Case Study: Optimizing Patient Identification in Myelodysplastic Syndromes (MDS)

Myelodysplastic Syndromes (MDS) are a group of bone marrow disorders characterized by ineffective production of healthy blood cells, often leading to severe anemia (low hemoglobin).

• Disease Dynamics: MDS is a dynamic, progressive disease. Anemia is the most significant symptom, severely reducing a patient's quality of life and being a critical factor in prognosis.
• The Hemoglobin Imperative: Monitoring hemoglobin (Hb) levels is central to MDS management. Early identification of a significant drop in Hb is vital, as it indicates increased disease burden or progression and can signal the need for therapeutic intervention.
• Transfusion Burden: Without effective, timely treatment, patients often become transfusion-dependent, requiring frequent red blood cell transfusions. While life-saving, repeated transfusions carry a risk of complications, including iron overload and subsequent organ damage.

II. The Therapeutic Solution: Drug X
A pharmaceutical client has developed Drug X, an innovative therapy designed for a specific subset of MDS patients.

• Indication: Drug X is indicated for MDS patients who meet specific criteria, crucially involving a hemoglobin level dropping below a defined threshold. This eligibility criterion makes timely and accurate laboratory data indispensable for patient identification.
• Treatment Goal: The primary goal of Drug X is to address the underlying anemia, reduce or eliminate the need for red blood cell transfusions, and ultimately improve patient outcomes and quality of life.

III. The Data Enabler: Prognos's Strategic Role
To ensure eligible patients are identified efficiently and connected with the Drug X therapy, Prognos provided the Client with the critical, underlying data asset. Prognos's strategic role leverages its unique capability to harmonize and enrich vast streams of timely, high-quality lab testing data.

A. The Critical Role of Lab Data

Lab testing is the only definitive way to identify patients eligible for Drug X.

B. The Prognos Advantage: Data Enrichment and Delivery
The core of the strategy centers on Prognos's unique ability to transform raw lab results into a high-fidelity, actionable data stream for the Client:

• Harmonization and Enrichment: Prognos ingests, cleanses, and standardizes lab data from diverse sources. This critical process creates a single, comprehensive view of the patient's record and journey, ensuring the data asset is high-quality and consistent across all patient encounters.
• Near-Real-Time Data Delivery: Prognos delivers the enriched lab test results, including specific Hemoglobin (Hb) values, to the Client almost immediately after they are reported by the laboratory.
• Enabling Treatment Eligibility Triggers: This delivery of timely, high-fidelity lab data allows the Client to implement its own proprietary processes to trigger alerts when a patient in the MDS population's most recent Hb value drops below the critical, predefined Drug X eligibility level.

This timely identification allows the Client's field teams and patient support programs to:

• Alert prescribing physicians to a patient who has just crossed the treatment threshold.
• Accelerate the prescribing and insurance verification process, reducing the dangerous gap between clinical need and therapeutic start.
  
  IV. Impact and Conclusion
  By integrating timely laboratory data into the HCP targeting workflow, the collaboration between the Client and Prognos created a proactive, rather than reactive, management environment for MDS patients.
• Improved Time-to-Treatment: Timely lab data ensures that the treating physician is alerted to a missed window for therapeutic intervention, reducing the risk of a patient spiraling into transfusion dependence while waiting for a clinical review based on less current information.
• Reduced Patient Risk: Accelerating the start of therapy, as recommended by the HCP, helps minimize the number of transfusions a patient might receive, potentially mitigating the long-term risk of organ damage associated with iron overload.
• Optimized Resource Allocation: The Client's efforts are precisely focused on providing support and educational resources to HCPs treating the currently eligible patient population, making marketing and support resources more efficient and impactful.

Conclusion: The dynamic nature of MDS necessitates a dynamic data solution. Prognos's provision of enriched, timely lab data provides the Client with the clinical immediacy required to effectively inform and guide HCPs in identifying and managing patients eligible for Drug X, ultimately serving to optimize patient care and outcomes.

Want to learn more about how Prognos Health and lab data can support your HCP targeting? Let's meet and learn more.