Toward Patient-Centric Marketing

Transcription

1 20 May 2013 Vol. 12, No. 5 Pharma Marketing Network Toward Patient-Centric Marketing Working Effectively with Patient Groups Author: Miguel A. Tovar, (@blogaceutics on Twitter), Associate Manager and journalist at Contenidos e Información de Salud, S. L. (Barcelona, Spain) Published by: Pharma Marketing Network PO Box 760 Newtown, PA publisher@pharma-mkting.com PMN

2 Vol. 12, No. 5: May 20, 2013 p. 2 Part 1: Effective Ways of Working with Patient Groups I n his keynote speech at the eyeforpharma Barcelona 2013 conference, Keith Allan, head of global advocacy at Novartis, discussed working with patient advocacy groups and expressed his desire "to be seen as a part of the healthcare solution, engaging meaningfully with patient groups, instead of being seen as we were 20 years ago as a part of the problem". Allan recalled that "Nothing About Us Without Us!" was the motto of the European Cancer Patient Coalition established in "I think that motto represents the increasing power and importance that patient advocates inspired," he said. Evolution of Patient Advocacy Allan described the quick evolution of patient advocacy groups starting 20 to 30 years ago when patient associations were set up to support their members by providing health and advice. Then they became more sophisticated and capable and got involved in education and communications, particularly within the main therapeutic areas. At that time pharma realized that this was an opportunity for partnership to help in an ethical way with the education and training of patients. "But the big thing now that all we should be aware of is that now patient groups and patients are invited to the table to debate regulatory issues, political policy issues and in some cases reimbursement issues as well. So we have to take these people seriously, we have to involve them very early on in all our research programs, they need to be involved with us," he added. "Now they are part of the dialogue with health authorities, regulators, policy makers". In Allan s opinion, "there is a big gap between where we want to be and where we are now. He thinks that patient groups and patients are moving from being passive recipients of information and products to getting involved in disease management and the care of their own conditions. "So we have to take that seriously," he said. He believes that now is a time to go back to basics to look at things like trust, loyalty and sustainability when working with patient groups. "The growth of patient groups has increased 10-fold or 12-fold since the 2000, said Allan, thanks to the growing effectiveness of the patient movement. Now there are about 120,000 patient groups around the world," he estimated. "Patient groups are lobbying at the international level (UN, Brussels, WHO, etc.) and influencing the regulation of pharma activities, including reimbursement, providing services at the community level, and changing the framework within which the doctor works," he told the hundreds of delegates in the room. Characteristics of an Ideal Partnership Coping with legal restrictions regarding the information that can be communicated to patient groups, being accountable, and building up trust and consistency were the main challenges for the industry Allan said. Allan believes that the ideal partnership with patient organizations is based on finding a common agenda and treating each other as equals, being independent and being transparent. "The challenge is to get the balance right, getting to a point where we provide value to patients and patient advocates but complying with codes of integrity and conduct, said Allan. Understanding that challenge and regulating ourselves is very important. "The thing that most patient groups dislike intensely is constant change of contacts with the pharma representative, said Allan. For that reason he recommended that companies appoint one person to take on the responsibility rather than a multitude of people. This builds up trust and sustainability, he said. Meeting Patient Advocates Needs With regard to the most common needs of patient advocacy groups, Allan mentioned: help to become advocates and support to be better advocates; information about the new treatments; support for disease awareness initiatives. This must be done with transparency and compliance with the law. Allan referenced PatientView surveys as a good source of information about what patient groups expect from pharma. Many of the published results of these surveys confirned what Allan cited as important issues. According to the 2011 PatientView survey, the main factors about companies that affect reputation are: patient safety, adherence to the law, provision of high quality information to patients, having a patient-centered company strategy, high quality and useful products, transparency and ability to manage adverse news about products. On the other hand, the most important factors that promote patient groups to work with pharma are: trust, clarity, adherence to code of practice, mutual interest, treating each other as equals, and providing good feedback, and managing conflicts of interest.

3 Vol. 12, No. 5: May 20, 2013 p. 3 Declining Reputation A global PatientView survey was conducted at the end of 2012 to explore the views of 600 international, national, and regional patient groups from 56 countries. Patient group feedback provided rankings of 29 leading pharma companies for six key indicators that influence corporate reputation: patient-centeredness; patient information; patient safety; useful products; transparency; and integrity. The 2012 study was a repeat of a similar one carried out in See Figure 1, below. "There is no evidence at the moment that we are actually improving our relationship with these groups. In fact, it is deteriorating," Allan sadly admitted. "Our reputation is declining in the eyes of patient advocacy groups." PatientView defines corporate reputation as "the extent to which pharmaceutical companies are meeting the expectations of patients and patient groups. Only 34% of the patient groups responding to the 2012 survey stated that multinational pharma companies had an Excellent or Good reputation during the course of that year, compared with 42% in 2011 a 19% decline. When asked whether the corporate reputation of pharma had improved, declined, or remained unchanged in 2012, 40% of respondent patient groups stated that the reputation had declined (21% said it had improved). "So if we listen to our customer we are not meeting their expectations," Allan concluded. Figure 1. The performance of the pharma industry at important activities. How good or bad do you think the pharmaceutical industry is at carrying out the following activities (all of which influence their corporate standing with patients and patient groups)? Source: PatientView Quarterly, January 2013, The Corporate Reputation of Pharma The Patient Perspective

4 Vol. 12, No. 5: May 20, 2013 p. 4 Strategic Recommendations Allan finished his presentation by providing three strategic recommendations. Companies need to: 1. avoid being overly product-focused in their relations with patient groups and have a robust patient centered strategy, 2. embrace patients and patient groups in any crisis management that they have to undertake, and 3. be more accessible to patient group partners. Part 2: Lundbeck s Patient-Centric Marketing Approach P utting in place a patient-centric marketing approach might prove a good strategy for a pharma company said Patrick J. Cashman, President and General Manager at Lundbeck Canada. He said this during his keynote presentation titled Lundbeck Adventures in Patient Centered Marketing on the second day of the eyeforpharma Barcelona 2013 conference. Lundbeck provides therapies for people with disorders of the central nervous system, e.g., in the area of depression, Alzheimer s Disease, and alcoholism. A patient-centric marketing approach helped Lundbeck to have the fastest growing product (Cipralex) and the fastest growing company in Canada for two years in a row. And they had similar success with Ebixa in Mexico. The idea of patient centric marketing is to keep the patient in line with everything you do, and that doesn't necessarily mean that the patient is controlling the therapeutic process, he said. He believes that this approach can help to improve the communication, the engagement of the patient and clinical outcomes. It helps to really understand the environment, the challenges that patients face, the perceptions of the world they are in. By improving understanding and outcomes, patients are more likely to stay on their treatments and use the product in a more appropriate manner. But supporting the patients is not enough. It is also necessary to support the relevant stakeholders. The family plays a key role in the patients' treatment outcomes, sometimes in a very positive manner and sometimes in a very negative manner, Cashman said. We want to make sure that the patients understand the medication and do what is right and we can play a leading role in influencing these stakeholders [physician, nurse, payer, pharmacy, family] to make sure that they also have the right information to help support the patient's treatment. Cashman also spoke about the patient journey, which he read about it on an article by Dr Simone Seiter, a consultant at IMS Health. The patient journey is every step of the way that the patient is going through from recognition of diagnosis of the disease through to the treatment and hopefully remission of the disease, he explained. Top Ten Pharma Performers Source: PatientView Quarterly, January 2013, The Corporate Reputation of Pharma The Patient Perspective Company Rank Rank Lundbeck 1 3 Gilead Sciences 2 10 Novartis 3 1 Janssen 4 - Pfizer 5 2 Abbott 6 8 Novo Nordisk 7 11 Roche 8 9 Lilly 9 18 GSK 10 4 Respondent patient groups ranked Lundbeck highly in 2012 for the quality of information that it has supplied to patients and for a good record on patient safety. There are very complicated and confusing journeys and there are many stages and emotions that patients pass through on their journey, noted Cashman. There may be misperceptions, there may be anger, there may be doubt and there may be denial. There may even be lack of awareness of the disease. We need to recognize what these patients are going through from their perspective, he said. One of the main goals throughout the journey is to make sure patients continue to take their medication as directed by their physicians. Cashman emphasized the importance of language for patient-centric communications. Our industry tends to use words that are very clinical and very data focused, he said. Our tradition has been to speak to clinicians and other healthcare providers. Now we all know that this has changed dramatically for the last few years and it continues to change. But if you are using a patientcentric marketing approach, you need to use language that patients understand and relate to, he emphasized.

5 Vol. 12, No. 5: May 20, 2013 p. 5 With regard to compliance, Cashman noted the obvious: if they feel better they don't feel they need it. They don't want to become addicted, or they don't like the secondary effects, or they don't feel the treatment is effective. To deal with this, Cashman emphasized the importance of not only our communications direct to patients, but also the communications we provide to healthcare professionals like doctors and nurses, who may be dealing with these questions and unknowns that the patients have. We need to help them to use patientcentric language and practices. Cashman believes that patient-centric marketing can help in terms of brand and company recognition, the uptake of the brand, adherence to the treatments that are offered, and improvement in value for patients, doctors and payers. It helps to focus all the activities on the patient, he concluded.