Pfizer follows Eli Lilly's lead in direct-to-consumer push

By Eleanor Laise

Pharma giant's new portal aims to connect consumers with telehealth appointments, prescription delivery, tests and vaccines

Pfizer Inc. on Tuesday unveiled a new online platform designed to help simplify and coordinate healthcare for consumers, adding momentum to an emerging trend in big pharma that has drawn criticism from some provider groups and policy experts.

The pharmaceutical giant's new PfizerForAll platform is aimed at patients looking to manage migraines, COVID-19 or flu as well as people seeking certain vaccines, including COVID, flu and RSV shots. Through the platform, patients can connect with a doctor via the telehealth company UpScriptHealth, get prescribed medications delivered to their home, find copay cards and other potential prescription savings, order diagnostic tests through Instacart (CART) and Amazon.com (AMZN), and schedule vaccine appointments at major retailers like CVS Health (CVS) and Walgreens (WBA), among other services.

Beyond discovering, developing and manufacturing drugs, it's critical for Pfizer to create solutions that "get our medicines to people who need them, when they need them," Aamir Malik, Pfizer's executive vice president and chief U.S. commercial officer, told MarketWatch. In a complex and often overwhelming healthcare system, "the last thing that we want standing in the way of a patient who needs one of our medicines and the medicine itself is navigation of an administrative labyrinth that makes it very difficult," Malik said.

The move follows Eli Lilly & Co.'s (LLY) January launch of its LillyDirect digital health platform, which is aimed at patients with obesity, migraine and diabetes and also offers access to independent healthcare providers and home delivery of certain Lilly medications.

Big pharmaceutical companies have previously tried to engage consumers directly in some more limited ways, including a Pfizer collaboration with digital health company Ada Health that aims to help patients understand whether they're at risk for progression to severe COVID and connects them with independent telehealth providers. But when an industry titan like Lilly decides to launch a more comprehensive direct-to-consumer effort, "then it's an arms race," with many more pharmaceutical companies likely to follow, said Tim Mackey, a professor in the global health program at the University of California San Diego.

The broader efforts by pharmaceutical companies to offer more full-service platforms directly to consumers have also been met with skepticism from some physician organizations and industry experts. The direct-to-consumer approach "is primarily oriented around the use of telehealth services to prescribe a drugmaker's products," the American College of Physicians said in a statement issued a day after the launch of Lilly's LillyDirect platform. "For telemedicine services to take place responsibly, there should be an established and valid patient-physician relationship, or the care should happen in consultation with a physician who does have an established relationship with the patient," the group said.

Lilly has said that its program connects people with independent telehealth providers who are identified based on prioritization of patient safety, robust medical practices and other factors, and that it does not incentivize providers to promote its products. As for PfizerForAll, healthcare providers' decision-making about appropriate treatments for patients is "happening outside of the four walls of Pfizer," Malik said. "Whether it's a Pfizer medicine or a non-Pfizer medicine, that's entirely an independent choice made by the physician in conversation with the patient," he said. Pfizer does not get any compensation from the telehealth providers when patients are connected to the providers through PfizerForAll, Malik said.

The Pfizer launch comes as the company is working to shake off some postpandemic headaches, including plummeting sales of its COVID products and some financial guidance that proved overly optimistic. The timing of PfizerForAll's introduction, just a few days after updated COVID shots were approved by the Food and Drug Administration, gives the drugmaker a new avenue to connect consumers with its vaccines and treatments ahead of the respiratory virus season.

Patients seeking care through PfizerForAll can use their existing insurance and pharmacy programs, Pfizer said, and can choose to have prescriptions sent for pickup at a local pharmacy or delivered to their home. The portal can also help patients who are struggling to navigate their health insurer's prior-authorization requirements, Pfizer said, and connect users with patient-access coordinators who can work with patients and healthcare providers to address coverage denials.

Certain categories of medications, including migraine and obesity drugs, can work well with drugmakers' consumer-directed portals because "the patient has more of a potential to influence the prescriber" and get the medication they're after, Mackey said. For other classes of drugs, such as cancer treatments, patients don't have such influence because they have to go through a detailed diagnostic process to determine which drug is right for them.

For patients, one potential risk is that they'll be prescribed a drug that's not medically necessary, Mackey said, or that they'll get a prescription when a behavioral-health intervention could be just as effective. And if there's a lot of overprescribing through these platforms, he said, that would drive up costs for the healthcare system overall. Telehealth regulation, Mackey said, is far behind on wrestling with the implications of such consumer-focused portals.

Pfizer, meanwhile, says it's addressing a clear need for better, more streamlined coordination of patients' healthcare. And importantly, "nobody's getting access to a prescription without engaging with an independent healthcare provider," Malik said. "That is the bedrock of this."

Pfizer's stock (PFE) is roughly flat in the year to date, while the S&P 500 SPX has gained 17.8%.

-Eleanor Laise

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08-27-24 0647ET

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