So...you want to be patient-centric?
Dr. Timos Papagatsias
BioPharma & HealthTech Competitive Strategy & Insights | Digital & AI Solutions | Gene & Cell Therapy | Vaccines
Although Patient Centricity (PC) is yet to be fully defined and understood by all stakeholders involved in a "PC"-termed process, it is something that is set to dominate pharma marketing for the foreseeable future. It is no surprise then that it creates such a buzz in the pharma circles.
However, despite the great interest PC is attracting, if one looks across a wide spectrum of pharma companies, they can see differences arising in how PC is defined and applied. Quite often companies see PC as them being able to provide increased patient support at a post-prescription / post-drug purchase stage (dedicated oncology nurse teams for example) or simply by being more active interacting with patients on social media. In the end, one could argue that true patient centricity requires a company to think about the needs of the patient at the R&D planning stage, use input from patients and physicians at all stages of product development and support patients closely once they become "customers"...
The above description is, or should be, the target for pharma, however, how does one go about designing, implementing and supporting such a process? This question is one that Social Pharma deals with on a regular basis and we would like to share some of our thoughts on the graph below. Our suggestions are by no means all-inclusive but we feel they provide a good primer for companies who have decided to adopt PC.
- Choose a PC-friendly TA: COPD, MS, other chronic / orphan conditions offer a good starting place for initiating PC-activities
- Experiment with low stakes: Depending on company size and reach, select a small region to run pilot programmes and finetune details
- Make PC second nature for your company: You need internal stakeholder buy-in and your staff to think PC-first; the latter will be difficult to implement
- Regulators are your best friends: Clarify restrictions and test PC concepts with regulators early on; input from US, EU and other regulatory bodies should be used to provide PC frameworks
- Understand how to use new tech: E-health, mhealth, new monitoring devices etc. will attract patient/physician/payor attention and can be very useful if properly used
- Be visible on Social Media: Patients and physicians use social media, so should you. Implement social media strategy early on with dedicated team. Train your staff to be SM-savvy
- Repeat: After testing your approach in a therapy area or product, refine and repeat the process for others
We hope the above is useful; please let us know thoughts below. You can contact us at [email protected]
Re-posted with edits from www.socialpharma.net
PC approach is well known in marketing as Customer Care supported by precision marketing. All efforts are driven to make patient care as individual and personal as possible keeping in mind overall cost and need to keep the process economically viable. So there is a constant tug of war between Angel of PC attitude and Devil of finance and bare economic necessities. It seems that personel of health care industry lacks marketing knowledge and practice in a very specific way. The problem is that such knowledge really exists in all entities engaged in the business, but its concentrated at Patient Care Department or Unit and should be transferred to minds and hearts of all personel involved. Thus behavioural aspects of marketing in health care business will have haydays in the nearest future. Free flow of information, not to mention its quality, make people looking for support in thw web. This was accuretely described in www.socialpharma.net post titled From Dr. Who to Dr. Google. Patients await holistic approach in contrary to narrow specialization of MDs who can cure one illness inducing another in other part of the body. GPs face huge problem to be the first in chain of all MDs to take care of a single patiens because of fast developments and changes in medical knowledge. Internet as an only source of information leads to a situation when a new "benchmark" is set up spontaneously in the web. It is affected by many factors and ways of possessing information input by patients. Whats more benchmark is segmented deeply by numerous determinants starting from age, gender and education and finishing on social status and spatial factor. Spontaneously created benchmark rises expectations towards the extention and quality of health services regardless of the reality. It can be pressumed that usually those expectations are at least slightly higher than possibilities to satisfy them what results in critisism induced by frustration.It seems that identification of all determinants forming unspoken and informal expected standard of PC service is a vital task looming in front of health care industry. Why shouldn't socialpharma.net be an initiator of such a cross-boarder at least Pan-European research? Why shouldn't we carry it out to raise the standard of service and by that standard of living? Dr. Adam K. P. Drab ([email protected])