Ashfield and Patient Connect Form Alliance to Provide Holistic Patient Services

LONDON, September 19, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Ashfield Commercial and Medical Services, part of UDG Healthcare plc, a global leader in providing outsourced healthcare services to pharmaceutical, device and biotech companies has announced that it has formed a strategic alliance with Patient Connect, the market-leader in optimising patient health at the point-of-dispensing. The strategic partnership is focused on improving patient adherence and outcomes by providing pharmaceutical clients with holistic, patient-centric services.

Ashfield provides field and call centre sales teams, healthcare communications, strategic consulting, in-home and call centre nurse educators, medical information, pharmacovigilance (drug safety), and event management services to over 300 healthcare companies in 18 countries including United Kingdom, America, Germany, Spain and Japan.

Through its Clinical service offering, Ashfield supports healthcare professionals in educating patients to help ensure they take their medications according to treatment protocols. Ashfield Clinical also delivers multichannel Patient Support Programs through nurse educators visiting patient homes and in-office telephone services.

Patient Connect's pharmacy network will support enrolment onto these programs and provides an important, additional channel to reach patients with consistent messages about their disease, treatment and adherence.

Patient Connect is the market leader in supporting patients at the point of dispensing, helping them understand and manage their medications better and thereby improving health and quality of life. Its pharmacy network covers 10 European countries, the USA and Australia with a reach of almost 450 million patients.

Patient Connect has the unique capability to reach large, meaningful patient populations with tremendous precision and relevant educational messaging, delivered by a trusted source, the pharmacist.

The behavioral effect of these interactions is quite measurable. Patient-Pharmacist interactions are triggered and monitored through the routine prescription cycle, enabling on point clinical messaging and information gathering.

With access to extensive datasets of anonymised patient level data, Patient Connect provides both valuable insights to design better targeted programs and the ability to quantify the impact of these programs. The opportunity to gather individual patient data at the point of dispensing also gives swift access to important real world evidence on product usage.

Julian Tompkins, Ashfield Regional President EUCAN, Asia & Emerging Markets said: "We are delighted to be launching this strategic alliance with Patient Connect. We believe that our joint services and approach to solving our client's challenges will make a huge impact for pharma companies and ultimately the patient. Patient Connect have an innovative service offering and we are looking forward to working with them in the months to come."

Zoe Barker, CEO of Patient Connect added: "This strategic alliance goes to the heart of our mission, which is to optimise patient care in an objectively measurable way. We are excited to be working with Ashfield and confident that the combination of their vast healthcare expertise and resources with our extensive patient reach and insights will benefit both pharma companies and patients alike."

For more information please contact:

Healthcare trade media:
Supriya Mathur / Hollie Vile, Hume Brophy
+44 (0)20 7862 6475
udg@humebrophy.com

Business / Financial media:
Lisa Kavanagh / Jack Hickey, Powerscourt
+44 (0)207 250 1446
UDGHealthCare@powerscourt-group.com

About Ashfield
Ashfield Commercial and Medical Services, part of UDG Healthcare plc, is a global leader in providing outsourced healthcare services to pharmaceutical, device and biotech companies. The company has 6,000 employees, operates in 18 countries across Europe, North America, South America and Asia and works with more than 250 companies, including all of the world's top 25 pharmaceutical companies. Its mission is to partner with its clients, improving lives by helping healthcare professionals and patients get the medicines, knowledge and support they need.

Ashfield provides contract sales teams, customer service reps, medical science liaison officers, remote detailing, nurse educators, medical information, healthcare communications, market access, market research, training, event management, digital, creative and pharmacovigilance services.
For more information, go to http://www.ashfieldhealthcare.com.

About UDG Healthcare plc
UDG Healthcare plc (LON: UDG) is a leading international provider of services to the healthcare industry, employing over 7,000 employees at operations across 20 countries including the US, UK, Ireland and Germany.

UDG Healthcare plc operates across three divisions: Ashfield Commercial & Medical Services, Sharp Packaging Services and Supply Chain Services.

Ashfield Commercial & Medical Services is a global leader in commercialisation services for the pharmaceutical and healthcare industry, operating across two broad areas of activity: commercial and clinical services, and healthcare communications. It focuses on supporting healthcare professionals and patients at all stages of the product life cycle. The division provides sales teams, healthcare communications, telesales, nurse educators, medical information, pharmacovigilance (drug safety), regulatory and event management services to over 300 healthcare companies in 18 countries.

Sharp Packaging Services is a global leader in contract packaging and clinical trial packaging services for the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries, operating from state of the art facilities across the US and Europe. Sharp is also a world leader in 'Track and Trace' serialisation services, which will require all prescription drugs to have a unique serial code for authentication and traceability.

Supply Chain Services consists of Aquilant, a leading provider of outsourced sales, marketing, distribution and engineering services to the medical and scientific sectors in the UK, Ireland and the Netherlands and our minority interest in Medicare, a pharmacy chain in Northern Ireland.

The company is listed on the London Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the FTSE 250.
For more information please go to: http://www.udghealthcare.com

About Patient Connect
Patient Connect is the market leader in supporting patients at the point of dispensing with a pharmacy network covering 10 European countries, the USA and Australia and a reach of almost 450 million patients. Its mission is to optimize patient care in an objectively measurable way, helping to improve health outcomes.

Through the pharmacist-patient interface Patient Connect provides a number of services to the biopharmaceutical industry including Patient Compliance/Adherence studies, Patient Recruitment to support programs, registries or clinical studies, Real World Evidence surveys and Patient Insights from analysis of anonymized datasets.

For more information please go to:http://www.patientconnect.eu and http://www.patientreach.com