In 2012, the pharmaceutical industry spent over $27 billion on drug promotion, hemorrhaging money into physician and patient outreach. Yet, the diffusion of medical innovation continues to lag: slowed in large part by the challenge of creating meaningful connections between health providers and industry experts.
Fortunately, this is where Chicago-based Drected comes in. One of the newest members of MATTER, Chicago’s highly anticipated health incubator, Drected is an emerging marketplace for medical information. This is a platform to capture and to manage those elusive connections that propel groundbreaking medical advances to patients.
Driven by long-time health entrepreneur, Christopher Kennedy, the motivation for Drected arose when Kennedy was consistently frustrated by delays in distributing medical information.
“I’d been working with infectious disease doctors for over 8 years…and it blew my mind that a drug that had been in the market for over 24 months is something people were still calling new. That shows you how long the delay curve for being educated on this is,” said Kennedy.
Kennedy, who is from Arrowsmith, Illinois, noted that these delays tend to be particularly outrageous for smaller hospitals and regions with lower patient traffic. And considering that the FDA approves between 20 to 30 novel drugs each year, it makes sense that care providers and companies would want to find faster avenues to relay new medical information.
Drected opens such a channel by providing two crucial services: medical networking and data analysis. Using the online networking system, industry experts and physicians can more conveniently find and connect with each other, augmenting the time spent sharing information rather than searching for it.
For medical startups like those in MATTER, this provides an opportune marketing outlet, diminishing the risk associated with hiring and maintaining a separate sales team. For medical personnel, this brings a database of relevant companies interested in educating caretakers on recent medical advances.
Of course, fostering a dialogue between care providers and companies has little worth if the conversation fails to be meaningful, and this is where the true power of Drected emerges: its data analysis. Through Drected’s subscription service, users are able to input and to collect feedback on their interactions, allowing companies and medical professionals to enhance how medical information is spread. The platform encourages users to collaborate to make each new conversation better than the last.
So much like its new headquarters, MATTER, Drected is ultimately founded on the concept that a collaborative ecosystem will establish faster and more effective medical innovation. For patients, this means getting better options faster.
“Our passion--our vision--is about impacting patient outcomes. [And Drected] is about bringing industry together to impact patients quickly,” said Kennedy.
Following the opening of MATTER in early February, Drected will launch its pilot program this coming Feb 23rd. Pilot program users have been preselected and include contracted health care systems and major health companies. Once the full platform launches later this year, Drected will be open to the public.
(Image via drected.com. As emphasized by its logo, Drected believes that ideal patient care is at the intersection of industry and medical expertise.)
