Itheum’s Use Case for Pharmaceutical Companies Manufacturing Generic Drugs

The following is an excerpt from an interview our founder had recently regarding possible applications of Itheum’s Proactive Data Collection abilities within the Generic Drug Manufacturing Industry.

Q: Explain your idea in a few lines?

Itheum is a complete platform to unlock new sources of health & wellness data via remote patient (user) engagement. Unlike existing market solutions, Itheum was built from the ground-up to be user-centered and provides an “optimum environment” where users feel comfortable in collecting and sharing data.

Q: What is the problem you identified and what made you launch your startup?

Healthcare is largely “volumn based” these days. You only see a Doctor when you are sick, who then collects specific points of data to diagnose you. This reactive model is causing chronic disease to spiral out of control and is pushing healthcare expenditure to unsustainable levels.

There is a strong push around the world to try and fix this via proactive healthcare incentivisation to drive “value based care”. Initiatives like digital medical records, Telehealth, remote patient monitoring, data interoperability, clinician analytics, decision support are off to a promising start but fail to gain any real strong adoption to make a dent in the issue.

It is widely accepted that a catalyst is needed to really boost value based care and make it mainstream. We feel this catalyst is in the unlocking of new sources of health and wellness data, but this will only happen when users feel comfortable sharing their own data for the advancement of healthcare as a whole.

No one is truly addressing the underlying issues that prevent an “optimum environment” for data to be shared, analysed and used in healthcare.

We started Itheum to solve this problem.

Q: Can you briefly describe your solution?

Our platform was built from the ground up to solve THREE issues we recognise with existing platforms offering health and wellness data solutions.

Issue 1:
Users do not trust the organisations who request them to collect data as they feel their data will be breached or misused. This leads to a reluctance from users to proactively collect and share health and wellness data.

Solution:
User-Controlled Data: Itheum provides a unique user-centric data access, control and privacy model. The user “holds the key to the safe where their data is locked”, this freedom from external data control creates an environment where they collect and share more data.

Issue 2:
Once a user collects data they have no opportunity to earn value from their data.

Solution:
Open Data Marketplace: Itheum provides a data marketplace where market requests for data are matched with user-controlled datasets and a user is given the opportunity to profit from their data.

Issue 3:
A lack of tools for organisations to build “structured, remote data collection programs” that engage and activate their user/customer base.

Solution:
Engagement Program Toolkit: Itheum provides a completely modular automated toolkit for organisations to build and run engagement programs that collect data by leveraging the user-centric data access, control, privacy and marketplace that Itheum offers.

Q: How is it Innovative?

Itheum is trying to solve a very complex issue and we have been working on it for 3 years. It is designed from the ground up to facilitate grassroots level behavioural changes from all parties involved in healthcare delivery. It identifies the THREE key areas that are needed to unlock more health and wellness data and make it available for a future of proactive healthcare built on AI. Its architectural design is based on future technologies like web3 and the Personal Data Stores that are being worked on by MIT, Facebook, Google, Amazon etc to rethink how data ownership, privacy and access control will look like in the next generation of the internet. But how we are truly innovative is that our platform can be used today, and you don’t need to wait until these futures technologies become more mainstream.

Q: What makes it interesting for a Pharmaceutical company manufacturing generic drugs?

Itheum is a platform that can be used by health and wellness organisations to unlock data via user (customer) engagement, it has powerful applications for a Pharmaceutical company.

As a generic drug manufacturer, it is in the company’s interest to have high levels of user engagement to ensure customers are adhering to their medication regimens and that they have the appropriate knowledge about their health conditions and are proactive in managing their health.

By providing solutions to assist customers in tracking and managing their health proactively, the company gains strong brand recognition and brand loyalty.

The Pharmaceutical company also benefits greatly from the health and wellness data collected via the Itheum programs which would give the company insights on not only how your customers are tracking with their health conditions but also give you the “data insight” needed for better marketing campaigns and analytics.

In addition, unlike other products and services in the market that are more like data harvesting tools, Itheum is a user-centric platform which provides the optimum environment where users are happy and willing to record and share their data.

Q: What are your targeting groups (B2B, B2C, B2B2C)?

Itheum is always free for the “data provider” (the user who joins programs to collect data). Itheum is provided as platform infrastructure (software as a service) to organisations who have large customer/user bases and who would like to build white labelled remote engagement programs for their users. We are targeting the B2B market (healthcare providers — public/private/specialists, payers — insurance/government, research — pharmaceutical/health analysts). Our payment model will be per user / per program (where an organisation will pay to build an engagement program using our toolkit and then pay for each user who signs up for that program)

Q: What stage of development are you in? (R&D, marketing, etc.) What have you already achieved?

We released our first program called the “Red Heart Challenge” to public beta 2 months ago. The program was co-developed with input from healthcare specialists and is aimed at anyone to join and collect data related to heart health. It unlocks blood pressure, activity, diet and stress data using science/evidence based collection methods. We are tracking towards 100 users.

Q: Is your solution already on the market? If yes, in which country?

It is in public beta and available in Australia, New Zealand, Canada and parts of Asia.