Ian Manners Outlines Pharma's Participation in Providing Financial Assistance for Patients

Only a small percent of patients eligible for assistance programs actually enroll, and Vivor is working with pharmaceutical companies to make the process of using patient assistance programs smoother, said Ian Manners, founder and CEO of Vivor.

Transcript

What has participation by industry been in Vivor’s work? What do they feel they get out of it?

For industry, there’s always been a challenge of: I want to make sure I’m addressing out-of-pocket costs everywhere, but programs that have been available for years often go very underutilized. We often sometimes see for cancer patients, even though the eligibility rules are generous, over 90% of patients are eligible for assistance programs, in some cases fewer than 20% of patients are actually getting enrolled. The gap is huge, and we know that industry partners are very interested in increasing the utilization of programs so that they can help patients get on appropriate therapy.

We take in a very provider-first view—we make our software first for providers. They are our customer. We make our results completely comprehensive. There’s no pay-for-play at all. But, the way that we do work with industry partners is to make the enrollment process and the process of using an assistance program much smoother. We can work with pharma companies to make it a one-click enrollment using the information that’s already in our platform to get a patient set up and enrolled in an assistance program and then send back the results in real time. So, industry partners are very excited about that ability to improve the experience, and as a result get many more patients who need, deserve, financial assistance enrolled in their programs.