Insights

Five Insights from Blue Charm’s Respiratory Program in Partnership with the Canadian Lung Association

February 15, 2024
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Blue Charm launched its first respiratory program in October 2022. Our original goal with Blue Charm for Asthma was to help patients:

  1. Learn more about their disease
  2. Stay on top of their medications
  3. Have their voice heard 

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After supporting over 2,000 patients, it’s safe to say we’ve achieved that and more. We experienced such significant patient demand for our digital health platform that we expanded to COPD in June 2023. Since then, Blue Charm has built the largest program of its kind in Canada supporting people living with Asthma and COPD. 

Terry Dean, President & CEO of the Canadian Lung Association, expressed enthusiasm for the program, stating, "Our medical experts have told us that patient education is a key element for helping people with lung disease live their best life.  New and innovative approaches like Blue Charm can support other proven support tools as we all learn differently, with the end goal of optimal disease management."

In addition to bringing tremendous value to patients, we’re starting to see the transformational impact of our patient insights and real-world data (RWD). Blue Charm partners across the Canadian healthcare ecosystem with clinics, providers, patient associations, life sciences companies, pharmacy, and patient support programs. To make patient-centric care a reality, we must first listen to patients and hear what they have to say. 

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Five key insights from our first COPD and Asthma programs

At Blue Charm, we hear directly from patients about the challenges they face, things they need, and impact of their medications. In today’s article we’re sharing a few insights from our asthma and COPD patients. 

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84% of COPD patients experience at least one exacerbation per year. 

This is significantly more than the 29-47% of patients commonly reported to have at least one exacerbation per year. Our observation highlights the reality of disease control for patients with COPD in a real-world setting.  

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50% of COPD patients believe that daily habits (exercise, diet, smoking) have moderate to no impact on their COPD symptoms. 

There is a need for further education and reinforcement of maintaining a healthy lifestyle when managing COPD.  

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49% of COPD patients did not receive any education on how to manage the possible side effects of their treatment. 

Providers have limited time with patients. We have to invest in other resources and channels to help patients receive the proactive COPD education they need. 

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39% of patients that describe their asthma as “poorly controlled” say that they “rarely” or “never” discuss their asthma control with their HCP. 

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Access to a respirologist or specialist is the leading resource asthma patients felt they’d be most likely to use to help manage their disease. 

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Source:

The above insights were extracted from Blue Charm’s Asthma (1,890 enrolled patients in 2023) and COPD (332 enrolled patients in 2023) programs. For a more detailed look at these insights (by province, by medication type, by age band), please get in contact with the Blue Charm team. 

Program Improvements 

Based on patient and partner feedback, we’ve made 3 key changes to our Asthma and COPD programs going forward: 

  1. Available in French and English. Supporting patients across Canada allows us to understand how patient preferences and experiences are impacted by where they live. 
  2. Support for multiple inhalers on enrollment. We heard from patients that they were confused about what inhaler to use during enrollment. Many patients use multiple inhalers to treat their condition (i.e., ICS/LABA + LAMA). It’s now super easy for patients to sign-up with multiple inhalers, and improves the quality of our insights and segmentation. 
  3. Incorporation of clinically-validated disease control tests. Patients going through our asthma program complete the ACT, and patients going through our COPD program complete the CAT. 

Partner with Blue Charm

Over the past few months, we’ve launched new versions of both our Asthma and COPD programs. We expect to support 1,000 new patients every year in each program, and are excited to continue making the patient voice the most important part of the conversation. 

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If you’d like your patients to get access to this program, or you’re interested in patient insights, please get in touch. 

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