Growing Pains

There is no one-size-fits-all model for pharma companies seeking input from patients. There was no blueprint when companies took their first tentative steps a few years ago and there is none now as they enter the next era – scaling up patient-centric efforts to become business as usual.“When I talk to patient organizations, many times they ask, Why does wanting better patient outcomes require a culture shift in pharma?” says Laura McKeaveney, Head of Global Patient Advocacy at Novartis. “But that’s not what requires the culture shift.”People who work in pharma want better patient outcomes, she says, “but if you look at our models, for 150 years we’ve had the healthcare professionals at the center of our universe, then the regulator and the payer community entered into the healthcare ecosystem. Now, with the rise of the patient movement in the 1980s and 1990s, we have a new stakeholder group . This is an evolution and we ought not to be too hard on ourselves.”Yet, with the plethora of patient-led research that is “driving very deep insights” into how pharma would have looked if patient insights had been included from the beginning, the time for action is now, she says. “It shouldn’t be a choice anymore; if you want to optimize value in the system then you’ve got to make patient engagement fundament al to your business.“These trends are irreversible; the patient movement isn’t going to go backwards, the regulators are increasingly providing guida...
Source: EyeForPharma - Category: Pharmaceuticals Authors: Source Type: news