The article also describes how STI’s SmartTechnology™ programs can help improve patient adherence and brand retention by increasing the touch points by increasing involvement of the physician and pharmacist.  Steele describes SmartTechnology™ programs as a tool that can complement various adherence programs with a hard measurement.  He also notes the ethical advantages of having the pharmacist involved in the continuum of care model and drug delivery at the onset of therapy as well as having medication profiles on file as one of the many advantages of STI’s SmartTechnology™ products and programs.