KEY POINTS:
It sounds simple - just read the label, measure your dose and swallow with water. Yet when it comes to taking prescriptions, it seems a lot of us have trouble following the doctor's orders.
Atlantis Healthcare boss Jonny Duder says about 40 per cent of people don't take medication properly. And while skipping on prescriptions means lost sales for drug companies, it spells big business for Auckland company Atlantis.
In the past four years, the Newton-based company has carved out a lucrative trade helping drug companies talk to their patients. Atlantis' job is to make sure patients know what they are taking and why, filling the "information gap" between busy doctors and drug companies, who are not used to dealing with patients directly.
It's a formula that has seen Atlantis' turnover triple since 2004. The Kiwi-owned company now has double the staff it had four years ago, employing 30 people in Auckland, 25 in Sydney and seven in Britain.
Duder says the secret is to pick one thing and do it well.
"We could see where other people's programmes were going wrong and we could see that the ones we had been involved in from the start did not have those problems," says Duder.
In 2004, not long after he joined the company as general manager, Duder sat down with owners Atlantis Group (investors Michael Whittaker, Sarah Walsh and Hamish Franklin) to talk about the future.
The four quickly realised there was an untapped market in patient support.
"People just don't take their medication," says Duder, who now has shares in the company. "It might be because of the cost, the nasty side effects or not knowing what to expect. No drug is immune to the problem."
After buying health marketing company Datamagic in 2000, Atlantis had carried on Datamagic's direct marketing business, which included running call centres for health-care programmes. After designing a handful of support programmes themselves, they noticed Atlantis' programmes worked better than the ones they ran for other companies. They decided Atlantis would focus on running its own programmes and Duder says they've never looked back.
Atlantis has now designed and delivered 35 patient-support programmes in nine countries. Many of the key players in the company have a background in customer loyalty, which Duder said gave them a "tail wind" when designing the programmes.
The turning point for the company came in 2005, when Atlantis won the right to design a programme for global pharmaceutical giant Merck, Sharp and Dohme in Australia.
Merck knew a big competitor to their osteoporosis drug, Fosamax, was about to enter the market and it wanted to stop patients switching drugs. Atlantis beat two of Australia's biggest advertising agencies to design a programme for Fosamax patients, called BREAKfree.
"It wasn't a typical ad agency pitch. We just came up with a strategy and talked them through it," says Duder.
The strategy was to target patients at times when they were missing out on support from their doctor or nurse. Patients who sign up to BREAKfree get a welcome phone call from a registered nurse (Atlantis employs 10 nurses), access to a free helpline and a regular magazine - all paid for by the pharmaceutical company.
The programme came top in two categories at the 2007 Australian Direct Marketing Awards, taking awards for pharmaceutical and personal care, and customer relationship marketing. It was also popular with patients - BREAKfree has 60,000 active members enrolled in Australia. To stay "active" on the programme, patients have to send in their empty packets to show they are taking their medication.
Duder says BREAKfree has given Atlantis a successful case study to show new clients. "Part of our business case is that we can not only run the programme, but we can measure it. We can prove we are giving a return to the client."
He says when people follow their prescriptions "the medication works as it's supposed to, the doctor has more confidence in the drug, and the patient has a better experience".
Duder believes that to maintain high standards, the company must keep control of every part of the service. "These are hard programmes to run and hard programmes to get right, so it's important the buck stops right here."
He says Atlantis is different to other companies offering patient support programmes because it designs, implements and manages the programmes itself. "A lot of companies will develop the programme but then outsource the call centres and databases."
Atlantis also offers a feedback and discussion process that lets clients tinker with programmes once they are in place.
"Clients are realistic. They don't expect every element of the programme to work, but we have a discussion process where we can review a programme and make changes."
Duder says the company tries to apply the same clinical principles to its programmes as the drug companies use to design the product.
It runs clinical trials for its programmes and works with Auckland University School of Medicine health psychologists during the development phase.
"The thinking that goes into our programmes is world-leading," says Duder, "We don't want to be just an advertising agency."
Following BREAKfree's success in Australia, Atlantis' next schemes will be for patients closer to home.
A text-messaging scheme to get people with asthma to take their medication will be rolled out this month and a successful scheme for carers of Alzheimer's patients, featuring an educational DVD, is already up and running.
But Duder says the company isn't afraid to go further afield and sell itself on "scary" global markets. Atlantis already runs programmes for diabetes and lung cancer patients in Britain and plans to roll out another four programmes this year.
The company is talking to a client in Switzerland about developing programmes that can be used worldwide and Duder says the next step is to break into the United States market.
The company has been asked to go back to the US to talk about its products, after impressing industry contacts with a presentation about BREAKfree at a conference two months ago.
"We've always erred on the side of 'go for it'," says Duder. "We've never been afraid to punch above our weight in terms of getting to the international conferences."
As for his advice to other companies hoping to break into a global market, Duder says there is no substitute for experience.
He says the company is where it is because it has built on years of work in the healthcare sector.
"We know a lot now," he says. "But, unfortunately, there's no shortcut. You have to go through that long process."
Profit Prescription
* Direct marketing company Atlantis Healthcare designs and runs programmes to make sure patients take their medication.
* Atlantis' clients are pharmaceutical companies, who lose money when people don't take their prescriptions properly.
* Owners Atlantis Group and general manager Jonny Duder decided to focus on patient programmes four years ago after noticing a gap in the market. * Since then, the company's turnover has tripled and staff numbers have doubled.
* Atlantis runs programmes in New Zealand, Australia and Britain. Switzerland and the United States are next on the agenda.
