Should Twill be in Your Digital Health RFP?

Twill has worked with over 12 pharmaceutical companies in the past 4 years, including 10 of the top 20. These companies have found Twill to be an optimal partner for driving patient behaviors that deliver business ROI. And while we should certainly not be in every pharma digital RFP, here are 5 questions that should help you determine if we should be: 

When we have chosen not to work with a pharma company, or vice-versa, it’s often been about perceptions on the importance of control. Pharma sometimes wants comprehensive control over aspects such as the design, look, feel, wording, branding, features, functionality, data, patient insights, image placement, fonts and more.

Here’s the thing: Perfecting these elements often requires a decade of refinement and millions of users.  A new solution will never get it right on version 1.0, 2.0, or even 3.0. It demands thousands of users and rigorous A/B testing to optimize it over several years. 

Consequently, pharmaceutical companies unintentionally set themselves up for failure in their quest for absolute control. In fact, studies have shown that 94% of all pharma digital efforts end in failure. So what is the value of this need for full control if it ultimately leads to failure? 

Twill has 5000+ evidence-based activities that have been developed using principles of CBT, mindfulness and positive psychology. These activities are designed to improve mental health and wellbeing in areas such as, stress, anxiety, depression, pain, sleep, and fatigue. We deliver these activities to patients in an engaging manner, ensuring they come back and use them again and again. 

We have run multiple randomized controlled trials (RCT), real world evidence (RWE), and observational studies with thousands of patients across our customer base to provide powerful evidence that shows our solutions are safe, effective, useful, and valued by patients. Additionally, we’ve  conducted commercial studies on ROI and patient lift for pharma using third-party insurance claims data and a match control process to eliminate bias. 

A common misconception among some pharma companies is the belief that they will own the software once it is developed for them by a consultant or tech development platform. Unfortunately, the truth is quite different. Typically, the consultant or tech company develops the pharma company’s app in order to lock the pharma company into a multi-year contract to update, maintain and support the software app for several million dollars per year. 

In essence, the pharma company finds itself in a situation where it lacks the autonomy to take ownership of the code and continue its support and development on their own. This in hand, is why they hired the consultant or tech company in the first place. 

As outlined in a previous article (Activation: The Misunderstood Foundation of Engagement), pharma clients generally turn to their ad agencies, not their consultants or tech companies, for finding and activating patients. We have consistently outperformed these ad agencies, 5 to 10 times  when measured against key performance indicators (KPIs) in finding and activating patients through social media and other digital channels.

We find all of our pharma partners want data. It can be patient journey data, symptoms, side effects, pharmacovigilance data, outcomes data, claims data, and more. Our philosophy is that the patient owns their own data, and if companies provide the patient a compelling value proposition then they will share the data with companies to use in ways that deliver value to them and to the company. So we find that patients readily share data with us in the normal course because of the value we deliver to them. And they can consent to share data with the pharma companies as well, as long as the value proposition presented to them is compelling.

In conclusion, if your responses are "yes" to the majority of these questions, we encourage you to explore a potential partnership with Twill.