How EnlivenHealth® is powering personalized patient engagement at scale with Twilio

Omnicell is a leading provider of medication management solutions and adherence tools, currently used by more than 50,000 retail pharmacies nationwide. EnlivenHealth, the retail pharmacy solutions division of Omnicell, builds advanced patient engagement, financial management and population health technology solutions to optimize pharmacy operations and improve patient outcomes. When EnlivenHealth needed a communications platform to power its patient engagement solution, Personalized Interactive Voice Response (IVR), finding a partner that would support its omnichannel approach and support personalized patient interactions was paramount.

Kim Howland, Ph.D., the Vice President, Product at EnlivenHealth, and her team, selected Twilio to be the communications layer in its Personalized IVR solution, enabling pharmacies and health plans to create a truly personalized experience for their patients and members that are reliable, scalable, and secure. “We had built up our own communication platform over the last 20 years, but at the same time, we’ve developed incredible expertise in pharmacy, clinical workflows, and patient needs,” Howland explained. “It’s a much better use of our resources to leverage our experience building workflows on top of a trusted communication platform. We’ll let Twilio be the experts in communication, so we can focus on healthcare.”

EnlivenHealth’s Personalized Communication Solution features interactive inbound phone communications, SMS texting, chatbots, email, and a mobile app that can be customized with the pharmacy or health plan brand. This powerful new customer engagement architecture allows EnlivenHealth’s customers to deliver the right message, via the right channel, directly to their patients or members. The first implementation of the new Personalized Communication Solution is Personalized IVR, which has already yielded strong results, including reducing phone transfer rates by 12-15% and saving pharmacists an average of 30 minutes per 100 calls. The newly launched solution is currently in the process of being rolled out across a range of customers on a nationwide basis.

Making automation more personal

When a patient calls a pharmacy, the first voice they hear is typically that of an IVR system. It might guide the patient through a series of prompts based on their reason for calling—if they need a refill, for example, they’d be asked for a prescription number. But nearly 50% of patients opt out of automation, choosing to speak with a human instead. “Some of these opt-outs are worthwhile,” Howland said. “The patient might have a complicated question that needs a human to answer. But in many cases, patients have simple questions or are trying to accomplish a task that can easily be handled by automation.”

This presents a problem for pharmacists and pharmacy staff, whose time becomes consumed by answering questions that could easily be answered through IVR, when it could be focused on providing more complex healthcare tasks.

“Our goal is to help our pharmacies by providing more personalized communications solutions that keep patients engaged in automation,” Howland said. To keep patients engaged, EnlivenHealth’s platform combines AI with digital communication technologies to offer highly personalized, accurate, and timely messaging to patients. The beauty of this product is that any pharmacy can implement the solution out of the box and enjoy the benefits of personalization. With the Twilio Lookup API, EnlivenHealth enables pharmacies to recognize incoming callers, validate their identity, and proactively offer options, such as a list of the patient’s prescriptions available for refill. The Personalized IVR experience not only saves time for providers, but also leads to higher patient satisfaction.

A truly omnichannel patient engagement solution

Personalized communication doesn’t end with just refills. Truly personalized omnichannel communications can be used to offer additional clinical services, Howland added. “It starts with building a more rich understanding of the patient,” she explained. Today, pharmacy data is largely tied to prescriptions and refills. However, by incorporating information from health plan partners and patient-generated health data (PGHD), EnlivenHealth aims to help providers reach out to patients at the right time, and through the right channel.

“Communicating with patients in the manner and at times that work for the patient increases engagement and successful completion of tasks,” Matthew Bernier, Product Manager at EnlivenHealth said. “We strive to put the patient first as we think about how we can bring together health systems, pharmacies and health plans to work in a coordinated effort to improve patient outcomes.”

Twilio handles the complexity of operating an omnichannel communications platform, allowing EnlivenHealth to more easily orchestrate tasks across different communication channels. “This allows us to spend more time doing what we’re good at, which is developing workflows,” Howland added.

The next generation of patient engagement

Twilio has made EnlivenHealth’s intelligent Personalized IVR system more flexible and patient-centric. But Personalized IVR is just the first step in the company’s omnichannel journey. In the future, EnlivenHealth plans to continue building its omnichannel engagement solution and leverage the Twilio platform to expand the use of other EnlivenHealth clinical, financial, and population health solutions.

“Twilio can’t wait to see what we build, and we can wait to show Twilio and the market what we build,” Matthew said. “It’s great to have a partner as excited as we are to provide value to pharmacies and health plans through Twilio’s industry-leading communications platform.”