Ryan Haumschild, PharmD, MS, MBA, CPEL

Panelists discuss how aligning evolving payer policies with real-world oncology practice is key to sustaining timely and equitable patient access.

Panelists discuss how national policy reforms are reshaping oncology care by balancing affordability efforts with the need to preserve access and innovation.

Panelists discuss how negative symptoms like lack of motivation, social withdrawal, and impaired expression significantly impact patients’ ability to maintain relationships and employment, representing a challenging aspect of care with limited effective treatment options.

Panelists discuss how physician assistants play an essential role in addressing the critical shortage of psychiatrists, particularly in rural areas, where 55% of US counties lack a single psychiatric provider and 143 million Americans live in psychiatric shortage areas.

Oncology experts at PCOC 2025 discuss breakthrough therapies, AI-driven care, and evolving care delivery models shaping the future of oncology.

Panelists discuss how managed care organizations can leverage prescription digital therapeutics as cost-reduction tools to address quality metrics and offset financial impacts from health care policy changes while identifying education of providers about workflow impacts and value propositions as the biggest unmet need for wider adoption in mental health conditions.

Panelists discuss how insurance coverage for prescription digital therapeutics remains uneven due to uncertain reimbursement pathways, lack of awareness among health care leaders, challenges in demonstrating cost-effectiveness, provider workflow concerns, and technical barriers including coding issues and limited electronic health record integration.

Panelists discuss how prescription digital therapeutics differ from traditional pharmaceuticals by following FDA medical device approval pathways focused on clinical performance and safety rather than chemistry and manufacturing while offering potential economic value by extending behavioral health capacity to underserved populations, especially in rural areas with limited mental health professionals.

Panelists discuss how schizophrenia imposes significant economic costs across direct medical expenses, nonmedical expenses, and indirect costs, with negative symptoms particularly amplifying the burden by reducing patient engagement, work capacity, and treatment adherence while increasing relapse risk and total cost of care.

Panelists discuss how prescription digital therapeutics will ideally be used in combination with traditional medications to provide optimal outcomes, particularly for patients hesitant about medication or those in early stages of illness where diagnostic certainty may be evolving.

Panelists discuss how the CONVOKE clinical trial was designed as a 16-week study focusing specifically on patients with negative symptoms, incorporating patient input in app development and showing improvements in negative symptoms, depression, and cognitive function even in chronically ill patients.

Panelists discuss how prescription digital therapeutics are currently used in clinical practice, noting that while none are yet approved for schizophrenia, CT-155 shows promise in phase 3 trials, and existing PDTs like Rejoyn for depression demonstrate the potential for technology-based interventions.

Panelists discuss how prescription digital therapeutics can serve the psychological and social components of schizophrenia treatment while potentially improving medication adherence, similar to how digital monitoring tools enhance outcomes in other chronic conditions like diabetes and hypertension.

Panelists discuss how the global shortage of psychiatrists contributes to patient burden by necessitating expanded training for other health care professionals, including nurse practitioners, physician assistants, primary care doctors, and law enforcement to recognize and manage schizophrenia symptoms.

Panelists discuss how negative symptoms create significant patient burden by appearing during the prodromal period in late adolescence and requiring a comprehensive biopsychosocial treatment approach that addresses biological, psychological, and social aspects of care.

Oncology stakeholders are navigating new policies as the landscape quickly evolves, according to Ryan Haumschild, PharmD, MS, MBA, CPEL.

Panelists discuss how successful access initiatives include integrated specialty pharmacies, community-based clinics, clinical trial opportunities, telehealth services, and financial assistance programs like 340B to serve underserved populations with atopic dermatitis.

Panelists discuss how diverse clinical trial data help build patient trust by demonstrating therapy effectiveness in similar populations and address barriers like health care mistrust and representation in treatment development.

Panelists discuss how negative symptoms of schizophrenia differ from positive and cognitive symptoms, explaining that negative symptoms involve withdrawal, flat affect, and poverty of thought rather than the more visible hallucinations and delusions of positive symptoms.

Panelists discuss how recent clinical trials like ADmirable and DISCOVER intentionally enrolled patients with skin of color (Fitzpatrick types IV-VI), demonstrating similar efficacy and safety profiles for biologics across diverse racial populations, with more than 70% achieving a 75% or greater improvement in the Eczema Area and Severity Index (EASI-75).

Panelists discuss how historical underrepresentation of patients with darker skin tones in clinical trials has limited understanding of treatment efficacy and safety across diverse populations, hampering real-world clinical decision-making.

Panelists discuss how health care providers need coordinated multidisciplinary care teams, visual resources like databases for eczema in skin of color, peer-to-peer educational sessions, and case-based learning to better recognize and manage atopic dermatitis (AD) across diverse skin tones.

Panelists discuss how treatment access challenges require provider advocacy through peer-to-peer reviews and patient assistance programs, whereas cost-effectiveness evaluation focuses on time to specialist care, therapy duration, and quality-of-life outcomes.

Panelists discuss how biologic therapy selection depends on disease burden rather than just body surface area (BSA), with monitoring requiring objective measures, patient-reported outcomes, and specialized photography documentation for patients with darker skin tones.

Panelists discuss how patients with darker skin tones often experience delayed diagnosis due to misidentification as fungal infections or other conditions, emphasizing the importance of shared decision-making and patient education about the immune-mediated nature of the disease.

Panelists discuss how atopic dermatitis (AD) presents differently across skin tones, appearing as purple, gray, or barely visible inflammation rather than classic redness, with perifollicular prominence and postinflammatory pigmentation changes being more prominent in patients with darker skin.

Panelists discuss how atopic dermatitis (AD) extends far beyond pruritus to include pain, sleep disturbances, psychosocial stigma, and quality-of-life impacts that affect patients’ work, school, and daily functioning regardless of disease severity.

Panelists discuss how health care professionals face educational gaps in understanding atopic dermatitis (AD) immunopathogenesis, with advanced practice providers (APPS) particularly needing additional training outside standard curricula to master biologic therapy selection.

Panelists discuss how atopic dermatitis involves complex inflammatory and neuronal pathways, with IL-4, IL-13, and IL-31 cytokines driving Th2-mediated inflammation that varies across different racial populations.

Panelists discuss how providers and payers must collaborate to develop innovative coverage criteria for BTK inhibitors that prevent patients with subclinical progression from being forced to fail multiple inappropriate therapies before accessing optimal treatment.