Allergan plc, has announced a multi-year research collaboration with Humana Inc. to explore new ideas and ways to improve the health and well-being of patients, members and their caregivers.
Allergan says that a main objective of the Allergan and Humana collaboration is to study key issues and obtain a more comprehensive understanding of opportunities for improvement in care delivery.
“In today’s changing health care environment, it is important for various stakeholders in the healthcare system to come together to gain in-depth understanding of unmet needs and find solutions to improve patient outcomes,” said Gavin Corcoran, MD, FACP, Chief Medical Officer, Allergan. “This partnership aligns with our goal of leveraging real world data to build evidence and conduct comparative effectiveness research in collaboration with health care systems to better understand unmet needs, the natural history of disease, and interventions that improve both outcomes and the quality of care delivered to patients.”
“The partnership with Allergan reflects Humana’s commitment to improving health outcomes while reducing costs,” said William Fleming, Pharm. D., President of Humana Pharmacy Solutions.
“Humana is always looking to collaborate where we see an opportunity to make it easier for people to engage the health care system and looks forward to focusing on these initiatives with Allergan.”
In annoucement issued on Friday, Allergan stated the terms of the agreement, Allergan and Humana will initially focus on the following initiatives:
Variety of Diseases – Improving health of patients with central nervous system conditions, including Alzheimer’s disease, as well as glaucoma and other eye diseases with opportunities to expand into other therapeutic areas as the collaboration progresses.
Patient/Caregiver Relationship – Obtain a clearer picture of the attributes associated with caregiver burden from the caregiver perspective, and how self-reported caregiver burden relates to healthcare-related utilization and costs.
Interventional Research – Conduct research based on interventional practices and predictive analytics, with a focus on treatment adherence, to ensure patients obtain the right medications at the right time.
One of the collaboration’s first projects focuses on Alzheimer’s patients’ caregiver burden. Unlike caregiving for many terminal illnesses, caregiving for Alzheimer’s disease may persist for much longer given that patients with Alzheimer’s disease can live for many years.
“Caregivers are vulnerable to health consequences as a result of the chronic stressors associated with caring for a person with Alzheimer’s disease,” said Roy Beveridge, MD, Humana’s Chief Medical Officer.
“By working together, Humana and Allergan can help close a gap in care by going beyond the patient and focus on how to better understand and support caregivers.”