One of the problems in translating clinical need into the design of drugs or diagnostics to improve care is the ability to understand what clinical need is. Clinical need is different from physician to physician or from physician to patient interaction.

Strategic Medicine has begun to look at this problem by examining the step by step decision processes administered by different consenting bodies (patient and physician). By looking at each decision point in the decision tree, and analyzing rich, curated literature from research at the molecular and clinical level, SMI can look at how much information is available to actually support each decision point. We can then use that to evaluate the quality of the decision at that point as well as work with the clinicians to find out how well they comply with that decision itself.

Strategic Medicine then combines these two pieces of information to identify where differences exist and provides detailed analysis of the economic impact of implementing the recommended practice pattern changes across a healthcare system.

The information content and the quality of the information enable the physician to better determine whether they should or shouldn’t follow a specific decision point in the guideline. The economic analysis enables a pharma or diagnostics company to understand where there’s a business opportunity in creating a new drug or a new diagnostic because there’s a gap in the knowledge that currently exists.

Strategic Medicine is building in an adaptive knowledge platform with the ability to translate problems that exist in the practice of medicine into an economic business case that can drive new product development for pharmaceutical and diagnostic companies. It also enables the clinician to have a better understanding of the decisions they have to make in managing the patient.