In the past, many research papers and reports have stressed the importance of compliance in the efficiency of healthcare systems, a report of the WHO in 2003 even stressed that there is more to expect from a better compliance than from any innovation in medicine.
Leveraging its data assets, IMS Health has published a seminal study that revealed that less than half of French patients suffering from chronic conditions were compliant with their medication. A projection showed that a better compliance could avoid complications that currently cost some €9 billion to the French system per year only considering direct costs. To conduct this study we mainly used one IMS proprietary database that contains longitudinal data on drugs consumptions delivered by a panel of 6,400 pharmacies, representative of the universe of 22,000 pharmacies in France.
Overcoming the complexity of longitudinal data through the development of a unique methodology permitted to deliver a single, simple and robust indicator of patients’ compliance.
It also opened the way to new paths of research and evaluation as it is replicable for specific products or conditions and sub-populations based on demographics or historic data, therefore addressing the need to target compliance programs or actions on patients profile that really need them instead of blind deployment. It also provides a powerful measurement of efficacy of patients programs aiming at developing a better adherence and that constitutes a new way to learn from past experiments and develop best practices.
This is only one example of potential benefits of such approaches but it is also representative of the challenge of making best use of healthcare data: embracing the complexity of data that reveal the intimacy of the patient journey to reduce it to key indicators without which clear and effective action are challenging to define.
The study also explains why IMS Health has decided to join the HDI as we are willing to contribute to the development of the use of healthcare data for a more efficient care in an innovative, efficient and responsible fashion.
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Stéphane Sclison is Strategy Director at IMS Health France, a global leading provider of data, services and technology for Healthcare stakeholders. He is a member of the Board of Directors of the Healthcare Data Institute.
A booklet in French detailing the study is available under this link.
