Robert Rosenbloom, our CEO, reflects on 2021 and looks to the year ahead.
A patient-centric education model in 2021 and beyond
As we look back on another unprecedented year, I’m struck by how we’ve seen time and again the power that education can bring to transform the lives of patients and providers. Education is at the heart of everything — from launching new screening protocols, to releasing new medications, to enhancing patients’ quality of life.
Over the course of 2021, we saw several themes consistently come up as we worked to deliver educational initiatives.
The power of partnerships
We’ve been incredibly fortunate to work with tremendous advocacy partners and centers of excellence to help improve health outcomes. We’ve empowered clinical experts from organizations such as Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Memorial Sloan Kettering, and organizations like the CLL Society to leverage our platform and digital expertise to produce award-winning educational content.
Half of all our programs this year were in rare diseases. Having access to clinical experts is particularly crucial for families living with these conditions. Often rare diseases are not well understood or are delayed in being diagnosed, and many patients lack access to the right specialists in their area. The National Association of Rare Disorders’ new Centers of Excellence program speaks directly to that critical gap. It can be challenging for advocacy organizations to bring all the right clinical stakeholders together, and our platform has been very effective in supporting this need.
Likewise, we were pleased this year to have formed key partnerships to support our diversity programming to deliver timely educational programs for providers, patients, and caregivers. Programs like this ensure that we not only bring forth the right faculty and content, but are able to reach diverse communities to foster health equity.
Delivering reliable, patient-centric content
Across all patient and provider communities, ensuring the validity and authenticity of content is essential, particularly at a time when it can be tough to discern what online health information is credible. Patients understandably are unsure of the integrity of information when it comes from certain sources. Partnering with reputable, mission-driven foundations and advocacy groups gives comfort to patient and caregiver communities that the information we produce can be trusted. Ultimately when patients have that trust, they are more involved in their care, and that’s a win for everyone.
Amplifying the patient experience
Today’s patients are taking a more active role in their own healthcare, and this is driving demand for content across therapeutic areas. Thanks to our partnerships with some of the most authoritative voices in oncology, urology, neurology, and rare diseases, we’re helping people from around the world gain access to expert clinicians and specialists. This will continue into 2022 as our focus intensifies in these key areas.
Looking forward
As we look forward to the coming year, we’ll see organizations continuing to rely on both physical and virtual models to deliver high-quality learning experiences. The greatest challenge for advocacy groups, foundations, associations, societies and centers of excellence will be supporting both of these models amid lean budgets and staffing challenges. Our industry leading partnership model and approach offer these organizations the means to cost-effectively produce both CME and patient-facing digital educational activities.
Our best-in-class outcomes approach will also continue to play an integral role in program development. We measure program results not just based on the number of learners but on key behavioral metrics such as competency gained and clinical practice improvements. By applying this approach, we have a framework to gather and apply patient and provider insights to continually refine future educational endeavors.
In the past three years, more than 34 million patients have been impacted by PlatformQ Health programs, with providers and patients viewing more than 5.45 million minutes of programming. It’s extremely gratifying to see the impact on so many people. I’d like to thank each and every member of the PQH team and our extended family of collaboration partners for making this possible. We look forward to continuing to improve outcomes throughout 2022.
Measuring our impact
As part of our end of year reflection, we compiled some of the year’s best insights to highlight the impact of our educational programs.
Continuing Medical Education Infographic: Fostering a powerful, patient-centric, continuing medical education model
Patient Education Infographic: A patient education model that empowers patients on their journey to improved confidence and communication
Industry Digital Solutions Infographic: A digital peer-to-peer education model designed to drive provider awareness, engagement and adoption
Have any questions or want to connect about our educational initiatives? Email us at digital@platformq.com.