Reverba named top 10 Patient Engagement Solution Provider of 2024

Setting the Trend with Innovative Patient Engagement Strategies

By: Cheryl Lubbert, CEO, published in Medhealth Review

In the healthcare landscape, patient engagement has become a critical foundational element for achieving positive health outcomes, and a range of healthcare and pharmaceutical companies turn to this important approach to incorporate the patient voice throughout their programs and products, starting with clinical research and through clinical trials and beyond.

At the forefront of this transformation is Reverba, a global patient engagement company that creates groundbreaking programs that empower patients from all backgrounds to share their experiences and enable companies to directly engage with healthcare consumers. For more than 20 years, Reverba has made engagement not just a priority, but an imperative, for any company aiming to innovate and contribute to the healthcare landscape in a meaningful way.

Evolved from the merger of Health Advocacy Strategies, Patient Health Perspectives and Health Perspectives Group, the company rebranded as Reverba in 2021. The company also maintains its subsidiary Health Stories Project, founded in 2014, a social sharing community about personal health experiences, participation in clinical trials and other activities. Earlier this year, the company announced the acquisition of Six Degrees Worldwide Inc., a leader in medical communications. The acquisition is poised to help Reverba and its clients continue to bridge the gap between science and real-life patient experiences.

“The patient voice is central to everything that’s happening in biopharma, from clinical trials to educational materials to support programs. The core of what we need to focus on is ‘How do we help health consumers do better? How do we help people be smarter, learn more, and elevate their understanding of their own healthcare?’” says Cheryl Lubbert, CEO of Reverba. “We bridge the gap between knowledge and empathy, using our years of experience and compliant high- and low-tech solutions.”

Health consumers are more informed and involved in their healthcare than ever before. Instead of being passive recipients of a physician’s advice, health consumers are active participants in their care and can serve as valuable partners. Reverba engages with patients on behalf of its clients, amplifying the patient voice to improve health literacy for better health outcomes and to drive lasting, meaningful change throughout the healthcare ecosystem.

Reverba focuses on delivering patient engagement solutions for pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies. The company makes this possible by helping biopharma companies navigate the myriad challenges of engaging and educating patients such as regulatory compliance, diverse patient populations, and translating complex health information. As Reverba expands globally, the company is also focused on the evolving role of medical affairs and the important connections between commercial and clinical areas in biopharma as well as between physicians and patients as health consumers.

Building Lasting Connections with the Right Patients

Two of the biggest challenges these patient engagement specialists address are identifying, and then understanding, the patient populations for their products. Reverba helps clients gain insights into who their patients are and how they prefer to engage.  Identifying the unique needs, preferences, and challenges of health consumers allows Reverba to assist healthcare and pharmaceutical companies in developing targeted engagement strategies that resonate with patients and address their specific concerns.

“We bridge the gap between knowledge and empathy, using our years of experience and compliant high- and low-tech solutions.”

Reverba leverages years of experience and best-in-class proprietary tools to find hard-to-reach patients, with special emphasis on diversity, equity and inclusion, and then inspire and support their participation. The company’s tech-enabled pre-screening capabilities enables Reverba to qualify, inform, and segment patients for educational opportunities and trial site matching.

One critical and unique resource that makes Reverba stand out in the field is Health Stories Project, its community of over 160,000 members who are ready and willing to share their stories about personal health experiences, participation in clinical trials and other activities. Reverba’s dynamic recruitment efforts to reach new patient populations are supported by the connection to this trusted consumer-driven platform.

“Once we’ve found these motivated patients who want to share their disease journeys and helped our clients build solid connections with them, we provide strategic tools to infuse their input across two key areas – clinical, from product development to clinical trial recruitment; and commercial, from commercialization ramp-up preparations to launch and through market adoption, expansion and maturity,” Lubbert says.

Technology-Enabled Patient Engagement

Times are continuously changing, and Reverba is moving quickly to bring the most forward-thinking technologies and tools to the company’s patient engagement initiatives.

Reverba leverages its proprietary advanced technology platforms to streamline the patient engagement process and facilitate seamless communication. These transformative tech-enabled solutions, offered in the reverbaBRIDGE® platform, “build a bridge” between patients and biopharma companies. This proven infrastructure makes it possible for the company to quickly launch programs without a learning curve.

The reverbaBRIDGE platform provides access to customized secure portals for biopharma companies to enable seamless integration into company environments, providing two-way data transfer for flexibility and scalability to meet diverse needs.

The portals allow companies to support collaboration among stakeholders while providing real-time metrics on patient activity. They also make it possible to easily manage patient relationships, with custom workflows that ensure consistent, compliant engagement. Biopharma companies have access to in-depth analytics that distill qualitative and quantitative feedback into practical, actionable reporting that can help them identify trends, understand patient behavior and optimize engagement strategies.

Compliance is Mission Critical

Great ideas aren’t enough to build successful patient engagement programs. It takes extensive know-how of critical components and a deep understanding of how to operate within the regulatory landscape.

Reverba’s platform is built with a strong emphasis on privacy and data security. All patient data is handled in compliance with regulatory requirements, ensuring that sensitive information is protected.

• To maintain SOC 2 Type II and and ISAE 3000 certifications for the highest level of security and privacy, Reverba’s controls are reviewed, examined, and tested by an independent auditor.
• Reverba strictly adheres to privacy guidelines, including GDPR and FDA regulations.
• The company’s systems, processes and policies exceed HIPAA requirements and are supported by continuous training, retraining and auditing practices.
• Reverba pairs data encryption measures that exceed healthcare industry standards with strict access controls to ensure patient information is kept secure.
• Everyone on the Reverba team completes extensive HIPAA, PhRMA, and AdvaMed training that is refreshed every year to ensure all employees have a current and deep understanding of compliant practices.

Case Studies: Excellence in Clinical and Commercial Initiatives

One notable example of Reverba’s impact in clinical trials involves working with a biopharmaceutical company to identify suitable patients for a trial that required prior surgery to qualify. This initiative necessitated developing communication strategies for patients with advanced disease and collaborating closely with their family members to explain the trial’s inclusion criteria. Additionally, Reverba worked with clinical sites to ensure patients were directed to the appropriate locations. The challenge centered on ensuring informed consent through a deep understanding of what patients and their families were experiencing and needed to know. This case study highlights Reverba’s approach in the R&D space, demonstrating their capability to navigate complex patient engagement challenges by prioritizing patient understanding and communication.

In the commercial sector, Reverba has facilitated the introduction of new treatments for diseases managed by different specialties. For instance, in a program involving dermatologists and a skin and joint disease, Reverba organized training sessions where rheumatologists and their patients educated dermatologists about the condition. This interaction allowed dermatologists to gain insights directly from patients and healthcare professionals, enhancing their understanding of diseases they might not typically encounter. This approach underscores Reverba’s commitment to bridging knowledge gaps between patients and clinicians, fostering a more comprehensive understanding of patient experiences in various therapeutic areas.

A Culture of Excellence

Reverba attributes its success to its strong company culture as a mission and values-driven organization. These values guide every step of the company’s operations and ensure that Reverba remains focused on its mission to advance healthcare.

Reverba’s innovative patient engagement strategies and modern communication tools have transformed the way healthcare organizations interact with patients. The company has supported more than 450 diseases and conditions, including more than 60 rare diseases, serving more than 135 healthcare brands, including more than 70 blockbuster brands.

By understanding patient needs, building strong relationships, and leveraging technology with decades of expertise in compliance, Reverba helps biopharmaceutical companies navigate the complexities of patient engagement to achieve business success. As healthcare continues to evolve, Reverba remains committed to harnessing health consumers’ abilities to inform, educate and inspire others to action, revolutionize how people think, feel, and take action by bridging the knowledge and empathy gaps across the healthcare ecosystem.