It’s old news that the healthcare industry, be it healthcare marketers or physicians or insurers, has embraced the iPad.
Even medical device makers are creating internal apps for their sales teams, but finding software to match the magic of the iPad’s hardware, however, is easier said than done. Custom iPad app development is expensive.
That is where App Data Room, an iPad app available on the App Store and developed by Minnesota high-tech firm thisClicks comes in. And one former Medtronic marketing executive, now at cardiac medical device startup Sunshine Heart, swears by it.
So, how does App Data Room work, and more importantly, what’s so great about it?
It’s a Web-deployed platform that can be customized for a company’s individual sales and marketing needs. Customers sign up to create an account on appdataroom.com and upload all content using menu selections for product brochures, reimbursement and other options. Content uploaded could be anything from PDFs to PowerPoints and animation to videos.
The manager of that content and account can then send email invitations to users and give them individual user names and passwords so they can download the free iPad app and access the content, explains thicClicks’ CEO and founder Chad Halvorson. Once the app is downloaded on the iPad and the user logs in, it automatically syncs with the content created on appdataroom.com.
A Deep-dive Into Specialty Pharma
A specialty drug is a class of prescription medications used to treat complex, chronic or rare medical conditions. Although this classification was originally intended to define the treatment of rare, also termed “orphan” diseases, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the US, more recently, specialty drugs have emerged as the cornerstone of treatment for chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.
Most of us are used to updating our iPad apps by clicking on the “update” button under the App Store icon. But this app updates automatically.
“When the person in charge of controlling the content makes a change or adds a menu item, everybody that has installed App Data Room will automatically get that change and it will be consistent throughout the network of connected devices,” Halvorson said. “When you launch the app, it recognizes that there has been a change and automatically downloads that in the background.”
One useful feature is the app is not dependent on continuous Internet connectivity. In other words, once the latest sync occurs, the data is stored on the device itself, which is a huge help when the rep is stuck in the basement of a hospital with a physician.
Other features include being able to create agendas such that sales reps can quickly create custom presentations depending on the type of customer they are meeting. The app also allows reps to email content.
“You can tag content just like you would add items to a shopping cart and then email that as a downloadable link directly from the app to the customer.” Halvorson said.
That is just one of the reasons the app is a huge hit to Jim Yearick, vice president of sales and marketing at Sunshine Heart, who joined the Minnesota startup in October. Another is price. Before coming to Sunshine, Yearick spent eight-and-a-half years at Medtronic, most recently as vice president of global product marketing for the company’s Cardiac Rhythm Disease Management Group.
He remembers signing off on a custom app development tool that cost the company around $45,000 to $50,000. Compare that to App Data Room for which Sunshine Heart paid $5,000, in addition to an ongoing monthly user and storage fee. Currently, 15 users have downloaded App Data Room on their iPads at Sunshine Heart.
I can’t say enough good things about thisClicks,” said Yearick. “They gave me a 30-day free trial so before I gave them even a dollar, I went in and created all the (content) and even put in our logo on there just to see how it would work. I loaded all our content in under two hours. It was that easy.”
Yearick contends that App Data Room’s platform easily stacks up with the level of scalability and quality that comes from developing a more expensive app from scratch. The only difference is that third-party developers would likely do a lot of the uploading themselves and so, “handhold” a company more than thisClicks where the user manages the uploads. Still, the ease of use and the simple architecture created by App Data Room makes it very attractive.
Yearick is leaving for Europe soon where he will meet physicians to gauge their interest in participating in a post-market trial of the company’s ventricular-assist device, which is expected to gain CE Mark in the second quarter. App Data Room is going to be the tool he will use to present to them and potential distributors. Yearick has video content, training and instruction manuals, and product support documents among other content.
He can use the custom agenda feature to create a presentation appropriate for some of the top physicians in the ventricular-assist device arenas with whom he as meetings scheduled.
“I am going to be speaking with physicians that are experts in ventricular-assist devices and so I really need to make sure my game is on,” he said. “So, I can just pull from my menu and create a custom agenda so that I don’t have to click through … and then I can pull content from that and immediately send it to him if he is interested in something I show him. It’s a customized presentation and then has an immediate follow-up.”
Yearick expects the number of app users at Sunshine Heart to jump when the company wins CE Mark. He can then decide what type of content a user — say an outside user like a distributor — can have access to as well.
“With a mixed audience, I can still customize what people can and cannot see,” Yearick said.
In the end, Yearick said that this app is great for both startups and large companies because it can scale quickly.
“Let’s say I want to add another 30 users, I can just go online and I can do that before you or I are done with our conversation in the next five minutes,” he said. “It grows with you.”
Aside from Sunshine Heart, other device companies that are using App Data Room include Oticon, Terumo Medical, Synovis Surgical Innovations and SterilMed. For those companies still reluctant to use an app that others are also using, Halvorson has something for them, too. thisClicks can create a unique iPad app and it will still be cheaper than building one from scratch, he promised.
