The list of winners of the fourth edition of the Harvard Business Review (HBR) Global Chinese Traditional Chinese Edition Dingge Award was announced, and this year’s Innovative Business Model Transformation Award, the first prize for small and medium-sized enterprises is a strategic consultant, and it also won the ESG Special Award. The award-winning project provides innovative solutions to the financial burden of self-financed new drugs, creates a platform that can help patients obtain financial subsidies for new drugs, and reduce transaction costs in the medical supply chain, and has accumulated more than 60 special drug services, covering special prescription drugs and medical materials such as cancer and biologics, and has become an innovation in the new drug benefit program in Taiwan’s medical market through cooperation with a number of international pharmaceutical companies.
“To solve the problem of accessibility of new drugs, in addition to public-private cooperation, health insurance and commercial insurance should go hand in hand, and innovative market solutions should be needed to take into account the affordability of patients and the market value of new drugs,” said Zhang Xiangxin, Chairman of PatientsForce Caihong Health Integration GroupDenote. In 2015, we launched the “PatientsForce Patient Assistance Programs” platform to assist pharmaceutical companies to directly provide patient medication plans, support and reduce the financial and treatment burden of patients during the period when new drugs are not included in health insurance benefits, and provide patient-centered care and health services.” At present, it continues to provide more than 80 patient support programs, and has provided more than 1 million units of drug support applications for physicians and patients since 2017, with a market value of more than 6 billion.
“Last year, more than 10,000 patients applied for the drug support program, but this year, the number of patients served by PatientsForce has exceeded 10,000, showing a multiplier growth. On the other hand, we can design innovative and diversified new drug solutions, and we can also provide services using different drug delivery channels and disease types.” Zhang Xiangxin, Chairman of the Group, said that in order to improve the medical experience of patients in Taiwan, the Group is committed to developing a complete digital management product, and the “MediPASS Integrated SaaS Platform” is an agile development integration system that enables pharmaceutical companies, medical institutions and pharmacies to collaborate on the same platform for the application and management of patient support programs. The launch of the platform enables all parties to share resources more efficiently and improve the overall quality of medical services.
Wang Yiwen, Chief Operating Officer of the Group, said, “Patientsforce has continuously optimized and developed a digital platform to complete standard and compliant quality management for the patient’s medication application process. At the same time, it completes the contact between patients and the hospital and dispenses medicines. Our management efficiency is equivalent to that of an insurance company’s claims department, except that we pay mainly for the actual drugs.”
In order to further promote the distribution of free drugs, the Group has also integrated the supply chain downward and launched the “Medical Notes” to help the pharmacy side manage the inventory of free drugs, which has greatly improved the accuracy and efficiency of the planned drug distribution. In addition, this case also provides a variety of solutions in terms of drug financial support for patients, such as the first drug staging service, which allows patients to purchase drugs first and then pay in installments, combined with the exemption clauses provided by pharmaceutical companies, which exempts patients from the financial burden of self-financed drugs before waiting for health insurance payment, and also includes financial solutions for patients with special cases, so as to cope with the short-term financial pressure of patients’ different payment abilities.
The introduction of AI intelligent services will be the next phase of PatientsForce’s scalable patient support solutions in the near future, adding that in order to achieve 24/7 (i.e., open-day, service-available, and year-round. In addition to the internal visual management to improve the quality of customer service, on the other hand, it has solved the large-scale dialogue services between medical units and patients, including notification of drug collection, regular follow-up, health investigation and clinical patient self-report management, etc., in order to respond to more new medical models of accurate health management services in the future.
PatientsForce has also expanded the patient support program platform to the enterprise side, becoming an ESG and employee support solution for enterprises, accumulating future healthcare capital for employees and their families. “PatientsForce not only provides a digital system, but also represents the practice of corporate responsibility, and we look forward to the participation of more medical institutions and pharmaceutical companies through innovative business models and digital tools, so that more patients can afford new drug treatment and receive complete care, and at the same time, it can also help PatientsForce solve the problem of patient support in medical clinics during the transition period and when private insurance is insufficient, and jointly promote the mutual benefit of the cycle of medicine, disease and medicine,” said Zhang.
