The radical change to deliver patient- and customer-centric engagement
Part Three – Patient Centricity
How can the pharma/biotech industry further adapt to meet the demand for patient centricity?
There is a strong demand for patient centricity in the pharma/biotech industry, defined as “putting the patient first in an open and sustained engagement of the patient to respectfully and compassionately achieve the best experience and outcome for that person and their family” (Yeoman et al., 2017). Given patients’ exposure to excellent customer experiences across other industries, where “real-time personalisation is increasingly the norm” (Accenture, 2019a), patients nowadays have very high, patient-centric expectations. 76% of consumers expect pharma/healthcare providers to deliver services that help them manage their health, and 59% expect their customer service to be “as good as that of Amazon” (Reinbolz & Schäfer, 2018).
Moreover, since healthcare outcomes depend on patient engagement, 91% of employees in the pharma industry also believe “it is very or extremely important for pharma to deliver on its patient-focused missions” (Reinbolz & Schäfer, 2018). Despite the clear demand, the 2018 Corporate Reputation of Pharma survey by PatientView, which collated feedback from 1500 patient groups, found that only 35% of patient groups say the industry is “excellent” or “good” at putting patients first (Accenture, 2019a). What does pharma need to do to bridge the gap between these expectations and the current level of delivery? And how can pharma continue to work towards achieving these expectations?
A lack of understanding of patient needs is hindering patient centricity
Pharma believes the disconnect between wanting and achieving patient-centric outcomes lies in a lack of understanding patient needs… and patients agree! In one study, almost half of all patients confirmed “they don’t feel biopharma companies understand their emotional, financial and treatment needs well enough to help them best manage their condition” (Accenture, 2019a). Yet, 76% of consumers expect pharma/healthcare to understand their individual needs (Reinbolz & Schäfer, 2018). Instead of assuming what patients want, pharma must learn their actual needs and requirements. This is challenging because the types of patients vary widely, and their needs change constantly depending on the events and challenges they face at any given moment. There is no one-size-fits-all solution.
How can the pharma and biotech industry learn what patients’ needs are?
To begin understanding patient needs, pharma/biotech companies will need to make patient centricity part of the core business, integrating it into the vision, mission, and strategy, and ensuring stakeholders do not see it as simply an add-on service. We also recommend involving patients at all stages of the drug development process to achieve meaningful outcomes.
Listening to individual patients provides invaluable insight into real needs, values, and challenges, and makes patients feel they have a more active role, improving transparency and building patient-pharma company relationships. For further information on how pharma brand teams can generate better insights to understand customer needs, please refer to Part 1 – Insight.
Case Study: LEO Pharma’s strategies for patient centricity
- LEO Pharma has put patients at the centre of its operating model through implementing its “Helping SARAH strategy,” an “ethical and people-focused ethos and strategy of LEO Pharma which is ingrained throughout all levels” of the organisation. Throughout the company, employees are reminded to ask themselves, “How is it helping SARAH?” to ensure the work they are doing is with a “focus on the patients they are there to help.”
- LEO Pharma’s Voices in Partnership (ViP) programme involves patients in developing programmes that raise awareness and reduce the burdens associated with dermatological or thrombotic conditions. By joining a company team on a long-term basis, patients can share their first-hand perspectives on the challenges they face living with their condition.
How can the pharmaceutical and biotech industry become more patient-centric?
Pharma companies can approach patient centricity through a variety of methods. We suggest that companies will need to take the following key steps to become more patient-centric:
1 – Develop better KPI models to measure the outcomes of patient-centric models/strategies and track how well the needs of patients are met. Fewer than half of the pharmaceutical companies piloting patient-centric models can accurately measure the impact of their services on business and patient outcomes (Reinbolz & Schäfer, 2018). To overcome this issue, companies will need to develop appropriate key performance indicators (KPIs) to monitor and continuously improve patient-centric models (Ascher, Höglund, M’lika, Ostojic, & Vancauwenberghe, 2018). For example, PwC suggests designing metrics around a return on experience (ROX) framework based on customer experience in addition to traditional return on investment (ROI) metrics to measure a company’s success (PwC, 2019).
Q. – Are you tracking your patient-centric initiatives?
2 – Investigate how services beyond the product, such as patient support programmes, can be implemented since medicines alone do not meet all the needs of patients. Patient support programmes can improve patient engagement by making patients feel more supported. In the case of medicines used by larger populations, where direct human-to-human patient support for each patient is not feasible, digital tools can be used.
Q. – Does your company provide “beyond the pill” services? What additional capabilities do you need to develop/improve such services?
Pharma vs Patient Organisation Services
An Accenture survey of 4,000 patients with Migraine, Rheumatoid Arthritis or Chronic Lymphocytic Leukaemia from the US, UK, France and Germany, showed that 76% of patients believed pharmaceutical companies have a responsibility to provide services that complement their products. “Patients today perceive pharma companies as having the lowest understanding of their emotional, financial and other needs related to their condition among payers, providers, pharmacies and patient organisations” (Accenture, 2019b). Consequently, patients prefer to use services provided by patient organisations rather than those provided by pharmaceutical companies, even for obtaining information on therapies and clinical trials. These observations highlight a big opportunity for pharmaceutical and biotech companies to collaborate with patient organisations, something which patients are demanding, as they hope this would “create a more seamless experience.” Additionally, half of the patients who were surveyed said they engage with patient organisations before their treatment begins. It may be advantageous for pharmaceutical companies to also engage with patients earlier in the patient journey (Accenture, 2019b).
3 – Work towards providing patients with better access and information. Workshops and validation exercises in US and European patient forums revealed that, in the opinion of patients and caregivers, the two most important principles a pharma/biotech company must embody are to provide education/information and provide access to medicines (Yeoman et al., 2017). Consequently, to become more patient-centric, pharma needs to provide patients with more easily understandable information, using patients’ preferred channels, and improve access to medicines. Bristol-Myers Squibb, for example, has created comprehensive access support websites, including a customer support centre, that provide information on financial support options.
Q – Does your pharma/biotech company have services in place to deliver clear information and access to all patients?
4 – Provide patients with self-management tools and services. Patients have a strong desire to manage their own health, something which pharma/biotech companies should support to become patient-centric (Yeoman et al., 2017). For example, Shire collaborated with Accenture to develop a mobile application that connects patients to its Patient Services programme, allows them to monitor disease symptoms and health events via an e-diary, and provides access to other resources, including disease education, patient support, financial support, and arranging infusion or injection training from a nurse (Accenture, 2020).
Q. – Does your company have the capabilities to introduce such self-management tools? If not, is there a recruitment or training plan in place to prepare for the introduction of digital technologies?
What are the implications of patient centricity for marketing?
Interviewees stated that pharma tends to hide behind the code of practice and blame ethics and compliance for its departmental lack of innovation. One company, for example, will not engage with any pre-licensing preparation activity either internally or externally. Leading pharma companies, however, are pushing the boundaries and testing innovative marketing strategies, taking advice from compliance bodies and working with them to interpret the local code of practice. Once an innovative idea is created, pharma needs to invest in navigating and adapting it to ensure compliance with regulations. The interviewees argued that if a pharma brand team is able to show that their innovative marketing strategy benefits patients, then innovative strategies, or adapted versions of their initial concepts, can usually be implemented.
- Branding
- Lead
- Growth Team
- “Customer 4 Life”
- Marketing Ops
The “Customer 4 Life” team, for example, is responsible for nurturing and retaining existing customers. This same organisational approach could apply to other customers, such as physicians, whereby the roles of teams range from “awareness-based branding to lead generation and nurturing, to customer retention” (Modern Marketing Partners, 2014).
The rigid hierarchical structure and large scale of most pharmaceutical companies will make such organisational changes difficult to implement; however, it may be useful to begin testing such ideas on a small scale. In the meantime, there are many ways in which pharma brand teams can become more patient-centric internally. Our consultants have summarised some tips below…
Put yourself in the patient’s shoes and really understand what it’s like to be them
Allocate a patient champion in the team who represents the patient voice in every meeting
Teach the importance of patient centricity company-wide through regularly sharing letters, quotes and patient thanks in team meetings and internal communications
Implement language that is more patient- than pharma-focused
Empathise with the patients, understanding that every health condition has a different, and often devastating, impact for the individual and their families
Needs of the patient must be put at the centre of everything the brand team does
Tension between patient and HCP needs to be fully understood
Conduct immersive interviews with patients, not only focused on the condition but on their thoughts and emotions
Engage and involve patients in the development of care solutions
Notice emotion and language used in patient forum chats
Team exercises can be used to focus team members on a time when they, or a close friend or family member, were a patient
Recognition of patient-centric behaviours in the brand team from senior leaders to incentivise patient-centric outputs
Invite patients to share their experiences in greater depth – emotion can sometimes be shared when they bring a partner, friend, caregiver or their HCP with them
Create an in-depth picture of the patient journey – from presentation of symptoms to full diagnosis and treatment
To conclude, there is a clear demand for patient centricity, but pharma is not currently fully meeting it. We have outlined many ways in which pharma/biotech companies and pharma brand teams can become more patient-centric – now pharma must continue to adapt!
We are a team of industry experts, with services in planning, strategy, capability, launch, early commercialisation and transformation, so if you’d like to talk to us about how to make your brand teams or plan more patient-centric, please do get in touch with us to discuss how we may help you.
References
Accenture. (2019a). Biopharma marketing: Harnessing change for growth. Retrieved from Biopharma marketing: Harnessing change for growth.
Accenture. (2019b). Better Together 2019 Patient Services Survey. Retrieved from accenture.com: https://www.accenture.com/_acnmedia/PDF-106/Accenture-Life-Sciences-Better-Together-2019-Patient-Services-Survey.pdf#zoom=50
Accenture. (2020). A Helping Hand For Patients – Enhanced Patient Experience with Mobile Tech. Retrieved from https://www.accenture.com/: https://www.accenture.com/bg-en/success-helping-hand-for-patients
Ascher, J., Höglund, D., M’lika, A., Ostojic, I., & Vancauwenberghe, M. (2018, August). From product to customer experience: The new way to launch in pharma. Retrieved from https://www.mckinsey.com/: https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/pharmaceuticals-and-medical-products/our-insights/from-product-to-customer-experience-the-new-way-to-launch-in-pharma#
Cleffi, J., & Bogdan, B. (2018). Product Launch: The Patient Has Spoken. Retrieved from https://www.accenture.com/: https://www.accenture.com/us-en/insight-product-launch-survey
LEO Pharma. (2019). Supporting patients. Retrieved from www.leo-pharma.co.uk: https://www.leo-pharma.co.uk/Home/Supporting-you/Supporting-Patients.aspx
Modern Marketing Partners. (2014, April 16). 7 Types of Marketing Organization Structures. Retrieved from modernmarketingpartners.com: https://www.modernmarketingpartners.com/7-types-of-marketing-organization-structures/
PwC. (2019). Global Consumer Insights Survey 2019: Healthcare and pharmaceuticals. Retrieved from pwc.com: https://www.pwc.com/gx/en/industries/healthcare/publications/return-on-experience-gcis.html
Reinbolz, A., & Schäfer, D. (2018, November 22). Five questions guiding the way to actual patient-centricity. Retrieved from PMLive: http://www.pmlive.com/pharma_thought_leadership/five_questions_guiding_the_way_to_actual_patient-centricity_1259649
Yeoman, G., Furlong, P., Seres, M., Binder, H., Chung, H., Garzya, V., & Jones, R. R. (2017). Defining patient centricity with patients for patients and caregivers: a collaborative endeavour. BMJ Innovations, 3:76–83.
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