In the United States, some medications have a specialized fulfillment process which can be challenging for patients to navigate. Specifically, biologic medicines are dispensed by specialty pharmacies that deliver by mail-order only, ensuring the medication is appropriately stored and refrigerated throughout the delivery process.
As a patient, working with a remote specialty pharmacy can be less transparent than a neighborhood-based retail pharmacy. Examples of this include patients not knowing: which specialty pharmacy their insurance authorizes to deliver their medication, when it will be delivered, or how to easily reach the specialty pharmacy for updates or to make changes to the scheduled deliveries.
The goal of this challenge is to simplify the filling of biologic prescriptions for patients in order to improve access to medicines. The proposed solution should:
Track the journey of a biologic prescription and provide status updates to patients on demand
Be patient friendly, i.e., usable format, easy accessibility, respects patient privacy
Offer a business rationale for specialty pharmacies to participate and share data
This solution should be implementable across all specialty pharmacies. The “challenge guidelines” and “additional context” pages describe in more detail the specific steps of the prescription journey that should be covered, along with context on biologic medicines and how the prescription system works currently in the US. Ultimately, by creating more transparency about biologic medicines and prescription status, we hope to help more patients receive the medications they need, when they need them.
This challenge is a call for ideas, and subsequent challenges may build out the technical, regulatory, and economic considerations in more detail for the winning solution.
This challenge is looking for a description of a simple and easy to adopt solution to help:
Track the journey of a biologic prescription and provide status updates to patients on demand
The solution should be able to tell a patient the status of their biologic prescription, regardless of which specialty pharmacy is processing it. It should have information about when a prescription was received by the pharmacy, what is the insurance approval status, when it was shipped, where along the shipping route it currently is, how to contact the pharmacy in case of an issue, and the date of the next course of treatment.
Be patient friendly, i.e., usable format, easy accessibility, respects patient privacy
The solution should be accessible to all patients, regardless of tech savviness. Since the data will be collected by this new solution (a third party in the pharmaceutical space), it is required to have patient consent. Successful submissions will address how to incorporate and obtain that consent (e.g., through push and pull, or single consent to access patient data set, etc.)
Offer a business rationale for specialty pharmacies to participate and share data
Many specialty pharmacies have a revenue stream selling anonymized prescription level data to pharmaceutical companies for insights into market dynamics. As yet, there has not been any initiative to combine or pull these datasets into one single solution that is available to HCPs and patients. Successful submissions should discuss how to incentivize specialty pharmacies to share data, whether by creating another revenue stream or through other business incentives.
We are primarily interested in ideas for what this solution could look like along with a description of a potential business model. We do anticipate there will be significant technical challenges in implementation (e.g., accessing, standardizing, and refreshing in real-time the data which will come from different sources in different formats). Subsequent challenges may address specific barriers in more detail, building on the overall approach from the winning solution.
Evaluation Criteria
Criteria
Description
Percent Importance
Impact
Does the proposed solution increase transparency of biologic prescriptions for patients?
40
Business feasibility
Does the solution offer a business rationale for specialty pharmacies to participate and share data?
30
Patient suitability
Is the solution patient-friendly, in an easy-to-use format that respects patient privacy?
20
Originality
How unique or creative is the proposed solution?
10
Challenge Parameters
Intellectual Property (IP): Winning solutions will be subject to a royalty-free, shared license with Novartis. Please refer to the Challenge-Specific Agreement for details of our IP arrangement. When you submit your proposal, you’ll be asked to confirm that (1) you have full rights over your own IP and (2) if you are selected as a finalist, you will agree to a royalty-free shared license with Novartis.
Participant Eligibility: In addition to confirming the Intellectual Property criteria, all participants who submit solutions to this challenge must confirm that they:
Are 18 years of age or older
Not employed by a foreign (ex-US) government or foreign (ex-US) publicly-funded entity
This challenge sought ideas on how to simplify the process by which patients receive biologic medications.
We are again impressed with the response and quality of submissions. Ideas ranged from mobile applications that provides the patient with push updates about their medication to SaaS portals that can function as a hub for collecting and tracking patient’s data. We continue to appreciate the variety of backgrounds of the teams that came from all over the world to solve our problem.
And the winners are...
1st Place, received $4,000:
Individual: Igor Jovanovic
PRTBS
Serbia
2nd Place, received $2,000:
Individual: Jeremy Martinez
Health Data (HD) Task Force
United States
3rd Place, received $1,000:
Individual: Lata Koundal
Patient Friendly App With Business Rationale
India
Honorable Mentions:
Biologic Pharmaceutical Medicine Portal – Joseph Stainback IV
Pharma Link – Ovidiu Dobre
Perfect Patient Updates as Prescribed – Adam Bostock
Thank you to everyone who submitted and followed the challenge. We hope that many of you will continue to share your creativity with us in subsequent challenges so that we can keep improving patient care together.
The Submission Deadline for the "Improving the Patient Experience in Receiving Specialty Medications" is TODAY at 5:00 pm Eastern Time (New York).
Here are a couple of last-minute tips for a smooth entry process:
1. Begin your submission before the cutoff time. This allows you to ensure everything you have been working on can be seamlessly integrated into the form.
2. Your submission will not be reviewed until you click the orange "Submit Final Entry" button at the top of the final review page. Please remember to do this!
3. Review the Challenge Guidelines to ensure your submission is complete. Pay particular attention to the judging criteria which will be the scorecard used to evaluate your entry.
We understand that the latest development in the global spread of the coronavirus (COVID-19) is disrupting the personal and professional lives of some solvers like few other events have before.
In response to this, Novartis has decided to extend the deadline for the “Improving the Patient Experience in Receiving Specialty Medication” challenge to March 30th at 5 p.m. ET.
We hope you, your family, colleagues and loved ones stay safe during this difficult time.
There are 7 days left until we need your submissions for the Specialty Pharmacy Challenge! Submissions are due on Monday, March 23rd at noon Eastern Time (New York).
To be considered eligible for the judging stage, you must complete and finalize your submission before the deadline and meet the requirements outlined in the Guidelines section.
Here are a couple of last-minute tips for a smooth entry process:
1. Begin your submission process several days before the cutoff time. This allows you to ensure everything you have been working on can be seamlessly integrated into the form.
2. Your submission will not be reviewed until you click the orange "Submit Final Entry" button at the top of the final review page. Please remember to do this!
3. Review the Challenge Guidelines to ensure your submission is complete. Pay particular attention to the judging criteria which will be the scorecard used to evaluate your entry.
We are 10 days away from our submission deadline for the Specialty Pharmacy Challenge!
This message is to remind you to complete and finalize your submission before the deadline on Monday, March 23rd at noon Eastern Time (New York). Make sure your submission is finalized before that time to be considered for the judging stage. For your entry to be eligible, it must meet the requirements outlined in the Guidelines section.
View a How-To video on completing your submission here.
As a reminder, if you have any questions regarding the competition, you can post it in the forum or email us at gethelp@herox.com
