Automated Calling Technology

I have had the chance to work with one of my previous vendors on their PBM strategy.  I find it to be a fascinating space – automated call technology.  They are at the heart of the consumerism push and work for 45 healthcare companies today.

Since a call center is often too expensive and often the turnover a killer for quality, that can be a difficult strategy for communications.  Letters are great from the fact that they can be perfectly scripted.  But, letters aren’t dynamic and aren’t real-time.  E-mail is good, but with HIPAA restrictions and other privacy issues, it can be constrained.

Everyone has a phone.  Using push technology with personalization and a dynamic engine for changing messaging has great potential.  We used this technology to drive brand to generic switching when Zocor was losing patent.  We used this to help people who got rejected at the Point-of-Sale understand their plan design (call avoidance).  And, we used this as a complement to our letters trying to move people from retail pharmacy to mail order.  It works.

I am working on the numbers now, but I suspect there is a few billion dollars worth of opportunity sitting on the table if healthcare fully embraces this technology.  By reducing inbound calls and using intelligent messaging to predict events and push information to patients, you can drive changes in behavior and make a difference.

Much more to come here…