Why the Indian Pharma sector should invest in partnering the patient in disease management?

The Indian pharma sector should start partnering with patients in their disease management journey to improve adherence towards treatment. It is a known fact that patients most often tend to stop the treatment after experiencing either relief or thinking the medication is ineffective leading to intentional discontinuation of medications. Counseling patients towards treatment adherence often consumes a huge amount of time, which the doctors can substitute towards the diagnosis of other patients’ diseases.

The pharma sector for long has been focused on engaging with doctors for prescription medicines or advertising for OTC medicines. But only a few companies will venture to engage with patients, understand their problems, and offer counseling to ensure adherence to treatment.

Here are a couple of ideas pharma companies can explore towards patients’ engagement:

1.??????Patient education – The pharma industry can create a series of small video series, which can be shared with the patients on weekly basis. This will focus on specific diseases condition explanation, information about the treatment, and how this treatment helps, etc. These videos will at least help to bring transparency and motivate the patients to believe in the treatment.

2.??????Support groups – With pandemic and social distancing, it is better to use social media tools for conducting weekly support group meetings. The pharma company should help the doctor to create different patient groups on WhatsApp or Facebook. A weekly Zoom or Hangout meeting using a webcam can help the patients to share their success stories and motivate others. Once a fortnight the HCP can also participate to cheer the patient groups.

3.??????Gamification of treatment – Though this idea is unique, but not been explored by major pharma companies. The entire treatment cycle can be gamified via a mobile app. The pharma company can invest to create mobile apps for treatment like PCOS, Allergic problems, etc, and promote it via the clinic. Each HCP will be the coach of his clinic team, and each team member's entire treatment is uploaded, the patient needs to keep on updating the mobile app for each initiative they take towards their disease management. This will help them to earn points and make them leaders of the group.

4.??????Counselling sessions – It is a known fact that longer the treatment cycle often leads to a lack of enthusiasm in following the entire treatment journey. The pharma company can partner with a therapist or counselor who can help the patients understand and motivate them towards adherence to treatment.

5.??????Home care – Due to the pandemic more patients and their families are reluctant to venture out for regular health tests, checkups, or wound dressings. Here the pharma company can partner with a home care company to offer these services at subsidized costs. Again, with more patient touchpoints, it will be easy to engage and ensure adherence to treatment.?

Engaging with patients will have a twofold impact:

1.??????It will ensure the HCPs focus on diagnosis and free time can be invested in studying the scientific materials shared by the pharma companies.

2.??????The pharma companies would know the impact of the drugs on the patients, the preferred mode of delivery the patients would appreciate, and other aspects of drug treatment. These insights can be shared with the research and development team to improvise the treatment.??

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