Omnicom, Validic team up to help pharma marketers tap wearables data

Everyone in healthcare is trying to figure out wearables, including pharma. Omnicom Health Group is counting on a new partnership with digital health platform Validic to go a long way in helping its drugmaker clients do that.

Of course, the plan extends beyond data from “wearables.” A wide range of personal health monitoring gadgets--including ingestibles, embeddables, sensors, robotics and home health devices--now collect patient data.

“Validic gives us the way to manage any type of device for any disease state in a HIPAA-compliant way and deliver a more comprehensive communications plan,” Jo Ann Saitta, chief digital health office at OmnicomHealthGroup, told FiercePharma.

She added, “The monitoring of biometric data now feeds the creative and the way in which we have to engage patients and doctors. … It can be very overwhelming. There are tons of wearables, lots of data, and people are asking ‘what do I do with it’ and ‘what if my doctor doesn’t understand it.’ All these things now factor into how we communicate with patients and doctors.”

Along with Validic and other Omnicom partners including IBM Watson, Google and Twitter Health, the agency is coming off the MedTech Expo it sponsored as part of the Cannes Lions Health festival. The topics and discussions presented along with personal monitoring devices included cognitive computing and big data, telemedicine, personalized medicine, virtual and augmented reality and 3-D printing.

“Technology and data are not only changing the delivery of healthcare communications but also changing the delivery of medicine,” Saitta said. “…This is uncharted territory for pharma definitely, but it’s also uncharted territory for a lot of partners in healthcare.”

- see the news release

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