Enhancing patient centricity and digital…

The pharmaceutical industry is working hard to operationalise and bridge patient centricity and digital ambitions to improve products and patient experiences. But there are obstacles to achieving this goal. Functions often work in isolation, resulting in limited success beyond pilot initiatives.

Overwhelming challenges like data privacy, security, data quality, regulatory compliance, and ethical considerations across functions like research and development, clinical, medical affairs, and commercial become lost in translation. To address this, any function can play a vital role using our tried and tested approach. Here's how to get started:

Alignment on patient journey and unmet needs: Your function can foster unity by creating a common vision for the patient journey and the underlying digital touch points. This aligns all teams towards a common objective centered around patients’ unmet needs. To achieve this, existing perspectives of the patient journey should be consolidated into a single version.

Assign objectives to existing and future capabilities: The next step is to understand how your existing capabilities will help to achieve goals. By mapping out the business plan and enabling IT capabilities, your team will be equipped to understand future needs and how digital and IT capabilities should support the business across the value chain.

Design a governance model across functions: Your function can facilitate the development of a plan which clarifies roles and responsibilities to achieve a shared goal. This ensures smooth collaboration and clear understanding of individual contributions. A helpful way to govern this, is by creating a common operating manual, encompassing success criteria, KPIs, resources, and key processes needed to bring the strategy to life.

By adopting this approach, pharmaceutical players can navigate complexity with simplicity. Aligning strategic intent and roles from the outset removes potential confusion, enabling the success of pilot projects, and scaling of digital patient solutions. This unifies different parts of the business under a common narrative and direction, creating the momentum necessary to bridge patient centric and digital ambitions. Ultimately, this approach puts the organisation in a better position to improve patient adherence, medical outcomes, engagement, and boost the company’s reputation and market share.

A function with a considerable stake in digital and patient centric strategies is well-positioned to lead the way in bridging ambitions and roles. By mobilising a shared strategic vision and defining clear roles, your team can drive the industry forward, ensuring patient-centricity, and successfully leveraging the power of patient insights.