Technology has driven patient-centric innovation—we must keep it going if we hope to improve outcomes and quality of life

People living with a chronic condition may feel as if it controls their lives. The discomfort, misery and pain some patients may feel – both physical and psychological – can keep them from living life to the fullest. Monitoring symptoms, taking medications and attending regular appointments can make managing a condition feel like a full-time job. 

Many of the technologies we quickly adopted as a society to continue working and socializing during COVID-19 can make it easier for people with chronic conditions to access care and manage symptoms long-term.

The pandemic has contributed to flare-ups or a worsening in condition for many people living with chronic inflammatory conditions such as the 65 million¹ around the world suffering from atopic dermatitis (also known as eczema), the 10 million² living with an inflammatory bowel disease, and others. For this and other reasons, telehealth use in general has increased by as much as 4,000%³ in the U.S. alone since the onset of the pandemic. 

Through our relationships with the patient community, we believe that many patients could find telehealth visits significantly reduce the time and disruption regular doctor appointments may cause – in turn reducing the burden of managing their disease. Moving forward, we must advocate for policies that ensure continuity of care for patients that includes equal support for virtual and in-person options. 

Clinical trials have also adopted new technologies to help make participation more accessible and more insightful. For example, Pfizer is working on a virtual clinical trial in collaboration with Verily, an industry tech leader. The trial uses a decentralized clinical trial hybrid approach of home visits and telemedicine to bring the study to the patient’s home rather than requiring the patient visit a traditional clinical trial site. Such virtual capabilities could be significant in developing medicines from now on. When combined with traditional recruitment methods, virtual capabilities could possibly result in faster recruitment, and an ability to increase participant diversity, convenience and retention. 

We hope that virtual studies will allow us to reach patients who would be unable to participate in a traditional trial due to geography, mobility constraints, limited caregiver support or work schedules.  

We see an essential role for wearables and remote monitoring in managing chronic conditions. For example, atopic dermatitis causes intense itching that leads to bouts of scratching at night, disrupting sleep. To understand better the impact this symptom has on patients, Pfizer’s Digital Medicine & Translational Imaging scientists are conducting studies where patients with the condition spend a night in a sleep lab with wearables that detect physical activity and measure wrist movements associated with scratching while also being recorded on video. The goal is to use the captured data to create machine-learning algorithms that detect sleep and scratching based solely on accelerometer data. These algorithms could effectively capture patient information in the context of their daily lives without needing to deploy a camera in every patient’s home.

While COVID may have accelerated technological advances, we must continue to develop bold new ways to bridge the gaps in healthcare delivery due to socioeconomic challenges. Increasing access to technologies must be part of our strategy as we move to an increasingly digital-driven healthcare system.

As pandemic-driven pressures on the healthcare system abate, we must continue to advance the learnings in how we incorporate technology into a comprehensive healthcare approach. At Pfizer, we’ve always used our understanding of the patient journey to integrate their experiences across the way we test, develop and make medicines accessible. As newer and more complex approaches to patient care emerge, we must ensure that these advancements focus not on technology for technology’s sake, but on giving patients more control over their conditions – and the freedom that allows. 

Patient-centric, technology-enabled innovation is necessary to help alleviate the burden of chronic disease. As an industry, we must factor the entire patient experience into everything we do. The solutions we design must treat the complexity of various medical conditions within the context of their often-debilitating effects on the day-to-day lives of patients and their caregivers, easing their burden and improving their quality of life. 

Learn more about Pfizer’s Inflammation & Immunology and our transformative approach to bringing patients medicines with the potential to alleviate their burden here.