Patient centricity: Mind the capacity gap

Pharmaceutical companies and regulators are in need of increasing amounts of input from patients throughout the entire product development lifecycle, from identifying what questions to ask in the earliest stages of research through clinical development to approval.    This usually means partnering with patient organisations and advocacy groups but pharma ’s ambitions here frequently come up against a problem. Very often, both industry and patient organisations are not set up to participate in these processes – with industry lacking systematic processes and patient advocates the required training and resources..   Since many patient organisations are both volunteer-run and chronically underfunded, they often lack the capacity to resource meaningful engagement on the professional level required by industry.    An obvious way forward for pharma is expanding the work it does with such groups to develop their ability to participate in pharmaceutical and medical research, and by helping expand their technical skills or administrative resources.    But if it is to scale such patient engagement optimally, pharma must first understand the challenges involved. Not least among these is a very basic need to bring individuals up to speed on the nature of the industry and its complexities, says Susan Schaeffer, President& CEO of The Patients ’ Academy for Research Advocacy, a US, non-profit, patient education start-up.   “Very few people who don ' t work in the ph...
Source: EyeForPharma - Category: Pharmaceuticals Authors: Source Type: news