Agile Therapeutics Gets Big Insights for a Novel Women’s Healthcare Launch

Increasingly, emerging life sciences companies working on novel therapies need to have data and analytics systems that are as modern and agile as those of their more established peers. How to do that with fewer technical and financial resources or having a technical infrastructure in place? Agile Therapeutics found its answer in Veeva Nitro, a data and analytics platform purpose-built for life sciences.

Data needed to support new product launch

Agile Therapeutics needed both fine-grained and broad, patient-level data to support the launch of its birth control patch Twirla. Not just how many women there were in the United States of reproductive age, but specific data on things like their body mass index (BMI), because Twirla is indicated for women with a BMI under 30 kg/m2. The Affordable Care Act requires most private U.S. health insurance plans to cover contraceptives, so Agile also needed deep understanding on payers, patient insurance, and formularies.

The women’s health market has an abundance of data, and Agile Therapeutics had been gathering information from multiple sources. The company needed a way to store all this data and run analytics on it that was within the budget of an emerging pharmaceutical company.

“With Veeva Nitro, we now have a direct impact on the business because decisions that affect the bottom line can be made based on data.” — Sunny Longordo, senior director, commercial insights, Agile Therapeutics

In February 2020, just before the pandemic hit, the company had hired a leader of commercial insights with three decades of experience in big pharma. Sunny Longordo knew she couldn’t approach data analytics at Agile Therapeutics the way she had at her previous employers: It didn’t have a multimillion-dollar data budget and she was the only analytics employee.

To find a solution quickly, Longordo networked with industry colleagues, and one whom she held in high regard strongly recommended Veeva Nitro. He told her that his company had used Veeva Nitro to strengthen its approach to intelligent customer engagement, and was very pleased with the results.

Despite the praises, Longordo was highly skeptical. “I thought that there’s absolutely no way that it can do what you’re saying for the cost you’re saying,” she recalls telling him. “I was actually afraid to sign the agreement because my frame of reference was what I had just been dealing with.” But with Twirla’s launch just six months away, she embraced Nitro. The solution enabled Agile Therapeutics to swiftly connect to its Veeva commercial applications and third-party data sources.

Turnkey solution for analytics

With long experience in setting up data warehouses, Longordo and Daniel Mammone, Agile Therapeutics’ director of business systems, had expected its Nitro implementation to be long and complicated. It wasn’t. Agile Therapeutics got up and running quickly with key commercial data sets that it could immediately put to use. “It really was a turnkey solution for us,” says Mammone.

“We could’ve done this ourselves,” he adds, “but we would still be building out the customer master. We spend less time on data warehouse issues and more time analyzing. Nitro provides everything I need.”

Mammone and Longordo have become enthusiastic converts to Nitro, both for what it can do and for the support that their company has received from Veeva. “The team that I was given to implement it was downright flawless,” Longordo stresses. “And I got to the point where I wanted to put more into this tool and better integrate it with Agile’s operations.”

Clear insights into revenue opportunities

Thanks to faster access to detailed data and Nitro’s analytics capabilities, Longordo and Mammone can make well-founded decisions more quickly. “We have answers in seconds,” Longordo says, “not hours, days, or weeks, and I appreciate that.”

Speed to insights isn’t the only benefit, however. “We have credibility because we’re fast and accurate,” Longordo adds. “With Veeva Nitro, we now have a direct impact on the business because decisions that affect the bottom line can be made based on data.”

“Data is a direct golden thread to the bottom line.” — Sunny Longordo, senior director, commercial insights, Agile Therapeutics

Case in point: Nitro allowed Agile Therapeutics to discover that not every insurance company was covering Twirla the way that it was supposed to under the Affordable Care Act. But, thanks to Nitro, the company has discovered which payers are doing full reimbursement and it is concentrating on those now.

Longordo said that Nitro also helps Agile Therapeutics to quickly see the impact of promotional efforts and the results that they drive. “Data,” stresses Longordo, “is a direct golden thread to the bottom line.”

Longordo and Mammone agree that, had they not decided on Nitro, they would not have had the data and insights needed to support Twirla in time for its launch. They appreciate the credibility that Nitro’s benefits have given their work, within Agile Therapeutics and in the women’s health industry. And they are firmly convinced that Nitro can support Agile Therapeutics well into the future.

“I very strongly believe that we haven’t tapped the end of Nitro,” Longordo says. “I feel like we are in a place where, as we grow, Nitro can grow and we can take advantage of new things that are in it.”

Veeva Nitro

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