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Comment on articleDi Stafford from The Patient Practice comments on PwC's recent report: Pharma 2020 - The Vision and highlights the renewed focus on patients as key influencing stakeholders, and the role patient understanding can play in value creation.
I’ve just been reading Price Waterhouse Cooper’s recent report: Pharma 2020: The Vision – Which path will you take? with some interest.
Sadly they didn’t ask me to contribute (I used to be deluged by requests for input into stuff like this when I was at Pfizer), but nevertheless, I’m pleased to see we’re in agreement.
Lots of focus on the patient. Excellent.
I can vaguely recall a similar such document about a decade ago (Pharma 2010 perhaps?) and being disappointed that the authors didn’t quite share my enthusiasm for patient-centric thinking.
I’d urge people to take a look at the report, but just to give you a taster, here are some of the patient-related highlights:
“The needs of patients are changing … Where treatment is migrating from the doctor to ancillary care or self-care, patients will require more comprehensive information. Where treatment is migrating from the hospital to the primary-care sector, patients will require new services such as home delivery.”
“Patients are playing a bigger part in the process, too. Indeed, they are even helping to decide which products should reach, or remain on, the market.”
“Patients will become even more influential, as access to reliable healthcare information increases, the use of co-payments proliferates and the trend towards self-medication grows.”
“The industry will have to work much harder for its dollars, collaborate with healthcare payers and providers, and improve patient compliance”
“…if Pharma is to command premium prices for its products in future, it will need to help patients manage their health.”
“The development of medicines the market actually wants to buy will not be enough, though. By 2020, pharmaceutical companies will need to offer a suite of supporting services for the treatments they launch.”
“… Pharma will also have to enter the health management space, with compliance programmes, nutritional advice, exercise facilities, health screening and other such services”
Nothing new, you might say, but I think what struck me was the continued emphasis on the important role the patient will play in the future. This, and the fact that PwC place the patient at the very heart or their ‘single, circular value chain’ and highlight the patient’s key role in judging whether a new product is innovative or not.
And to further emphasise the point, PwC even identifies the 'Patient Communications Officer' as a key role within the marketing and sales function of the future.
Other industries (FMCG, retail) have been putting the end user at the centre of their product and service design for some time, and now it seems it really is time for pharma to do the same.
We all know it’s a more complex customer relationship, especially in the UK, where the buying customer is often different to the user, but it does seem that patients are now being recognised for their important influence, and we need to find ways to manage through the complexity to deliver real value for them.
We need patient-centric thinking right across the business, from initial innovation and product development, through to product packaging, product delivery and patient support and communication.
And from conversations I’ve been having recently with clients, I see evidence that it’s beginning to happen.
Di Stafford is Director of The Patient Practice – a patient-centric marketing consultancy
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