Patient Support / Hub Services Continue to Evolve

The goal of producing meaningful data is driving industry progress.

The business of providing outsourced patient support and hub services is growing in lockstep with the growth of specialty pharmaceuticals, which are now approaching nearly half of pharma spending in the US. Specialty pharmaceuticals are not only growing in number, but also in cost, with the latest cellular and genetic therapies reaching a half-million dollars or more for a dose.

Even so, the hub business is extraordinarily dynamic, with businesses merging at the same time as others are opening their doors, with competing loci of patient attention from specialty pharmacies and from service providers to healthcare systems, and—crucially—a riskier element of regulatory compliance, as government regulators look more closely at industry practices. Yet another factor is the ebb and flow of pharma’s own interest in owning the patient experience, through in-sourcing some or all patient support activities.