The PROxy Network Puts Patient Voices at the Heart of Decision-Making by providing a muktistakeholder platform of real-world patient outcomes information.
Pitch Initiative:
Background
In Canada, the healthcare system is publicly funded, ensuring access to hospital and physician services without incurring direct charges to patient. Additionally, Canadian have the option to supplement their coverage with private insurance, which can help to cover treatment cost and address other healthcare needs. The access to innovative therapy involves a systematic evaluation of the clinical effectiveness, cost-effectiveness, and broader social implications to inform decision making regarding the adoption, reimbursement, and utilization of a new healthcare technologies. Canadian payers and policy makers recognize the value of real-world evidence (RWE) and patient reported outcomes (PROs) to better inform funding decisions. Despite the recognized need for real world data, only few organized structures prospectively collect this type of data in Canada.
Aim and Relevance
The PROxy Network is an innovative research platform that enables the generation of patient centered evidence in wide-ranging medical conditions to help the decision-making process. PROs collected though the network includes but is not limited to quality of life, healthcare resource utilization, patient satisfaction, and caregiver burden. The PROxy Network goes beyond conventional methods of generating RWE, highlights the outcomes that matter most to patients and places their voice at the core of healthcare decisions. Empowering patients to actively engage in shared decision-making, our platform provides a direct conduit for patients to articulate their perceptions of health status, symptoms, and overall quality of life. PROs offer a direct assessment of the impact of healthcare interventions on patients’ live, facilitating a more accurate evaluation of the value delivered by different treatments.
Patient Description and Method
This unique Canadian initiative stands out by involving interdisciplinary stakeholders, such as an established network of community pharmacists, patients’ associations, or healthcare practitioners. The Network facilitates synergistic collaboration among multiple stakeholders to identify eligible patients for participation in a PROxy study. The population involved in our initiative includes all patients visiting community pharmacies, members of a patient’s association, or visiting specialized clinics. Community pharmacists, patients’ associations, or healthcare practitioners will approach the eligible patients and the PROxy Network team will obtain the patient’s consent. Data are collected using the PROxy Network secured web-based platform.
Size and Scope
The PROxy Network has been launched in September 2022 and includes now over 100 community pharmacists, patients’ associations, or healthcare practitioners. Through the PROxy Network, our goal is to catalyse a paradigm shift towards patient-centric healthcare that prioritizes outcomes and patients.
Important Preliminary Results
A cross-sectional proof-of-concept study assessed the impact of migraine on work productivity and activity impairment of adults using triptans. Conducted in 10 pharmacies member of the PROxy Network recruited 100 patients, of which 92 met the inclusion criteria. Findings from this RWE study demonstrate that despite acute migraine treatment (triptan), patients’ daily productivity remains significantly affected, especially those with chronic migraine. Although Canada offers preventive treatments for chronic migraine, their limited accessibility due to high costs affect their usage. This study provides crucial evidence for both public and private payers, underscoring migraine’s real impact and urging discussions on reimbursement criteria of innovative migraine treatment.