Insights That Matter – Effective Digital Strategies Informed by 500,000 Patient Interactions

In an era where digital transformation is table stakes, life sciences leaders are rethinking patient engagement. During our recent webinar, Oliver Dunford, VP of Life Sciences at Relay, and Angela Cornacchia, Director of Patient Access Services at Alkermes, unpacked data from over 500,000 patient interactions to inform smarter engagement strategies across the entire patient journey—from onboarding to adherence.

Here are the key takeaways for life sciences professionals striving to improve access, engagement, and adherence outcomes through digital tools.

A recurring theme throughout the webinar: don’t wait to engage. Patients who were introduced to digital tools at the beginning of their therapy journey—during benefit verification, HIPAA consent, or onboarding—maintained higher overall engagement through the adherence phase.

“Supporting the patient during the earlier parts of the process flows naturally through engagement—even into adherence,” said Dunford.

By engaging with patients up front, life sciences organizations are establishing the patient relationship, so it is important to start off on the right foot. By providing valuable information at that initial “hello”, these organizations are demonstrating the support they can offer a patient at the onset of their therapy journey.

After the initial connection, it’s vital to maintain momentum with patients. Delayed outreach or generic messaging kills engagement. Engagement dropped by 29% when organizations delayed outreach by just a few hours.

“Patients are more likely to engage if the message is sent right after a call or interaction,” explained Cornacchia.

Alkermes’ use of real-time, CRM-triggered messaging—like appointment reminders and follow-up resources—has led to 68% engagement with at least one message. Plus, even when they have sent out message manually, Cornacchia emphasized that those messages are delivered right after a patient interaction on the phone with an agent.

With the right tools, patients are willing to engage. Gathered from the insights, Relay’s feed-based digital channel has generated:

These are traditionally friction-heavy moments—yet patients are proving highly responsive. In this case, it’s about using a channel that meets patients where they are with the information that they need, in an easy-to-use format. By providing patients with easy ways to complete the things these organizations need, they are more willing to complete the tasks.

“Even though we may see these processes as long and laborious, patients are really putting a step forward and helping give you that information,” Dunford added.

By making things easy for patients, they are more willing to engage. But engagement is not meant to be a passive act, it should include active participation by patients, in the form of actions. Patients don’t just want to receive information—they want to be able to take action where necessary. This is one of the features that makes Relay’s channel truly unique. From basic click-to-call functionality to the ability to upload documents, right within the channel, Relay’s platform enables:

“[Patients] can just call, they can click to call and get a hold of somebody at their own convenience, so you’re not always just leaving patients messages,” Cornacchia emphasized.

Tracking click-through and action rates are standard for engagement programs, but one of the most telling metrics is opt-out rate. If patients are not interested in messaging, it is easy to just opt-out altogether. And across many digital platforms, that is what happens. High click-through and action rates carry much less weight when the opt-out rates are high as well.

Angela shared a relevant story about opt-out rates at Alkermes that impacted their ability to connect with patients. Before Relay, Alkermes launched a basic texting program. However, the initial results weren’t great. “They were opting out at 90%. So, you can’t follow through with those patients to send them another message. And maybe they didn’t like that first message, or it wasn’t valuable. But as we know throughout the journey, we have a lot of different messaging we can send patients.”

When Alkermes found Relay and switched from their basic SMS platform to our personalized channel, they saw opt-out rates drop from 90% to less than 10%, enabling them the ability to further connect with patients across the journey with minimal fall off.

In terms of the four major buckets of message categorization: onboarding, coverage, access, and adherence, coverage support—including copay assistance, PAP, and benefit investigation—generates the highest engagement with 56% click-through and 84% action rates on average.

But the style of communication for these messages matters. Messages that provide context and explanation (rather than status-only updates or emoji-based “trackers”) perform best. While it is typically best practice to keep messages clear and concise, lack of context can lead to confusion and disengagement. It is important to strike a healthy balance between sending too much or too little information, and it is up to the organization to determine which messages require more details.

“Whatever is good for the patient is great for engagement,” said Dunford. “We’ve noticed when you spend a few minutes talking a little bit about the PA process or what an appeal means and any extra kind of intel and information that you can provide around those things is deemed to drive kind of higher engagement.”

Even in the later phases of therapy, empathy matters. Patients are humans, after all, and many times are dealing with complex and chronic conditions that require their therapy. Messaging that recognizes patient milestones (e.g., “You’ve been on therapy for 60 days—how are you feeling?”) outperforms generic refill reminders.

“Getting empathy across to the patient is really valuable and it can be done in a digital world. Patients are getting text messages from the pharmacy. They’re getting text messages from their doctor. So how do you really bring that empathy across? You personalize it,” advised Cornacchia.

For life sciences manufacturers, PSP leaders, and access services teams, the message is clear: digital tools should extend the human touch, not replace it.

“It’s not about sending more messages—it’s about sending the right ones, at the right time, with the right intent,” Dunford concluded.

For more insights, tune into the entire webinar conversation here.

If you are interested in learning more about Relay and the Relay Feed, reach out to sales@relaynetwork.com

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