Class: Controlled substance drugs (CII - CV)
Prescribers: >150,000

Patients: 3.2 million
Pharmacies: > 20,000

Validated ROI: $11 million

IP Rights Status: Available for license

What if you could identify and stop prescription drug abuse directly at the source? That is now possible with SafeUseNow, an innovative prescription drug abuse risk identification and intervention program. SafeUseNow uses its industry-leading risk prediction algorithm to predict combinations of prescribers, patients, and pharmacies at risk for the misuse, abuse, addiction, and diversion of controlled substance drugs.

SafeUseNow offers a clinically validated solution utilizing advanced data analytics and predictive modeling to identify combinations of prescribers, patients and pharmacies at risk of contributing to the prescription drug abuse problem. This actionable information enables healthcare stakeholders, including health insurance plans, self-insured companies, hospitals, pharmacy benefit managers and pharmaceutical manufacturers to teach prescribers how to treat their patients more safely and effectively. SafeUseNow also allows customers to proactively monitor prescribing patterns for early detection of changes in prescribing trends and behavior.

In a 3-year pilot program with Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey, the SafeUseNow program achieved clinical and statistical significant in eight of nine endpoints, resulting in more than $11M in pharmacy and medical cost savings to the health plan.

For detailed information about this award-winning solution, see www.safeusenow.com.

Diagnostic: Vulnerable plaque burden

Revenue: > $100 million
Patients: 500,000
Achievable ROI: $90 million

IP Rights Status: Assigned to client

An early stage bioinformatics company sought to develop a medical product to non-invasively detect the presence of vulnerable plaque – a type of plaque that can rupture and result in heart attack or stroke. Astoundingly, death is the first sign of cardiovascular disease in 40% of all reported cases in the US. With 70% of heart attacks resulting from plaque rupture in areas containing little plaque, current diagnostic methods proved incapable of reliably detecting high-risk vulnerable plaque. Consequently, research and development began to design a product to resolve this critically unmet need.

Product prototyping began with the construction of a plaque burden prediction model. The data used for development of the prediction model originated in the MRI of both in vivo and ex vivo patients diagnosed with cardiovascular disease.

How does this product work? By applying proprietary analytical and statistical methods to outcome data from landmark studies, we improved the ability to predict plaque burden for high – risk patients. Now, millions of patient lives can be extended with lower cost, first line interventional treatments, potentially saving the healthcare system hundreds of millions of dollars each year.

Class: Anti-depressionRevenue: > $1 billion

Field Force Size: 2,500 

Physicians: 125,000

Achievable ROI: $25 million

IP Rights Status: Available for license

By measuring physician response to myriad promotional and non-promotional activities and accurately forecasting physician-level prescribing behavior, optimization permits our clients to maximize their marketing mix ROI. 

In this engagement our team optimized the marketing mix for nearly 125,000 target physicians in the SSRI market. Our work began by calculating physician-level promotional sensitivity to key tactics such as details, meetings and events, and professional journal and direct-to-consumer advertising. A key objective of this work was to separate collateral effects in order to expose the unique contribution made by simultaneous promotional events. We next controlled for key non-promotional effects such as disease incidence and prevalence, seasonality, and census markers. Then, using a scenario builder we considered thousands of possible marketing mix allocations, each one resulting in a forecast of total prescriptions in the SSRI market for both our client’s brand and competitor brands. The scenario builder included a dynamic market forecast component that predicted competitor responses to each proposed change in our client’s promotion mix, thereby providing our client with a clear, short-term view of the market landscape.

The result? Our client deployed the tool in their periodic POA process so that Sales and Marketing leadership could explore, in real-time, the resulting ROI of each level of promotional investment considered. Optimizing the marketing mix at a physician-level unearthed achievable ROI of $25 million.

Therapy: Bariatric surgery (obesity)

Revenue: $225 million

Patients: 9,300

Achievable ROI: $5 million

IP Rights Status: Available for license

A Blue Cross® Blue Shield® health plan commissioned a quality of care analysis for the treatment of morbid obesity. Aggregate treatment costs for bariatric surgery were growing faster than projected, and complication rates began to rise. As the treatable patient population was expected to grow by 65% in 10 years, management sought to better understand the relationship between quality of care (QOC) and bottom-line performance.

Four study objectives were identified:

1. Compare common recurring surgical costs

2. Evaluate hospitals and physicians

3. Analyze complication costs

4. Demonstrate achievable savings by comparing patient costs to a benchmark measure

Using data mining and statistical analysis techniques, an estimate of achievable cost savings that would result from improved patient QOC was developed. The result? An achievable ROI of $15 million within two years for employing a bariatric surgery Centers of Excellence program.

Class: Anti-Cancer

Revenue: < $1 billion

Patients: 5,000

Achievable ROI: $15-$75 million

IP Rights Status: Assigned to client

In preparation for filing for product registration in the European Union, a prominent oncology research group sought to compare the efficacy, toxicity, and safety profiles for its drug versus those whose results were published in leading clinical research journals. The drug was already approved for use in the United States and had a randomized controlled trial underway, but the client did not expect results for another eight years.

Our work involved culling through more than 2,000 journal articles in order to develop a comparator database of published clinical trial results. We then compared published results for key endpoints to those in the client’s clinical studies: complete remission rate, median relapse-free survival, and overall survival. Finally, we reported statistically validated measures of superiority and inferiority across all key dimensions.

Our meta-analysis report was submitted with the client’s product registration filing as evidence of results likely to emerge from the randomized controlled trial. Should the EU approve the product registration in its current form, the client will avert a costly clinical trial and launch its drug five years sooner than originally planned.

With the drug’s EU revenue projected to average $15 million per year, the achievable ROI for this client is conservatively in the range of $15–$75 million.

Class: Sedatives

Revenue: > $1 billion

Field force size: 2,000

Physicians: 100,000

Achievable ROI: $30 million

IP Rights Status: Available for license

A marketing optimization program should be evaluated in terms of its ROI. Planning, implementation, and validation in support of an optimization program ensures maximum total return. In a recent engagement, a Principled Strategies team completed a marketing optimization validation analysis. 

The methodology measured one-year effectiveness for key physician-level programs. Our analysis compared the behavior of a control group of physicians to a test group of physicians in order to identify both successes and failures. The study resulted in an ROI estimate for each physician, and precisely accounted for sales representative adherence, the largest individual contributor to program ROI. Using a principled validation methodology, the team successfully measured total ROI, physician ROI, key contributors to physician ROI, and channels for which the client can improve program effectiveness.

The results offered immediate feedback that permitted the client to react and respond to groups of sub optimally performing physicians. A tangential benefit of the project was an improved understanding of techniques for securing sales representative buy-in. The tangible benefits for this client include enhanced knowledge, improved capture rate for achievable ROI, and more efficient planning and marketing in the future.