Healthy Skepticism Library item: 69

Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.

Publication type: news

Fiedler T.
Minnetonka company's patient-recruitment redefines doctors' role
Star Tribune 2003 Sep 21

Full text:

Mark Summers doesn’t dislike doctors. He just thinks that they often get in the way.

Summers is a former medical device sales executive, and at his previous employer, Edina-based Spine-Tech, “we recruited and trained doctors, hoping they would resell our product to the patient,” he said.

“If the patient’s doctor was not one of our product’s users, we were out of luck.”

To eliminate what he sees as the doctor bottleneck, Summers started Minnetonka-based ThreeWire Inc. to go directly to patients, partly through Internet recruiting.

But he didn’t stop at just getting potential customers to a product Web site, a tactic that’s become common among drug companies and other health care firms that have turned to TV and print ads in recent years.

Instead, ThreeWire is taking the direct-marketing approach to a new, conclusive level — funneling potential patients to a nurse-staffed call center that pre-qualifies them for insurance benefits and then books appointments for them with doctors who use the products of ThreeWire’s corporate clients.

“I think what’s unique is the appointment making,” said American Medical Systems CEO Doug Kohrs, whose company has used ThreeWire to promote itserectile dysfunction products. “When the potential patient calls an 800 number, he doesn’t just get a packet. They go the extra step. What you are doing is taking a motivated patient to the next level.”

In another marketing twist, ThreeWire will be also be recruiting and qualifying patients for drug and medical device trials. Last month, it signed a vendor deal with a health care unit of the multibillion-dollar advertising and communications firm Omnicom Group to handle major drug company trials.

Summers said the new business will help his four-year-old company grow from about $3 million in annual sales and 17 employees this year to $8 million to $10 million in revenue and 40 to 50 employees next year. His five-year goal is annual sales of more than $75 million.

A former naval flight officer who co-piloted F-14s onto carrier decks, Summers, 48, chose some naval jargon for his company’s name. Four wires stretch across a carrier deck, and the plane needs to catch its tailhook on one of the wires in order to land. It was considered a perfect landing when the pilot caught the “three wire.”

A number of health care industry observers say ThreeWire’s offerings are unusual, if not unique.

Dan Schaber, a vice president at Fridley-based Medtronic Inc. who supervises clinical trials for certain types of heart products at the multibillion-dollar medical device company, called ThreeWire’s ideas “innovative” and something that Medtronic is considering for some of its clinical trials.

“There have been some ideas to use the Web to inform patients, but this is more a turn-key system than things we have seen in other places,” Schaber said.

Kohrs, a former associate of Summers at Spine-Tech and CEO of Minnetonka-based American Medical, which has annual sales of about $140 million a year, has been working with ThreeWire for the past 18 months on the erectile dysfunction devices. Kohrs said the devices are his company’s toughest marketing challenge because patients are squeamish about discussing the problem.

ThreeWire placed newspaper ads, ran radio spots and organized doctor seminars that drove people to a Web site it created that had information about erectile dysfunction (ED). Summers said the company has also developed software to help ThreeWire Web sites appear high in Internet searches.

Then ThreeWire encourages patients to make a toll-free call to an interaction center staffed by nurses. The nurses screen the clients to see if a treatment with one of its corporate partners’ products is medically appropriate and meets insurance reimbursement criteria. Once the patient is qualified, the nurses use ThreeWire software to book appointments with nearby specialists who use American Medical products.

Kohrs wouldn’t reveal how much sales have increased, but he said that American Medical found that tens of thousands of people have visited the ThreeWire-created ED site, and that about 10 percent of those ask for more information from call-center nurses, and that 10 percent of that second group makes doctor’s appointments.

Summers said the qualifying is crucial because otherwise doctors would have the additional burden of sorting through leads to see if a person was a good candidate for treatment. ThreeWire tracks the patient even after the appointment, either through direct contact or, if the patient agrees, by having the doctor share data with the company.

Drug trial recruiting

The ThreeWire process is also being tailored to recruit patients for drug trials. Kathleen Drennan, the top marketing executive of Chicago-based Iris Global Clinical Trial Solutions, a unit of Corbett Healthcare Group, which in turn is a unit of Omnicom, estimated that drug trials are a $1 billion market annually.

Drennan said drug companies are looking for ways to streamline and speed the clinical process because millions of dollars of sales can be lost through even a small delay in getting to market.

Iris handles newspaper, radio and other advertising to drive traffic to ThreeWire’s Web site or interaction center.

“There are a lot of players in the recruitment world,” Drennan said, “but I think [ThreeWire] focuses on reaching and engaging patients in a unique way.”

ThreeWire is also at a leading edge in its approach to protecting its technology.

Summers has filed for a business-method patent, which focuses on protecting the whole marketing process, rather than just a product. The application, made in May, includes 57 separate claims relating to recruiting patients for drugs or medical devices or finding them for clinical trials.

Only 400 to 500 business method patents have been granted annually in recent years, less than 1 percent of all patents.

Michael Lasky of the Altera Law Group, ThreeWire’s patent lawyer, said business-method patents can help to level the playing field for smaller, service-oriented businesses, such as ThreeWire, that otherwise have little protection for important intellectual assets. That protection often is a key in raising additional capital, he said.

ThreeWire has raised about $1.5 million to date from individuals, such as James Claseman, vice president of finance and administration for the Minnetonka-based marketing company Gage Group, and Michael Rogers, the former CEO of Ontrack Data International.

The company had some timing problems in a couple of other money-raising efforts — it aborted stock offerings when the Internet stock bubble burst in the spring of 2000 and again after the 2001 terrorist attacks.

Its second try at an IPO had been scheduled for Sept. 12, 2001.

But Summers said ThreeWire remains well-positioned because of consumers’ increasing appetite for Internet health information and their increasingly active involvement in seeking treatment.

“Gone are the days when a patient comes in and lays down for surgery,” he said.