In an era of data-driven decisions, Eversana is using analytics to transform patient care.
In this episode of Bite the Orange, Manny has an insightful conversation with Eversana's Pierantonio Russo, Chief Medical Officer, and Maria Kirsch, President of Patient Services, about the company’s vital role in guiding patients through the complexities of the US healthcare system. They present the array of services Eversana provides, including patient access, affordability, specialty pharmacy, tech-driven adherence solutions, and Eversana Intouch Engage, which is designed to facilitate telemedicine consultations and prescription management. Dr. Russo and Maria Kirsch explain how Eversana serves clients of all sizes and tailors solutions to meet their specific needs and how it is committed to precision medicine, demonstrated by its use of predictive analytics to identify misdiagnosed patients with rare diseases. Their conversation also underscores Eversana's dedication to enhancing healthcare through technology while preserving the human touch in patient care.
Tune in to learn about Eversana's role in reshaping the future of healthcare access and affordability!
FULL EPISODE
BTO_Dr. Pierantonio Russo and Maria Kirsch: Audio automatically transcribed by Sonix
BTO_Dr. Pierantonio Russo and Maria Kirsch: this mp3 audio file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.
Emmanuel Fombu:
Welcome to Bite the Orange. Through our conversations, we create a roadmap for the future of health with the most impactful leaders in the space. This is your host, Dr. Manny Fombu. Let's make the future of healthcare a reality together.
Emmanuel Fombu:
Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to another episode of Bite the Orange. And today we have two very special guests. One of them has been on the show before, and it's an honor to have him back again. And this time, he decided to bring another powerhouse to the show. And this is the very first time we have two guests on the show. And I think if you know them, you will be very happy to learn more about them today. But if you don't, you're about to meet two great individuals that are making the future healthcare a reality coming from Eversana. Welcome to the show, Dr. Pierantonio Russo and Maria Kirsch.
Dr. Pierantonio Russo:
Thank you very much for inviting us.
Emmanuel Fombu:
So, with that being said, I will start out by asking you to introduce yourself. Maria Kirsch, can we please start with you, please?
Maria Kirsch:
Yes, Dr. Fombu, thank you for the kind invitation. I'm so pleased to be here today. I'll start by a little bit of my background. First and foremost, my current role is President of Patient Services at Eversana, and what we do in Patient Services is to have the privilege to serve patients and their caregivers and their physician practices and helping them to get onto, and onboard onto the intended medications written by their physicians. And as you know, today, the US healthcare landscape is complex, to say the least, and quite opaque. It's difficult for those of us who are in the industry to navigate and almost impossible for those that aren't. And our role is to help patients navigate all the insurance hurdles, the access and affordability hurdles, which there are many, many of, and also their corresponding physician practices who really are there to do what they love to do, which is serve patients, take care of them, patient care. But on top of all of that, you know better than I do, they are so overburdened with paperwork, insurance, all of that that they really add so much burden to them every day. And we are here to make that easier, simpler, bring transparency to the process, and do everything that we can to ensure patients get what they need. I've been in healthcare for more than 20 years. I really love, I have a passion for solving complex problems and healthcare that may seem insurmountable, really to, I love being close to my customer. I've been in clinical development. I've been in manufacturing, and I've been in the commercial side for more than ten years now, and just really love being in healthcare and being close to patients. So, thank you for having me today.
Emmanuel Fombu:
Thanks for having you. It's an honor to join you to join us today with all that great experience and background. And later down the road, I'd like to jump into some of the services that you guys offer and the value that that brings. And with that being said, Doctor Russo, please introduce yourself again to the audience.
Dr. Pierantonio Russo:
Pleasure. I'm Pier Russo, I'm the corporate Chief Medical Officer at Eversana. Practiced cardiac surgery and heart transplantation for more than 20 years, so I'm cardiac surgeon like you. I have started my career at the Mayo Clinic and then continued in Philadelphia at Temple University, Thomas Jefferson University, and I practiced my pediatric congenital disease surgery at Saint Christopher's Hospital for Children in Philadelphia. After about 20 years of practicing in heart transplantation, in cardiac surgery, and doing research in academic medicine, I moved to the industry, and around 2008, and was first medical director in Independence Blue Cross in Philadelphia and then Vice President for Medical and Clinical Affairs with the ... system on the insurance side, and I also was the, a lecturer in population medicine at the Harvard Medical School. The common thread between my academic work, clinical work, and of course, the work at the health plans has been using data first with statistics and now with machine learning to try to make sense of various trends that one can find in the healthcare system, in taking care of individual patients, or can take care of populations. And at Eversana, my role is really to help translate clinical knowledge into actionable analytics that provide the final solutions for precision medicine. And so, with, when we predict the events, when we identify the right patient for the right treatment at the right time and the right location, we are getting closer and closer to precision medicine, and we leverage the expertise that we have in-house to do so.
Emmanuel Fombu:
Which is quite amazing. I looked at Eversana in general, I see how you guys are structured. It's functioning like a whole pharma company, actually, right? Without owning the product necessarily per se. And I know, Doctor Russo, from your perspective of like leading like medical affairs kind of function that perspective, and Maria, looking at Patient Services, which a lot of times from a commercial ... You have a product piece, the product's clinical trial, recruitment, and everything else. You have a commercial piece, many have a patient support hub, for example, that offers several services. So maybe I want to start off by someone just listening in general, just to understand the full scope of services that you offer. So, within medical affairs, on the medical side of it, what kind of offerings do you offer as Eversana that could be beneficial to someone listening? And. Dr. Russo, that question would be for you. Give us overall structure of how the medical function works. And then after that, Maria, I think it would be great to hear from you, also, how Patient Services is structured within, and what kind of services you offer.
Dr. Pierantonio Russo:
So yes, like you said, Eversana is structured like a pharma company, and we have, of course, a division, a commercialization unit. We have the medical affairs unit, compliance, legal, and we have, of course, the Patient Services, which is growing exponentially. Maria will tell you about our specialty pharmacy. And then we have a strong agency and data analytics. So my role is really to coordinate all the medical scientific affairs to support every initiatives that we have. I feel very strongly that even if you are in a commercial business, you are in the business of healthcare. And so, in order to maintain that adherence to the healthcare system, you really need to maintain also rigor in your analysis. So yes, they are commercial-oriented analysis, but you need to maintain that scientific rigor which allows you to then target the right patient with the right drugs, right treatments, right? Or we also have a division of digital medicine, so it's not just the drugs that we're dealing with, but also with the digital medicine solutions as well as digital therapeutics. And, of course, we feel very strongly that part of everything that we do, whether it is commercial agency or Patient Services or just pure data analytics, must take into consideration health economics and the value that a new treatment, or an old treatment, provides to a patient in terms of patient experience, clinical outcomes, but also economic.
Emmanuel Fombu:
Maria, over to you, please.
Maria Kirsch:
Thank you. So Patient Services at Eversana encompasses a full service offering, including traditional access and hub support or access and reimbursement support navigating insurance hurdles. We also have a full-service copay and affordability services for pre-drug and Pap programs. We also have a captive specialty pharmacy which has a legacy in supporting rare orphan and very complex drugs with a specialty for infused and physician-administered drugs. Associated with that specialty pharmacy, we have well over a thousand infusion specialists across the country that support patients in their homes, ensuring that they have the convenience and flexibility of being infused in home, or if they so choose, they can visit a facility. And then we also have tech-enabled services, particularly adherence services, to really personalize services. And we'll get into this a little bit, I know this is a real interest for both Pier and I, we have a passion around this, to personalize services for patients based on many things about their lives and the sort of product archetype that they are on. And that could be ranging from simple texts and omnichannel support services, ranging to support services by a clinician, a nurse, a social worker for much more complex and involved needs.
Emmanuel Fombu:
So, Maria, one of the programs that I think that you guys offer that I found very interesting, and you have some great case studies you list on your website, and we will have this link in the show notes for anyone listening to actually check it out. It's about a very special program called the Eversana Intouch Engage. Can you please tell us about the program?
Maria Kirsch:
Thank you for that. That's a solution that we're very proud of. This is an offering, basically, that we can provide to our clients, our patients, our practices from beginning to end, that if a patient really, as you know, today, can be difficult to see a specialist. So if a patient would like to engage with a telemedicine provider, they can do so, interact with a specialist, and the specialist can prescribe the medication; it can come directly to our specialty pharmacy or our hub services. We'll do the benefit investigation, the prior authorization if needed, and then we triage the prescription to the appropriate pharmacy, or we can offer home delivery. This is really exciting. This is something that can happen in a matter of days rather than the traditional up to two weeks or even a month, really, in the closed system of Eversana, and we're really thrilled to be able to provide this to the healthcare ecosystem. The innovation we're very proud of.
Emmanuel Fombu:
Which is quite interesting, Maria, just to get a better understanding of this. Because I look at your Patient Services offering, it looks like it's literally end-to-end. So if you look at the whole landscape of someone listening that's not familiar with pharma, and how everything works, when you start out from the idea of a concept for therapy, you want to do studies, right? That's the molecule. You go from Phase One, Phase Two, Phase Three, which are drug-approved, right? You need multiple services like patient recruitment, which also deals with patients and engaging patients. And then once you launch that product in the market, some of these products come with additional services that a patient needs, like a wraparound kind of service. And sometimes you need special offerings, just like you buy an Apple Watch, you have Apple Care and all these things that come along to make things much easier. So, do you literally cover the entry into a clinical trial recruitment all the way to commercialization and offering the services to market access? Because that's all under your remit.
Maria Kirsch:
We do. We provide services to, as I mentioned, we can provide from the time the script is written, but we also do, as you mentioned, even prior to commercialization. So, from the time that clinical trials may end, we can provide EAP programs, extended access programs, to ensure continuity of care for those patients. We also provide, through our specialty pharmacy, direct-to-patient shipping for clinical trials. The services that we provide are broader, even from just the commercial services we do provide clinical support for across the spectrum. Thank you for asking that.
Dr. Pierantonio Russo:
Yeah, I'd like to add that for a particular product that you were mentioning earlier, right? GIMOTI. We also used the Advanced Machine Learning methodology to identify the patients who currently meet all the clinical criteria for oral, for a nasal spray metoclopramide, which is, of course, is GIMOTI But they are not offered yet that particular therapy. They may not be offered because the physician doesn't know about it or because the drug is not being, it's not entered the database of the health plans, right? Not being approved by the health plans. So, we used the advanced methodology to try to identify patients who currently are on GIMOTI and they are on a certain therapy. And again, this methodology can be extended for others, but this is a use case. Identify all the interaction of those patients with the healthcare system over time, and then, by using predictive analytics and machine learning, identify similar patients in our claims' databases that really may benefit from that new treatment, but they have not been offered that treatment because, again, the ecosystem around them. And so that's very important because then we can not only discuss with the health plans the changes in medical policy and the reasons why the patient would benefit from a change in medical policy, but also we can identify the physicians who are not using this treatment for their patients and educate those physicians.
Emmanuel Fombu:
That is a great add-on to that, doctor. So ask ... a question. So if I'm listening and I work in a pharma, or I work in a biotech company, or a digihealth company, or I'm listening to this, what are your ideal kind of clients right now, and what problem if someone listening to this and they want to reach out to you on your side, Dr. Russo, and after this, Maria, I'll get to you as well, But who is your ideal client? Who is that person? What kind of problem does that person have, and what kind of questions are they thinking in their heads right now? And what is that solution that you can provide to them?
Dr. Pierantonio Russo:
Are you asking about individual patients, or you are asking ...?
Emmanuel Fombu:
Let's say in pharma, like your current clients, right? And I have a product, what stage do they engage with Eversana, right? Do I engage when I'm in like a Phase One pre-clinical, do I engage when I'm in a Phase Two? Phase three? What kind of questions am I trying to answer? What makes Eversana best position to help me answer that question or help me?
Dr. Pierantonio Russo:
So we definitely, be in a position of supporting clinical trials, not to conduct clinical trials, but supporting clinical trials by identifying the correct patient population that would be included would be ideal to be included in clinical trial. We can identify where those patients are. We can identify their physicians, and therefore, working with their physician to then encourage the enrollment in clinical trials. Then, of course, our commercial partner, commercial colleagues can work with the company to think of an end-to-end commercialization or even a complete commercialization. Then again, Maria will intervene with her team to support the patients who are on this new treatment, and the data and analytic team will continue to work with my medical team to identify the KPI that we need to report, either to the FDA or to simply the medical community or even simply the pharma company, to let them understand how the product is actually working in real-world clinical practice, which as you know, is very different than the experimental practice of the clinical trial.
Emmanuel Fombu:
That's one thing there, just to clarify that. So you don't have a CRO necessarily, correct? You don't have a CRO, so you will work in conjunction with the CRO, for example, or you guys offer CRO services? You don't carry out the study.
Dr. Pierantonio Russo:
We don't have a CRO, but we certainly have worked, particularly the data analytic team has been working with CRO or with Pharma and CRO to support, improve the efficiency of the clinical trial.
Emmanuel Fombu:
Not quite helpful for us. And that ... Really, on your side. I've read, you know, ... in pharma and understand like putting this hyper Patient Services around products, and right, my career. So for you specifically, who is your ideal client? Maria, who's the ideal customer that you have and solve the problems for them? I know you have some great use cases, but what is that ideal client for you? What is that title? What kind of pharma sizes? Are large pharma company, mid-size? Tell us more about that, please.
Maria Kirsch:
I think the way I would go about answering that is we work across all size clients, large pharma, mid-size, and small. And our clients, if they're preparing for a launch, should typically engage six months to a year before their PDUFA date. And we certainly love to help with program design strategy and all types of varieties of elements prior to launch and building the program. But we also engage with our clients in life cycle management of the program. And one of the things we're really proud of in terms of bringing innovations is bringing technologies and ways to integrate such complex entities through benefit investigations, particularly around medical benefits. So if there's a program that's existing today, medical benefit investigations are supremely complex, take a very long time. It's something that we've innovated on, can get answers in a very quick period of time, not only for drug but for ancillary services around that, and something that we can plug into an existing program today.
Emmanuel Fombu:
Which is quite interesting. I mean, is there any particular therapeutic areas that you have focused on, or you have some great use cases around it? I know you mentioned nursing program, for example, you know, you have a red ... offering, so are you across all therapeutic areas?
Maria Kirsch:
Yeah, we do work across all therapeutic areas, but we tailor our solutions based on the therapeutic areas. So, if it's a rare and complex solution, we have an exclusive distribution model that's all-inclusive of services end to end, including our 3PL group and nursing and specialty pharmacy distribution to facilities. And if it's a more high volume, low touch, primary care, and retail product, we have a much different model that we recommend that is more inclusive of light touch ... and networked with retail pharmacies and so forth. So we work across therapeutic areas, but we look at the services that we tailor based on the product type and their needs.
Emmanuel Fombu:
Thank you. And then the question, this question, so what are some of the services that, on the medical ... side, that you offer specifically? Do you have support in strategy and tactics, or are you involved in thinking about how to design a study? What kind of services specifically do you offer on medical ... product?
Dr. Pierantonio Russo:
So we do have a team that focuses specifically on consulting and therefore strategy, right? Again, it is usually, we are trying to take a multidisciplinary approach, even for consulting and strategy. So we would bring in beside myself or any of the other medical team members. We would also try to bring in, again, the data science team, the health economics experts, and even the commercial experts, of course, and whenever appropriate, Maria's team. So think, for example, right now, we are strategizing with a company that is interested in developing a new form of remote patient monitoring for patients with heart failure. And so Maria's team is involved with that strategy. I am involved not only as a clinician who have implemented this type of governance before, but also from the standpoint of providing the data analytics strategy to identify the right patients with heart failure who may benefit; because not all patients will benefit, and so you want to target the correct patients, and therefore you need the analytics. And then of course, the strategies and the agency in order to make sure that there is also a marketing component to the initiative.
Emmanuel Fombu:
Which is quite interesting. As we wrap up here, this will be actually, this is the first part of that series, and this was meant more to give like an overview of the offerings that Eversana has in the areas of medical function and Patient Services kind of function. In the next three ..., as we are getting ... discussions ... Next episode of this will be identifying specific use cases, and I'd like Doctor Russo and Maria, yourself, to come on and explore more of these services and some of the case studies that you've done, looking at some of the problems of how we went about solving this. If there are any of them that you guys could bring up just on a high-level kind of piece of the problem and the solution that you probably saw that you're proud of, on your side, Dr. Russo, that you could share publicly, of course, that would be great. And Maria, you can also share one just on a high level. In the next episode of this, we'll dive deeper. ... You could share to our listeners right now on a high level some of like problem, solution, and outcome, that'd be great. Is it, you want to start, Doctor Russo?
Dr. Pierantonio Russo:
Yes, yes, we have several, I would say that all the work that we've been doing with NIH on the study of rare diseases has been focusing specifically on utilizing the predictive analytics to identify the patients who are misdiagnosed with rare diseases. For example, in this country, it takes up to 4 to 5 years for even a child to be diagnosed with a certain condition of rare diseases in spite of the fact that we have newborn screening. In some states, some of the newborn screening is mandatory, and yet the miscommunication and the fragmentation of the care system does not allow every child to be diagnosed properly and timely with the newborn screening. So we actually worked with the NIH on putting rare diseases by identifying the centennial symptoms and signs that will be used into decision support for physicians to then shorten the time to diagnosis, as well as we identified the cost drivers of taking care of these patients with rare diseases, identifying and publishing the impact of low-value care because of the misdiagnosis and continuous cycling across the healthcare system of taking care of these patients. So Maria, on the other hand, has some spectacular examples of how the application of human approach to Patient Services, together with technology, improves adherence. And so I don't know, Maria, if you want to discuss any of your success story.
Emmanuel Fombu:
Well, you can do a high level, Maria, on the next episode of this. We'll go deeper into it. Just to tease our audience so they know exactly what's coming up.
Maria Kirsch:
Yeah, I think by philosophy, and thank you, Pier, our philosophy in Patient Services in Eversana is really to automate all the routine tasks that are associated with payers and the paperwork and all of that so we really leave time for the moments that are so meaningful for our clinicians and our pharmacists and our social workers or whoever it may be to really connect with patients and caregivers, because tech isn't really going to solve everything, and in fact, sometimes it makes it worse. But we're using tech to create bandwidth for the human touch, and so we're excited to talk about that with you in more depth at another time.
Emmanuel Fombu:
Thanks a lot, Maria Kirsch and Dr. Pierantonio Russo. It was an honor to have you on the show and I'm sure our audience listening to this want a lot more about what Eversana has to offer in terms of services, right? And it's all about the patient. I really like to put the patient front and center. Dr. Russo is a friend and I know him personally, so I know he really cares about this from the bottom of his heart, and something that matters to him quite a bit. And I'm sure it's the same with you, Maria; been in the industry for over 20 years, takes dedication and passion for what you do. So thanks a lot for being on the show today. And if you're listening, please, we'll have the contact information for Eversana and for Dr. Russo, as well as Maria, listed along with the services that they offer. And so once again, would like to thank both of you for being on the show today... Thank you very much.
Maria Kirsch:
Thank you.
Emmanuel Fombu:
Thank you for listening to Bite the Orange. If you want to change healthcare with us, please contact us at info@EmmanuelFombu.com, or you can visit us at EmmanuelFombu.com or BiteTheOrange.com. If you liked this episode and want more information about us, you can also visit us at EmmanuelFombu.com.
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Pierantonio Russo:
Pierantonio Russo, MD, FCPP, FAAP, STS is a CT surgeon and healthcare executive, currently in the role of Corporate Chief Medical Officer at EVERSANA. He has practiced cardiac and heart transplant surgery for more than 20 years. More recently, He has held executive positions in data and analytics, predictive modeling using ML, health economics and reimbursement, health insurance, and population medicine.
Maria Bucceri Kirsch:
Maria Kirsch is a decisive, strategic, and forward-thinking leader with more than 20 years of experience across operational excellence and strategic development in the pharmaceutical industry. She previously served as Head of Patient Experience, Technology, and Innovation at Novartis, where she focused on industry-leading, innovative strategies aimed at removing barriers to patients accessing and adhering to their medication.
Overseeing EVERSANA’s Patient Services, Maria provides strategic and executive oversight to ensure the best possible patient and customer experience.
Things You’ll Learn:
The Eversana Intouch Engage program streamlines telemedicine consultations, prescription management, and medication delivery, improving patient convenience.
Precision medicine is at the core of Eversana's approach, utilizing advanced analytics to identify patients with rare diseases who may have been misdiagnosed.
Eversana's strategies have yielded success stories, such as faster diagnoses and improved patient adherence, demonstrating their service effectiveness.
Data-driven decision-making guides their approaches, from clinical trial recruitment to product commercialization, informed by real-world clinical practice.
Eversana is committed to healthcare innovation, harnessing technology and strategic prowess to enhance the healthcare journey for all stakeholders.
Eversana's philosophy centers on the automation of routine tasks to create space for meaningful interactions between healthcare professionals and patients, with a strong emphasis on personalized care.
Resources:
Connect with and follow Pierantonio Russo on LinkedIn.
Connect with and follow Maria Kirsch on LinkedIn.
Follow Eversana on LinkedIn.
Visit the Eversana website.
Get to know more of Eversana’s case studies!
Learn more about the Eversana Intouch Engage Program!