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About Strategic Consulting

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The need for evidence-based support and decision-making is apparent throughout all layers and segments of the healthcare industry:

clinicians ¦ healthcare workers across all disciplines, working both independently from and interdependently with each other, in settings from acute outpatient care to hospitals to institutional long-term care.

 

consumers ¦ patients, families, and communities.

 

suppliers to clinicians and consumers ¦ pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies; manufacturers of diagnostic and monitoring devices, therapeutic equipment, and care supplies;

 

payers ¦ insurance companies, employers, governments, but also individuals and families.

 

educators ¦ those who train the healthcare practitioners, scientists, and engineers of tomorrow - as well as those who keep today's workforce up-to-date

 

scientists ¦ those who innovate healthcare: laboratory scientists trying to understand mechanisms of action or discover new methods of treatment; clinical researchers assessing the efficacy and safety of interventions; outcomes researchers examining the effectiveness of treatment paradigms in "real world" settings.

MATRIX45 is built around a core of scientists who are consultants, and consultants who are scientists -- the ideal combination for providing services that are strategically relevant and scientifically rigorous, yet also pragmatic and responsive.

 

We are not "shelf consultants" who prepare voluminous reports to adorn executive bookshelves.  Sure, we do a good amount of thinking, optioning, and planning.  As needed, we analyze the big picture or zoom into pixel-level granularity.  When it comes to presenting you with our work, it will be pragmatic and implementable - within a relevant context and supported by thorough analysis.

 

We balance strategic purpose with scientific rigor.  Too often, strategy-driven studies are criticized for the scientific compromises they (are believed) to make.  The challenge is to design studies with a purpose that will stand up to scientific standards and peer review.  This is the scientific consulting expertise you can expect from MATRIX45: solid science, pragmatically adapted to strategic purpose and budgetary realities.  We may recommend one particular scientific approach, or present you with different scenarios and their respective advantages and disadvantages. 

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The Question-and-Evidence Chain

 

Identifying and analyzing problems, raising questions, conceptualizing, hypothesizing ... project design ... supervision and monitoring ... statistical analysis ... linking results back to the initial problem ... formalizing new knowledge ... we call it the question-and-evidence chain: the dynamic, iterative process of asking questions, generating evidence, applying the answers, and developing new solutions.

 

At MATRIX45, we ask questions all the time.  Questions guide our work.  We focus on the what, why, and how of addressing your evidence-based strategy.  We do not stop there - just as much, we work with you on the so what, what if, and what next questions.  Our ultimate goal is to provide you with answers to the where from and where to questions - the critical end-questions that lead to industry foresight, strategic leadership, and competitive advantage.

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Integrated Healthcare Solutions

 

New insights in genetics and disease processes, advances in human therapeutics, innovation in biomedical engineering, and the continued need for patient and family support are transforming healthcare and pharmacotherapeutics from disease-driven to solution-focused.  Treatments are evolving from focusing on specific diseases to targeting pathophysiologic processes at the genetic, molecular, and cellular levels: from drugs for disease classes to drugs for individuals-with-illness-processes.  In the (near) future, this will require advanced diagnostic methods and monitoring techniques.  Patient compliance with treatment and monitoring will be a necessity not a choice, as will patient participation in clinical decision-making.  Patients and families will need to be guided and supported in the management of their disease and the prevention of relapse, sequelae, or new illnesses.

 

Taken together, today's somewhat hesitant convergence will soon evolve into integrated healthcare solutions: the integration of diagnostic technology, human therapeutics, secondary/tertiary prevention, technology-enabled delivery and monitoring, and patient and family participation and support. 

 

In turn, this will substantially alter the relationships among all healthcare players - into evidence-based and knowledge-driven collaboration:

between patients, families, and clinicians

 

between the pharmaceutical, biotechnology, diagnostic and monitoring device, medical technology, and informatics industries

 

between these industries, clinicians, and patients

 

between clinicians and healthcare provider organizations

 

between the payers, the providers, and the consumers of healthcare

These advances call for the design of new healthcare models, developing multilevel approaches to scientific investigation, rethinking strategic marketing frameworks, and examining new methods of costing, pricing, and paying.

 

MATRIX45 wants to be your strategic science partner in this process.

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Case Studies

 

 

Throughout their careers, MATRIX45 principals have worked on many strategic consulting projects.  A few examples, all of which are in the public domain:

 

Phase 4 & 5 Portfolio Analysis

Case Management Models for High-Risk Geriatric Patient Cohorts

Performance-Based Pricing of Drugs

Technology for Knowledge-Based Collaboration in Key Opinion Leader Management

Commercialization of Clinical Data

Designing a Clinical Knowledge Consortium

 

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Phase 4 & 5 Portfolio Analysis

 

Several years of rapid growth from new drug launches, in-licensing, and merger-and-acquisition activity gave our client one of the richest drug portfolios in key primary and specialty care areas.  Our client requested an analysis of its phase 4 and 5 portfolio - not in terms of picking the "winner drugs", but in terms of picking the "winner projects": maximizing detection of emerging indications, understanding practice patterns and outcomes, long-term efficacy and safety, global and regional coordination, managing key opinion leaders and coordinating investigator-initiated studies, and strategic, scientific and competitive positioning.

 

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Case Management For High-Risk Geriatric Patient Cohorts

 

 

During more than a decade, we provided the strategic and scientific leadership to develop and evaluate case management models for high-risk geriatric patient cohorts.  In the USA, under the auspices of major foundations, we developed community-based case management service models for elderly in medically underserved areas - integrating formal community services with volunteer training.  Upon request by the Belgian Ministry of Health, we designed national implementation models for community-based case management and hospital-based discharge management - for geriatric, psychiatric, and gero-psychiatric patients.

 

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Performance-Based Pricing of Drugs

 

 

If there is virtually no doubt that a lab value V is the clinical target to be achieved with drug D, and that it is achievable in a large majority of patients, why is it that so many patients are persistently at values < V?  Realizing the gap between actual and best practice, and the associated variability in patient outcomes, we examined strategies to reward "good" outcomes with pricing adjustments, yet avoid "subsidizing" substandard care or care to patients with less predictable treatment responses (e.g., those with complex co-morbidities).

 

Using mathematical models and clinical review, we identified cohorts of patients who had either achieved or maintained lab values > V.  For risk analysis purposes, we also looked for subcohorts that might fail to achieve or maintain V.  This yielded a final set of subcohorts of patients recommended for performance-based pricing.

 

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Technology for Knowledge-Based Collaboration in Key Opinion Leader Management

 

A key strategy in the marketing of specialty drugs is the scientific communication with various tiers of opinion leaders - and stimulating changes in clinical practice through these opinion leaders.  Key opinion leader management is a supra-regional effort, seldom confined to one region or country but rather involving the coordination of geographically dispersed experts.  This scientific communication is focused on the science of pharmacotherapeutic agents: trials and other studies, as well as dissemination and education.  Pharma employs highly educated staff in this effort: from basic to clinical scientists - by necessity geographically dispersed as well.  The challenge is to optimize collaboration among these teams: from avoiding duplication and reinvention, to optimizing the discovery and exchange of key information, opinion leader management, and medical education materials.

 

There are software tools that go beyond document management and promote team collaboration on the market - in fact, some are of high quality.  But introducing technology does not lead to changing work processes, unless people are prepared to adopt the technology.  This requires needs assessment, staff participation in analysis and planning, careful specification of functional and technical characteristics, policies and procedures, training and support, and a technology that emulates work processes.

 

Return to list of examples

 

 

Commercialization of Clinical Data

 

Having accumulated a voluminous database of key health parameters, this national healthcare provider sought advice on the database's commercial potential - not only to the various healthcare industries, but also to such industries as food/beverage, financial services, and insurance.  Additional revenues would enable this healthcare provider to expand population-based prevention and detection programs.

 

"Selling raw data" to individual companies was ill-advised: the value of the data would drop rapidly after the first sale.  Moreover, what the industry needed most was knowledge, not data.  A sustained revenue base model was preferred over a variable revenue base.

 

We worked with this organization on the design of a membership-based plan in which, for an annual base fee, industry would be provided with a "level playing field" of knowledge - the same knowledge to and for all.  The plan was also tiered: higher (priced) membership levels offered additional knowledge disclosures, special briefings, and the ability to request ad hoc, company-specific analyses.

 

Return to list of examples

 

 

Designing A Clinical Knowledge Consortium

 

A regional charitable chain of tertiary healthcare care facilities was particularly concerned about the dissemination and utilization of good clinical practice information throughout its facilities: the same level of evidence-based care throughout the organization - by physicians, nurses, therapists, and other clinicians.  Along the way, it intended to achieve the economies of scale that come with standardization.

 

Our role was one of expertful facilitation of various working teams: visioning yet also embedding this vision in the teams; process analysis yet also feasibility testing; conceptualizing while giving the teams a (due) sense of ownership and achievement.

 

Return to list of examples

 

 

Strategic Consulting Services

 

Scientific strategy development

Scientific portfolio review

Market / competitor analysis of scientific strategy

Competitive positioning through scientific strategy

Knowledge-based collaboration strategy

Knowledge dissemination and commercialization strategy

Partnerships and alliances development and support

Technology-enabled knowledge strategy

Advisory board / expert panel / key opinion leader

development and support

 

Knowledge-based value-added strategy

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Last modified: 03/25/06