A dose of digital: what digitalisation means for healthcare

Over the past decade, dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion of the phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal sec­tor has pro­gressed steadi­ly¹. Automa­tion, arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence (AI) and machine learn­ing offer swift clin­i­cal data col­lec­tion and analy­sis, and the stream­lin­ing of admin­is­tra­tive tasks that can release time for cru­cial research. In the past two years, we have all seen the step change that has occurred in health­care and almost every oth­er aspect of our lives.

I am a pas­sion­ate pro­po­nent of dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion and reg­u­lar­ly advo­cate for the val­ue of data and inno­va­tion in health­care. But while the advances we see today are excit­ing, we must remem­ber that they can­not exist in a vac­u­um. Janssen UK’s dig­i­tal strat­e­gy, as a cor­ner­stone of our busi­ness, recog­nis­es this point first and fore­most. To this end, we have cre­at­ed an ecosys­tem of trust­ed part­ners that con­sis­tent­ly cre­ate and deliv­er dig­i­tal propo­si­tions. Togeth­er, our goal is to cre­ate val­ue through col­lab­o­ra­tion, and deliv­er our joint indus­try goal to ulti­mate­ly improve patient treat­ment and out­comes.

The next few years will see the ongo­ing rip­ple effect of the pandemic’s surge toward dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion². Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­nies are in a strong posi­tion to guide this inno­va­tion in a patient-cen­tric direc­tion.

Janssen’s innovation pipeline

At Janssen, we remain com­mit­ted to a patient-first approach to inno­va­tion and have been devel­op­ing and imple­ment­ing our dig­i­tal strat­e­gy for the past few years. Guid­ed by our cre­do, we con­tin­ue to recog­nise our first respon­si­bil­i­ty is to the peo­ple we serve. In every project we under­take, we look to inno­vate with pur­pose, to cre­ate change, and improve out­comes for patients and staff. To bet­ter under­stand our role and appli­ca­tion of tech­nol­o­gy, we first ask the ques­tion: how will it improve patient out­comes?

This think­ing led to the cre­ation of our own J&J Inno­va­tion Cen­tres. These hubs – based in the UK, US and Chi­na – iden­ti­fy, devel­op and accel­er­ate ear­ly-stage sci­ence to solve the great­est unmet health­care needs of our time³. The cen­tres act as col­lab­o­ra­tive hubs where entre­pre­neurs and sci­en­tists can devel­op treat­ments, tech­nolo­gies and prod­ucts that direct­ly ben­e­fit the patient – and have seen tan­gi­ble, promis­ing results.

Beyond these cen­tres, Janssen’s dig­i­tal pipeline has yield­ed real tech­no­log­i­cal inno­va­tion that is already being inte­grat­ed into our process­es – one of the most excit­ing being an aug­ment­ed real­i­ty (AR) appli­ca­tion for patients.

AR in action

When we look at the cur­rent land­scape, a key area for improve­ment in both the US and Europe is adher­ence to treat­ment, which across dis­ease areas and patient groups is still sub­op­ti­mal⁴. Improved under­stand­ing of how such treat­ments work could make a dif­fer­ence and at Janssen we decid­ed to tack­le this chal­lenge in a new way.

An exam­ple of this appli­ca­tion of new tech­nol­o­gy is using AR to sup­port patients with their admin­is­tra­tion of treat­ments; specif­i­cal­ly an inter­ac­tive AR expe­ri­ence, users of our app can view the treat­ment and the appli­ca­tion instruc­tions vir­tu­al­ly, while also access­ing fur­ther infor­ma­tion for cor­rect device usage. The app not only pro­vides insights on device func­tion­al­i­ty, sup­port­ing adher­ence, but it can also encour­age increased engage­ment between health­care pro­fes­sion­als (HCPs) and their patients.

Many indus­tries are tout­ing the use of AR; some­times it feels as though we are talk­ing ‘ambi­tion’ ver­sus ‘real­i­ty’. I believe that apply­ing AR to tack­le real-world prob­lems and edu­ca­tion will help empow­er patients to take greater con­trol of their treat­ment and, in the longer term, hope­ful­ly improve out­comes.

AR is a promis­ing new tool dri­ving pos­i­tive change for HCPs and patients alike and I look for­ward to see­ing how it will con­tin­ue to advance the patient expe­ri­ence. In the mean­time, we are also pur­su­ing many oth­er avenues to explore how this tech­nol­o­gy can be used in fur­ther­ing med­ical edu­ca­tion.

Crowd solving for patient resources

As tech­nol­o­gy con­tin­ues to improve, at Janssen, we are ensur­ing these devel­op­ments are har­nessed into every­day process­es, so we are able to focus our time and resources on projects that make the biggest dif­fer­ence to the lives of patients and their fam­i­lies. With that in mind, we recent­ly reassessed a time-inten­sive process with­in the busi­ness – the review of edu­ca­tion­al con­tent used by HCPs and patients.

As the pro­lif­er­a­tion of dig­i­tal chan­nels and con­tent con­tin­ues, review­ers have been fac­ing increased demand to approve mate­ri­als at a faster pace and on a larg­er scale. We part­nered with Ernst & Young to devel­op Smart Review­er, an AI-pow­ered func­tion­al­i­ty that would stream­line our con­tent review process. The inte­gra­tion of AI allows for the swift iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of lan­guage or fac­tu­al errors, and flags infor­ma­tion that must be val­i­dat­ed. Not only does this reduce review time­lines while main­tain­ing qual­i­ty stan­dards, it also allows for fur­ther effi­cien­cies for the review­er and frees up time that can, in turn, be applied to oth­er com­plex tasks. Dig­i­tal inno­va­tion that seem­ing­ly occurs invis­i­bly, while still bring­ing out ben­e­fits, is still worth cel­e­brat­ing.

Anoth­er way we’re look­ing to super­charge our patient con­tent is via MED Select, a plat­form that sup­ports the rapid cre­ation of per­son­alised con­tent and patient edu­ca­tion resources, to empow­er patients by pro­vid­ing rel­e­vant infor­ma­tion tai­lored to them. MED Select also allows HCPs to devel­op indi­vid­u­al­ly select­ed resources. Togeth­er with our AR solu­tion, these smart mate­ri­als sup­port patients in tak­ing a proac­tive role to help man­age their con­di­tion and to encour­age more effec­tive con­ver­sa­tions with HCPs.

Developing a partnership ecosystem

Janssen’s data and dig­i­tal vision is bol­stered by the infra­struc­ture of strong tech and thought lead­er­ship part­ners. To enable our strat­e­gy, it is crit­i­cal that we con­tin­ue to source tal­ent­ed, expe­ri­enced lead­ers – whether they are a part of the phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal indus­try or from unre­lat­ed sec­tors fac­ing sim­i­lar chal­lenges.

Janssen’s strate­gic part­ner­ships include sev­er­al world-lead­ing pio­neers in dig­i­tal inno­va­tion, from Ama­zon Web Ser­vices to Rolls Royce Data Labs: each with a vision to help us solve busi­ness chal­lenges with AI and data-dri­ven solu­tions. Janssen is also part of the Rolls Royce res­i­den­cy, an incu­ba­tion group of indus­try lead­ers col­lab­o­rat­ing to solve shared prob­lems. This means we are guid­ed by its Aletheia frame­work – a toolk­it to ensure ethics and trust­wor­thi­ness in AI – so that as our tech­nol­o­gy devel­ops, data safe­ty and secu­ri­ty are equal­ly focused all along the jour­ney.

As the phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal indus­try moves inevitably towards a digi­tised world, I whole­heart­ed­ly believe that we must ensure new inno­va­tions work for every­one: for the peo­ple in our organ­i­sa­tion and, more impor­tant­ly, for patients and their fam­i­lies. For­tu­nate­ly, the broad­er indus­try is already head­ing in this direc­tion. I am inspired by the efforts under­way at Janssen in cham­pi­oning a col­lab­o­ra­tive dri­ve to reimag­ine tech­nol­o­gy in new ways and evolv­ing health­care to new lev­els.

For more infor­ma­tion please vis­it janssen.com/uk

1. Her­mes S, Riasanow T, Clemons EK, et al. The dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion of the health­care indus­try: explor­ing the rise of emerg­ing plat­form ecosys­tems and their influ­ence on the role of patients. Bus Res 2020;13:1033–1069
2. Furt­ner, D, Shinde, SP, Singh, M, et al. Dig­i­tal Trans­for­ma­tion in Med­ical Affairs Sparked by the Pan­dem­ic: Insights and Learn­ings from COVID-19 Era and Beyond. Pharm Med 2022;36:1–10
3. Inno­va­tion Cen­ters; nur­tur­ing the glob­al inno­va­tion ecosys­tem. Avail­able at: https://jnjinnovation.com/innovation-centers
   [Last accessed: July 2022]
4. Med­ica­tion non­ad­her­ence: medicine’s weak­est link? Avail­able at: https://www.wolterskluwer.com/-/media/project/wolterskluwer/oneweb/www/health/division/insights/2020/medication-nonadherence-infographic.pdf [Last accessed: July 2022]

EM-105676, July 2022

Pro­mot­ed by Janssen