Description
Novartis, a leading global pharmaceutical company, faced challenges with its outsourced patient support services, which lacked coordination and consistent best practices. Patients often encountered difficulties accessing medications due to insurance issues, specialty prescription problems, and high costs, leading to frustration and missed prescriptions. To address these issues, Novartis decided to bring its patient services in-house, consolidating them onto a unified platform powered by Amazon Web Services (AWS).
The new patient services platform centralizes Novartis's patient support initiatives, allowing for greater control over data and management capabilities. This hub-and-spoke model integrates self-service features with third-party capabilities, creating a seamless experience for patients. By leveraging a wide array of AWS solutions, Novartis enhanced its data storage, analytics, infrastructure design, and patient-facing self-service functionalities. The company also partnered with Salesforce, an AWS Partner, for customer relationship management.
On the patient-facing frontend, the solution offers a well-designed, near real-time experience for checking patient eligibility and status. Using Amazon EventBridge, Novartis connected its platform with backend CRM applications like Salesforce to create custom solutions and optimize the patient journey. This resulted in a 36% reduction in workflow time for applying for benefits, with a 15% increase in patient conversion rates, meaning more patients successfully fill their initial prescriptions. The backend architecture was optimized for scalability using services like AWS Lambda, supporting over 124,000 enrolled patients without friction. Novartis also utilized AWS AppSync for building serverless GraphQL and Pub/Sub APIs, enabling secure data querying and updates through a single endpoint.
The platform's configurability and microservices design allow for customization per drug and strategic vendor integration. Novartis employs AWS Step Functions to orchestrate serverless workflows for various enrollment processes and stores enrollment data in Amazon DynamoDB. By 2023, Novartis successfully launched three drug brands on this multibrand platform, with launch times decreasing significantly from 11 months to 3 months. This agile approach enables Novartis to respond more rapidly to market and regulatory changes. The company plans to launch five new programs in 2024, further expanding its patient services and enhancing the overall patient experience, reinforcing its commitment to putting patients first by removing friction from their journey.
Key Takeaways
Patient support system development
Medication access and affordability programs
Data storage and analytics on AWS
Infrastructure design and implementation
Patient-facing self-service capabilities
Streamlined patient workflows
Improved patient conversion rates
Scalable backend architecture
Serverless API development
Visual workflow orchestration
NoSQL database for enrollment data
Multibrand patient services platform
Agile response to market shifts
What This Case Study Demonstrates
- Enhance medication access
- Improve patient affordability
- Streamline prescription fulfillment
- Centralize patient services
- Enhance data analytics
- Optimize patient workflows
- Build self-service capabilities
- Enable agile operations
