Asembia AXS25: Leveraging Advanced Analytics and Data Insights to Improve Specialty Pharmacy Patient Outcomes

In an interview with Pharmacy Times®, Kathi Henson, senior vice president of patient services, nursing, and quality at Orsini, discussed how specialty pharmacies can use advanced technologies like predictive analytics, natural language processing, and artificial intelligence (AI) to improve patient care and outcomes. She highlighted her presentation, “How Specialty Pharmacies Can Use Technology to Support Rare Disease Patients and Improve Quality,” which she shared at Asembia's AXS25 Summit.

Henson underlined the importance of aggregating data from multiple platforms to create comprehensive clinical programs that address patient needs throughout their treatment journey. A specific example highlighted was a project with PicnicHealth that allows patients to access their medical and pharmacy records, enabling better tracking and assessment of therapy effectiveness. Henson also emphasized the goal to work closely with manufacturer partners to develop insights and programs that are most beneficial for patients.

Pharmacy Times: What are the most impactful ways specialty pharmacies can leverage advanced analytics and real-world data to improve patient outcomes?

Kathi Henson: Great question. I think when we think about specialty pharmacy, it's all about patient care. Using things like predictive analytics to assess whether we think a patient is going to have challenges with adherence to their medications. We're starting to use things like natural language processing and AI as well as just creating, I think, strong clinical programs and using all those data inputs to help create those programs.

Pharmacy Times: How can integrating robust software platforms and data insights help specialty pharmacies mitigate risk and enhance the quality of their services?

Henson: Most of the time, specialty pharmacies use a lot of different platforms. Having a way to aggregate that data and then look at that data holistically, across the patient journey, to determine where we think we can have the most impact and use that to again create clinical programs, hopefully with the goal of improving patient outcomes.

Pharmacy Times: Can you share an example of how the strategic use of technology and data analysis has demonstrably improved patient care or outcomes in a specialty pharmacy setting?

Henson: We're actually working on a really unique project right now with a company called PicnicHealth, offering this to patients. They can join a patient registry that allows them to access patients’ medical records, and then, in combination with their pharmacy records, we can pull those 2 things together and use those insights to help assess how well the patient is doing on the therapy. We are working closely with our manufacturer partners on those kinds of insights, as well as using that information to help inform again our clinical programs and really using those to make sure that we're creating programs that are going to be most beneficial for patients.