Building medication adherence through education and engagement

Greg Patey’s vision for Blue Charm Adherence (450 words, 2.5 min)

and

Oct 18, 2022

NPC Healthbiz Weekly is presented to you with support from Impres, Canada’s Next Generation Commercial Partner

“When you’re an entrepreneur,” said Greg Patey, CEO of Blue Charm Adherence Inc., “you have to learn how to dance.” Patey was a co-founder of STI Technologies, which he helped lead for 16 years until its acquisition by IQVIA in 2017.

Speaking on the latest episode of Season 8 of the NPC Podcast, Patey (photo below) said adaptability was one of his key learnings as an entrepreneur. “What I mean by [dancing] is, you get in with an idea and you’re confronted with potential, with great clients who love [the idea] but may not be buying what you’re selling. So you have to shift a little bit.”

At STI, that meant a pivot from card-based samples to a deep dive into data, using the information they could collect around who’s using samples and co-pay cards. “That’s when [the business] really started to take off,” he said.

Patey has brought that adaptability, paired with his depth of experience in digital health and his expertise—backed up by a doctorate-level business degree—in medication adherence and specialty medicines, to his new role leading Blue Charm Adherence. He says the company helps patients access medicines and related services by “creating a digital engagement platform that provides content written at the patient level [to help] patients learn more about their treatment and disease.”

Patey said its platform is “first of its kind in Canada, where we actually utilize behaviour modification and gamification to [get patients’ attention and help them] to adhere to what they’ve been instructed to do.”

Blue Charm, launched in 2018, found its focus by weighing concepts within adherence and identifying health literacy as its number one focus. “We work closely with disease associations,” Patey said, identifying the MS Society of Canada, the GI Society, the National Lung Association, and the Canadian Pharmacy Association as partners. “Many of these organizations have great content that [Blue Charm] creates learning modules around,” he said, which elevates the content in terms of patient engagement.

Patey described Blue Charm’s environment as one that rewards patients for their behaviour and builds engagement within the platform, capturing actionable data that can further enhance adherence rates.

“What we’ve learned from our clients is the importance of other kinds of digital health solutions, [such as] card-based programs,” Patey said. “There’s so much data that comes out of insurance prescription claims.”

Blue Charm is already working to ‘dance’ in that direction. Patey says the company is launching a program called Blue Charm Assist, which will complement the existing platform by providing an integrated co-pay card and financial assistance solution.

Ultimately, Patey envisions combining Blue Charm’s real-world patient engagement data with the claims data accessed through Blue Charm Assist to provide superior insights. “Overall, we’ll get to a level that will have much better data intelligence, hence future intelligence.”

THIS WEEK 10/18/22

The Toronto company CanAm Scientific and SD Biosensor of China, makers of a Covid-19 rapid test, have introduced a Rapid M10 Analyzer for the fast detection of infectious diseases, including Monkeypox. This new rapid test provides results in one hour instead of multiple days.
The U.S. FDA has approved Furoscix (furosemide injection) for the treatment of congestion due to fluid overload in adults with New York Heart Association Class II/III chronic heart failure. Furoscix is not recommended for patients with acute pulmonary edema. The therapy was developed by scPharmaceuticals of Burlington, Mass.
Health Canada has granted approval to Australia’s Telix Pharmaceuticals Limited for Illuccix [kit for the preparation of gallium (68Ga) gozetotide injection]. It’s used for staging and restaging intermediate and high-risk prostate cancer and localizing tumour tissue in recurrent prostate cancer.
Mirum Pharmaceuticals announced that the European Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use (CHMP) has adopted a positive opinion of Livmarli (maralixibat) for the treatment of cholestatic pruritus in patients with Alagille syndrome (ALGS) two months of age and older. The CHMP positive opinion is the first step for the European Commission to grant marketing authorization in Europe.
Ian J.S. Moore, a long-time healthcare advertising executive and medical writer who spent his career in Toronto and Montreal died Oct. 6, in Burlington, Ont.
He was managing editor of the monthly journal "MD of Canada," and a founding member of the Canadian Science Writers' Association. His byline appeared in many journals and publications.
He was a prolific and frequent contributor to The Chronicle of Healthcare Marketing, and a familiar figure at life sciences conferences and meetings, particularly those of the Pharmaceutical Marketing Association of Quebec and the Ontario Pharmaceutical Marketing Association. He was passionate about the arts, books, music, films, food, history, and the Montreal Canadiens (in no particular order.)
Ian leaves his beloved wife, the artist Patricia Jean (Patty) Moore, his daughters Siobhan Kathleen and Lisa Bronwyn, and their families.
His family requests that contributions in Ian’s name be made "to a charity or humane society of your choice, or make a donation to the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada." Ian was 86.

LISTEN NOW

In season eight of the NPC Podcast, Dr. Greg Patey, CEO of Blue Charm Adherence Inc., talks about patient adherence programs, helping patients access medicine, and IT startups in Atlantic Canada. Hear him in conversation with podcast hosts Mitch Shannon, Jim Shea and Mark McElwain.

CANADIAN HEALTHCARE MARKETING HALL OF FAME

The Canadian Healthcare Marketing Hall of Fame awards were established in 2002 to honour healthcare marketers who have contributed to our vocation and inspire others.

More than 100 honourees have been selected during the past 18 years. In the selection committee’s view, they represent a cross-section of the qualities that make our business unique and fulfilling. NPC Healthbiz Weekly will acknowledge one past Hall of Fame Honoree each week.

2003 Inductee
Claude Perron
Laval, Que.

Editor’s note: Claude is now an independent Strategic Advisor at his company Perron Inc.

Claude Perron is proud of the 20 years he has spent as a team player in the pharma industry. His career, he submits, has been “challenging and stimulating” from the day, armed with a degree in biochemistry, he marched off to Burroughs Welcome for a 12-year stint, first as a sales rep, then district sales manager, and product manager for the antiviral drug Zovirax.

At the time, Zovirax, a breakthrough antiviral product, created a stir among the medical community, says Perron, who now bears the title of vice-president sales and marketing for Shire Biochem.

“Physicians were very skeptical about antiviral drugs because history had shown they were also very toxic, [but] that product was the first to show efficacy and at the same time be very selective in the way it was working, really minimizing the side effects.”

Perron has been a significant participant in a number of therapeutic firsts. But he claims his proudest moment occurred in 1995 during the launch of the antiretroviral drug 3TC. The drug, co-marketed by Glaxo where Perron was part of the HIV marketing team, was a “true correlation” between the development of new products and really changing lives for patients. “That was at a time when HIV therapy was at a crossroads--of doing something or failing and obviously what it proved is that combination therapy has been the cornerstone of HIV treatment and HIV is now treated as a chronic dis-ease,” notes Perron. Today, the drug is the most widely used antiretroviral for HIV therapy because it is efficacious and well tolerated, he adds.

These days, Perron’s attention is turned to a host of new developments at Shire including an anti-infective program for hepatitis C, an area he maintains is largely “untapped” in terms of treatment, a new option for attention deficit disorder, and a phosphate-binding product for dialysis patients that is currently in Phase IIIB testing.

“It has been a great industry to work in and there have been a lot of significant additions over the last 20 years,” remarks Perron. “I think the key result of these new options is that people are living longer with conditions they were dying from earlier. When we look objectively at what the pharma industry has done for patients in general, you just have to look at life expectancy which continues to grow every year: Our grandparents and parents are living well into their 80s [with their] sugar, their heart disease well controlled. And all of that is mostly due to new medications and lifestyle changes.”

Register now for the 16th Annual National Pharmaceutical Congress on Wednesday, November 2

As Canada’s most important stage for leaders in the pharmaceutical industry, the Congress is an opportunity to learn, reflect, and network with the industry’s most prominent thought leaders and visionaries.

Join us at the Mississauga Convention Centre on November 2 for five panels featuring reflections, ideas, and innovations from luminaries in the Life Sciences industry:

The Future of Rare Disease & Oncology
Omni-Channel Marketing
Updated Perspectives for the New Normal
Evolving Roles in Commercial & Medical
Pharma’s New Role in the LifeSci Ecosystem

NEXT WEEK

It’s easy to get your no-charge subscription to NPC Healthbiz Weekly, and we’ll send each issue to your phone or inbox each Tuesday at 6:00 a.m. sharp.

You are receiving this newsletter because you are a client of Chronicle Companies, attended a National Pharmaceutical Congress live event or webinar, or previously requested a subscription to one of our newsletters. If you no longer wish to subscribe to this newsletter, please send an email with the subject line “Unsubscribe NPC Healthbiz” to health@chronicle.org.

NPC Healthbiz Weekly is published by Chronicle Companies, 701 Ellicott Street, Buffalo, N.Y. 14203. Canadian Office: 555 Burnhamthorpe Road Suite 306, Toronto, Ont. M9C 2Y3 T 416 916 2476

Mitchell Shannon, Publisher; R. Allan Ryan, Editorial Director; John Evans, Kylie Rebernik, Jeremy Visser, Editors; Cristela Tello Ruiz, New Business Development; Catherine Dusome, Operations Manager

Content is copyright (c) 2022, Chronicle LifeSci America Corp., except as indicated. Are you interested in contributing to this newsletter or learning more about Chronicle’s services? Please write to us at health@chronicle.org.

Thanks for reading NPC Healthbiz Weekly. Subscribe for free to receive new posts directly to your inbox.

NPC Healthbiz Weekly