eyeforpharma Barcelona 2015 day one summary

18.19 CET

That’s it for today’s live coverage. Please join us here tomorrow from 9am CET.

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17.58 CET

Whelan: industry must partner with patients and give the data back, educate more about clinical trials, integrate with diagnostics to demonstrate value and address outdated regulatory processes when it comes to personalised medicine. His call-to-action: we must support the pharma / biotech industry in driving these changes and we will all benefit. He also quotes a very one-sided Time story about the pharma industry and pleads for executives to fight their corner and shift its reputation.

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17.55 CET

Whelan: talking about hackathons and using 'Blue Button' to develop new solutions, like an app to monitor and measure cancer biomarkers by a traffic light system, to help patients better understand how they are doing. For those who haven't heard Jack speak before he knows as much about cancer as most oncologists! Interesting to see his description of personalised medicine - genomics-based therapy that is tailored to the individual patient and depends critically on the right initial, and ongoing, diagnostic screening.

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17.52 CET

Just time to nip into Jack Whelan's talk at the end of the day - seems appropriate to let a patient (and very inspiring one) have the last word.

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17.49 CET

Ibitoye closes with key learnings on content marketing: define consistency, define good content and stick to it, communicate success internally, support local innovation and do involve the local markets when it comes to implementation.

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17.43 CET

Ibitoye: tell your customers what they don't know for good content marketing - educate, educate, educate - including success stories and new ideas. Then measure, measure, measure to see what has worked well, to feedback into future content.

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17.37 CET

Warren Buffet on screen and Ibitoye highlights how he has described his mistakes as a framework for how successful his company is now. The concept of 'failbetter' comes up again - don't be afraid to try new things that fail provided you can learn from them in the future.

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17.33 CET

Ibitoye describes the importance of a good feedback loop between global and local around content, feeding in insight from the local markets back up to the global level to enable better content to get disseminated back. He quotes Facebook in saying marketers should spend 30-40% of time on content, 20% on promotion and the rest on analysis (but I guess they would say that!). Interesting to see him also describe the terms that people associate with different brands, e.g. Apple = emotive. What is your pharma company's brand message?

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17.28 CET

Next - Lanre Ibitoye, from Lundbeck, to talk about creating a content strategy that stands out and reaches the affiliates with consistency. He quotes McKinsey with the three Cs of customer satisfaction - consistency, consistency, consistency. But there are challenges in efficiencies around consistent global level content that resonates at a local level - the old challenge of think global, act local.

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17.24 CET

Alan Thomas (patient) asks whether Delhey is sharing learnings in other areas beyond diabetes, which he tries to do but highlights how there could be more opportunities for cross-functional lessons.

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17.22 CET

Delhey addressing apps and raises some good questions. Do patients need more apps? What are you trying to achieve with them? How many do you download per month? What makes pharma believe it can promote apps better than its products? Also - the lifecycle of an app is world's apart from that of a drug - 10+ years compared to 10 months. He makes some final points following this around ensuring you ask and understand what problem you are trying to solve for patients on a daily basis, before diving in. If there is a need, you will then need cross-functional teams, external partners, budget, internal buy-in and compliance (data privacy) to succeed.

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17.13 CET

Interesting process being outlined by Delhey around developing patient-centric multichannel solutions, which seems analogous to the drug development process. It starts with phase I ideation / developing the concept, before phase II quantification of the business opportunity (including real example of SMS reminder service to help patients adhere to treatments).

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17.09 CET

Delhey describes the conversation / language gap  between patients and doctors in diabetes. Doctors focus on the disease, patients on their personal situation; doctors want to educate, patients want to share; doctors want to be efficient, patients to collaborate (although flags he appreciates this is a generalisation). Also, Delhey notes that 80% of the information iimparted to patient when visiting doctor is forgotten shortly afterwards. Payers are demanding multichannel approaches because they know they are critical to delivering value, e.g. call centres for patient support, software solutions etc. In summary, he sees patient-centricity and multichannel going hand in hand with positive outcomes.

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17.04 CET

Delhey outlines why diabetes is a good focus area for patient-centric multichannel engagement, as there are multiple stakeholders involved, lots of patients and less specialists. There are also very defined segments of diabetes patients, covering both type I and II, each with very different needs from the healthcare system. In each case it raises questions around the role for pharma and the physicians in supporting these patients.

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17.01 CET

Delhey: Highlights how patient-centricity means different things to different people (beyond the pill, around the pill, understanding patients, commercial versus clinical etc.) and also asks how many pharma comms / marketers in the room spend more than 5% of budget on patient-centric initiatives, with only one hand going up.  So good intentions not yet supported by budget? Interesting to note that the multichannel marketing track this year seems much more balanced in terms of focus on the patient versus focus on the doctor, so signs of healthy progression (I'm an optimist).

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16.58 CET

And we're back in the room for the final sessions of today. Now up - Ben Delhey, Marketing Director at Sanofi, talking about bringing patient-centricity into the daily business. A number of MyStar diabetes solutions being presented on the screen - diabetes seems to be a recurrent theme for focussing on the patient today.

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15.25 CET

Workshop break now - live coverage back at around 16:50 CET

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15.23 CET

Gummati (Cegedim) outlines a vision for a 'system of insight' feeding into sales excellence in pharma:

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15.19 CET

Gummati: You can empower your field force with new insights to deliver on steps 4&5 as part of multichannel - segment, plan, align and orchestrate / engage.

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15.14 CET

Gareth Dabbs @garethdabbs tweets:
Emiliano from @CegedimRM linking the availability of info and insight in evolving a relationship; good link with previous talk. #e4pbarca

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15.13 CET

Gummati outlines how to integrate engagement and data around the customer for sales excellence. 1) Have a common customer ID, 2) have a single view of the customer profile across channels, 3) extract insights and intelligence on the customer context, 4) segment, plan and align across channels and 5) orchestate, execute and engage. Simple huh?

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15.10 CET

Gummati: you need to look at engagement from your customer's perspective, not your own channels and messages, to generate trust. He outlines how to achieve this you need to integrate systems for interaction and not have them in silos - and integrate the data on that customer to really know what is going on, e.g. the customer who you think you're not seeing enough but actually have 120 interactions a year with them when you check.

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15.05 CET

On the topic of integrating physical and digital engagement, I've nipped into the 'sales excellence' track to hear what Emiliano Gummati, from Cegedim, has to say about 'becoming a trusted advisor'.

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15.02 CET

Alan Thomas (patient): describes it's reassuring to hear about meaningful engagement and asks if we can not forgot to apply this to patient engagement too. Fiebig reminds that we are all patients at some point, whether doctors, pharma or patients - we're all individuals.

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15.00 CET

Rebecca Belton @beckybelton tweets:
Love this George Bernand Shaw quote 'The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place' #e4pbarca

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14.57 CET

Fiebig: Effective applications to deliver attact, engage, refine multichannel engagement must be integrated by design, data-driven and specific to the life sciences industry. He closes by inviting people to come and talk to him - in real life and not just digitally :)

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14.54 CET

Fiebig continues: Once you have an impactful and useful first engagement it's then about continuous refinement to sequentially improve each interaction to be better than the last. The sequence is therefore 1) attract 2) engage and 3) refine, and all of these stages must be integrated across the business. Interesting to see this definition of multichannel embrace the 'over time' axis rather than just across channels within a defined point in time. Technology, data and the right expertise can help to create this virtuos cycle.

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14.48 CET

Fiebig asks: do you understand that individual customer's personal information needs and how they like to receive that information? Even if you can tick those boxes, how do you then deliver a useful engagement and what do you do next? A great engagement is about the customer getting useful information and pharma companies understanding much more about that customer. If this is done properly via digital engagement, that first physical meeting can be incredibly impactful. Nice to see a discussion on multichannel talk about true multichannel (ncluding face to face / offline) and not just digital. This is what it should be IMO.

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14.44 CET

A great parallel being presented by Fiebig on trying to get people to upgrade to a newer version of Microsoft office and the challenges faced by pharma. How much better is it? How much more expensive is it? Who are the real customers? How can we engage with them and what do they want to know? Even with a 'lightweight launch' you can apply these principles for good effect. He elaborates that too much marketing is about just shouting into the air without knowing how effective it is - we know doctors are bombarded with too much stuff, they want more focussed and relevant communication, whatever the channel.

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14.40 CET

The Wikipedia definition of 'conversation' is put on the screen by Fiebig to illustrate the point. He sees the main challenge for the pharma industry as getting back in control of that conversation, being part of it rather than being talked about. Effective healthcare is about having productive conversations with individuals on a global scale.

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14.37 CET

Now up - Craig Fiebig from IMS Health, who previously worked at Microsoft and now brings that beyond pharma perspective to bear on the industry. He starts with a salient point about language and talking about 'customers' - these are people whose lives we want to improve. We need to have authentic engagement.

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14.34 CET

Lunch over and back into the debate - heading into the multichannnel marketing track before nipping over to sales excellence. Christopher Wooden, from Cegedim, starts the session by reasserting the theme of the event that 'the customer is in charge' and asks whether multichannel marketing is meeting their needs. For example, where reps have tablets they are only used in 1 out of 10 meetings and only 22% of interactions with pharma are perceived as 'digital'. He quotes the Economist saying that 'machines cannot transform acquintances into relationships' - we need to combine digital and non-digital engagement.

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13.10 CET

And so to lunch after an interesting morning session. We should be back at around 14.25 CET. Thanks for following so far :)

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13.08 CET

Heading towards the lunch break now at a pace - but some common themes from this first morning. Patients want to engage - with their peers, with medics and with pharma, and the industry has lost control of the health conversation. To reengage it needs to understand how to deliver meaningful conversation with all healthcare stakeholders and through what channels they want to engage. To do so, it needs to address reputational issues and utilise digital and non-digital engagement routes. In doing so, it can deliver against patient and commercial objectives.

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13.01 CET

Sorry - lost you all there for a moment as the wifi 'had a moment'. Now listening to the energetic Ali Parsa (CEO, Babylon) talk about how technology will revolutionise healthcare before we close for lunch. Key point is that patients want to talk to other patients and doctors and it should be really easy. Healthcare is going to soon see the impact of consumer services like Uber and TripAdvisor - this is an an enormous opportunity for pharma to engage and support IMO.

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12.51 CET

Dewulf recommends reading 'An anthropologist walks into a pub' as we discuss patient input into research and closes the session. Interesting session.

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12.43 CET

The panel discusses how there is enormous multiplicity in areas like digital apps for patients - some competition is good but there is also an opportunity to collaborate more and drive better solutions. Compete or collaborate - a key question!

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12.41 CET

Krumins: "we must find mechanisms within the legal constraints of every individual country to drive two-way engagement". She also highlights how there is a lot of information already out there that is incredibly useful, e.g. PatientsLikeMe, that the industry should be monitoring and not re-inventing the wheel to research areas where data is already available.

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12.37 CET

Audience question around how pharma can and should engage with patients where there are no medicines or only off-label medicines. Pluntz: important to engage with these patients early on to support lobbying for new drugs and focus development. This is one area where compliance personnel are probably the most nervous, IMO, as it could bring up off-label discussions. Again highlights the need to set boundaries on discussions with patients and most patients understand why this has to be the case in the context of regulations.

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12.33 CET

Great question from Jack Whelan (cancer epatient) - how does pharma know who are the credible / informative patients are to speak to as all have their own experience and bias? It highlights the need for the industry to speak to as many patients as possible on an ongoing basis so the sample size is greater than one, or a few, to build a consensus view. It also brings us back to how technology can complement this and support with big data across multiple patients when applied in the right way.

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12.31 CET

The panel is discussing compliance and how and why to engage with patients. As Dewulf himself has said in the past let's not confuse "we cannot promote to patients" (regulations) with "we cannot talk to patients" (not regulations). A clear consensus that the benefit is feedback and listening, not going in trying to push messages, whether (illegally) relating to products or not. IMO engagement with patients around how they cope with their disease and medicines in the real-world is critical for an industry needing to deliver value.

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12.27 CET

Bonacker: the question is not whether to do digital or not - you have to engage digitally and through other channels. Krumins agrees that there is not single channel magic bullet - coordinating a multichannel approach for different stakeholders over time is critical.

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12.24 CET

Now we're onto digital - Dewulf asking if the industry should go 'patient' before it goes 'digital' (although may be a little late). Krumins addresses this point by talking about the challenges of medicines adherence, where a lot of digital focus has been applied and they have seen failed experiments - failing because they didn't factor in the multiple touchpoints patients have with all kinds of stakeholders. This reasserts the absolutely critical aspect (IMO) of anything digital that is directed towards patients - get them involved in the development stage to build something that works. Pluntz adds that digital is important, but must be complemented by physical engagement around them, e.g. 'hackathons' to develop crowdsourced solutions.

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12.20 CET

Dewulf: how do you make sure the finance people get patient-centricity? Bonacker talks about how they bring in representatives of patient organisations to address all functions and explain what they need.

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12.18 CET

Krumins outlines how Boehringer Ingelheim UK held a closed meeting with one of their key patient organisation partners, where they shared their strategies under NDA to see how they could better align - very transparent.

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12.16 CET

Pluntz: Ferring has just appointed a Chief Patient Affairs Officer to drive organisational change at the European level. Bonacker now outlines how his organisation is trying to upskill everyone around being more patient-centric. So we have three different models outlined by the three panellists 1) Build a discrete function around patient engagement 2) Appoint a senior level patient engagement lead to work across the business and 3) upskill everyone to be more patient-centric. Dewulf (chairing) challenges the latter model by asking whether it becomes chaotic? Bonacker: patient understanding must happen at the local level, but still need some central coordination.

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12.12 CET

Crumins kicks off the panel discussion on building a more patient-centric organisation: "the endpoint for our business has always been to ensure that patients have access to our medicines" (not regulatory approval). She outlines how Boehringer reorganised a few years ago to drive more patient engagement / advocacy, which drove the company receiving technical certification around patient-centric communication.

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12.07 CET

...and most think patient-centricity is key to future profitability. Time to start investing in that reputational piece perhaps to seek decent ROI! And the poll ends, so on to the last panel before lunch.

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12.05 CET

Interesting that the pharmaceutical industry sees competition coming mainly from outside its own walls (next poll question) - here comes Apple, Google etc.? Does the industry need to adapt or die?

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12.04 CET

Is pharma's reputation improving among healthcare professionals - the audience leans towards 'no', so that's a bit of a worry as things are not getting better and we're now sure what to do to change it. When the same question is asked about reputation with the general public the situation looks slightly worse.

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12.02 CET

And the poll question on what pharma needs to do to improve reputation shows that as many agree that we know what we need to do to change this as those that disagree. So still some work to do there.

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12.01 CET

One for the sales force - "the ability to sell is no longer the most important skill for the pharma sales force". Big disparity on this one - the day of the sales rep isn't over yet it seems.

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11.59 CET

When asked about increasing revenues this year, a greater degree of confidence emerges than last year. And most agree that pharma companies need to become genuine healthcare providers - so more revenue coming from areas other than drugs, or just supporting them (my question)?

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11.57 CET

The poll continues - does the pharma business model need to change quickly? More people agree than disagree.

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11.56 CET

Great disparity of responses when people are asked to vote on how far into being patient-centric their companies are  (we are tweeting photos of these via @pharmaphorum!).

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11.55 CET

Interesting - when asked about the driver for being patient-centric a balance emerges of responses between making an ethical difference to patients' lives and because it makes good business sense. A fairly healthy balance I would say if patient-centricity is for the long-term. Three people are honest and say they are not trying to be patient-centric!

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11.53 CET

Now a quick audience poll ahead of our next panel on organisational change with Lutz Bonacker (Vice President and GM for Western Europe at CSL Behring), Zinta Crumins (Managing Director at UK and Ireland, Boehringer Ingelheim) and Gilles Pluntz (Senior Vice President Europe, Russia and CIS Emerging Markets at Ferring Pharma).

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11.50 CET

Allan asks the panel to close with some basic advice. Baker: societal conversations are necessary and you must break out of silos, plus shift the regulatory system. Hirst: you don't need to always be the leader, provided you can bring in the right partners with the right experience - be democratic and inclusive. McMahon: it is about building a relationship that is long-term, which must be driven by an industry cultural shift from the very top - pharma CEOs; patient engagement cannot be a tick-box exercise.

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11.42 CET

Baker responds to a question on how to drive practical change by stating that the policy makers are key in all of this - we must gather the evidence to present to them that will drive change. Once have that willingness to change than developing good practice is the next hurdle and there are shared experiences / opportunities here across many different therapeutic areas. Hirst shares his experience of influencing policy makers and how he used his parliamentary experience to drive change from the very top down - engaging with the Prime Minister. But he also mobilised all the relevant diabetes bodies to coordinate around meetings and keep communicating the key issues, in a consistent way over time.

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11.37 CET

McMahon: relationships in healthcare are like the ones in other aspects of our life. They must be personal, not corporate, and nurtured over time. The pharmaceutical has to define its vision that balances fair return with improving healthcare for patients - that may be a different vision for each company but must be clear. He closes by adding that we must not forget the unique challenges of the developing world.

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11.34 CET

McMahon, from IAPO, explains that there are a lot of patients around the world who simply don't have access to critical medicines - these are global problems that require support from bodies like the WHO. All patients deserve to be treated with dignity, to be informed of care options, to have quality-assured health systems (improving products and skills), to be able to give informed consent for all treatments, and finally to have trust in the system.

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11.29 CET

Hirst wants to see the type of alliance spearheaded in diabetes taken to other therapeutic areas - and not just the major ones. This type of collaboration can achieve things both in saving patients' lives and also improving quality of life, at a global level.

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11.27 CET

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11.25 CET

Hirst: The partnerships he seeks must be transparent, ethically sound and for the long term, not for short-term gain. The major opportunity is to find the people who have not yet been diagnosed as it is much easier to catch the problem early.

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11.23 CET

Hirst: The numbers will rise to 600m diabetics with 400m pre-diabetic over the coming years - around 1bn diabetes patients coming our way. More than 80% of this increase will also be in the developing world - the diabetes epidemic is now a truly global problem. Advocacy is critical - he explains how the IDF led the way on getting a UN resolution around tackling diabetes. Clear targets are no in place - to halt the growth of obesity (leading to diabetes) and increase access to key medicines to 80% and tackle diabetes early. The IDF sees the pharma industry as an essential partner in meeting these.

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11.20 CET

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11.19 CET

Baker: The pharma industry needs to draw upon its experience of research partnerships and take that to other areas, e.g. technology, patients etc. "Your patients are super-consumers and they are capable of making real value decisions based on outcomes". She adds that transparency is not enough - the industry needs trust. To gain this, the industry must capture patient experience - the patient is now a powerful stakeholder....but patients have their own bias and the industry must adopt a societal view to deliver value-added health outcomes in an IT-empowered global health market place. She concludes by describing it as a "wonderful challenge" that the industry will rise to.

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11.15 CET

Mary Baker starts by explaining how the European Brain Council has had to change and bring all kinds of stakeholders across many different disease areas together. She notes that the European Commission wants this kind of collaboration. Amazing stat - "of all the people who have ever made it to 65, two thirds of them are on the planet now". It highlights how much everyone in healthcare has achieved....but we have increased the problem of chronic diseases of the elderly. The future is comorbidity and polypharmacy - enormous problem for healthcare systems. But she states how we must look longer-term: "health is an investment", we cannot cost-cut in the short-term and damage the future. The challenge for pharma is to therefore establish what value you bring to the table - "you need to build a new business model to focus on health outcomes" and it will be driven by partnerships.

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11.09 CET

Allan: This next 40 minutes is about whether pharma is ready to accept its changing role and what does good look like in terms of pharma's involvement. Great line up on the panel.

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11.04 CET

Right - back from coffee break (an hour earlier than I said - should have read 11am CET clearly) and about to follow the panel session on trust with Keith Alan (Global Medical Affairs, Novartis), Sir Michael Hirst (President, International Diabetes Federation), Mary Baker (Past President. European Brain Council) and Stephen McMahon (Interim CEO, International Alliance of Patients' Organisations).
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10.34 CET

So can what Merck Serono is doing be applied to other therapeutic areas / other injectibles? Kneen: in theory, yes, but the nuances of each area will differ and that's why an important aspect is to drive more dialogue between patients and doctors. Now time for a coffee break - see you back here circa 12 noon CET.

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10.32 CET

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10.32 CET

Patient feedback / question for Kneen: patients are their own experts, but don't have anywhere near the information available to them that the doctors do, so should patients be given more of this data? Good question.

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10.29 CET

Kneen: sees remote adherence monitoring and home care solutions being critical allies to bettter drug delivery solutions and services, in order to really help patients. One observation is that we are hearing a lot about how patients want to be involved more in their own health, but we also know some patients don't want to be more involved and this is the tricky segment to engage using mobile health / ehealth. But overall, good to see much more focus on what I call genuine 'beyond the pill' - not about trying to sell more drugs but actually improve patients' lives.

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10.27 CET

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10.23 CET

Kneen moves onto the details of what Merck Serono is doing. MSdialog has been developed with patients and doctors (tick!), to help drive better drug delivery and adherence. For him, the ehealth journey has gone hand-in-hand with the drug delivery journey. A video explaiins more about MSdialog - as with most good technology it's about data sharing, in this case consensual between the patient and the physicians. IMO this is how big data can help patients - it's actually about collecting lots of small (ie. individual patient) chunks of data. The challenge is getting people to use these technologies - manual input of data (e.g. how they are feeling) is always a stumbling block, again IMO. Ends with commenting that phyicians and nurses can spend less time on the 'how have you been?' and more on developing better treatment plans. But....I suspect some patients want more 'how have you been?'.

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10.18 CET

Interesting listening to Kneen talk aboiut mobile health and wearables. They will definitely revolutionise personalised healthcare in the long-term, but probably make us all hypochondriacs in the short-term IMO :)

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10.17 CET

Paul Tunnah @pharmaphorum
Kneen: all signs point towards eHealath playing a greater part of our lives in the near future #e4pbarca

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10.16 CET

Kneen: ehealth is big, very big and it's going mobile. Expect to see 142m medical app downloads in 2016! The US provides some good examples of ehealth to look at - The Veterans Association now offers telehealth in 45 specialty clinical areas in the US and more than 690,000 veterans have taken part in more than 2m virtual appointments. When you think that the first cell phone is only 40 years old we've come a long way (and most of us would not have noticed mobiles until the 1980s). And we have our first slide showing Steve Jobs (RIP) and the iPhone, plus the Apple Watch (step forward or not?). Kneen himself is wearing a FitBit.

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10.12 CET

Now up - Tim Kneen from Merck Serono (Executive President, Europe & Canada) to talk about enhancing the 'patient experience', or 'patient centric personalised support' within multiple sclerosis as it is referred to on the title slide. Sounds interesting, although I wonder if patients would find the language a little industry-centric?

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10.08 CET

Panel session wraps up - my conclusion is that the industry is trying to be more patient-centric, but needs payers and investors to go with them, as well as internal obstacles.

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10.07 CET

Great point made by Kay Wesley over Twitter in that maybe engaging with patients needs to start with Google (and Wikipedia) - this is where they go for medical information initially. What is the industry doing to tackle this?

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10.06 CET

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10.05 CET

Great point from the audience (doctor and patient): is there a danger that we build up hopes for patients, only for payers to dash them by not paying for innovation. Loew reiterates need to shift from rewarding the act to the outcome and hints at displeasure with the UK system. The perversity is that the UK system, in NICE / CDF etc., is trying to focus on rewarding the right outcomes (is it successful? - that's  a big debate!), so clearly some disconnect and a need for more dialogue between the industry and payers (a point which Loew also covers off).

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10.00 CET

Audience question (from a patient): how can we help you as an industry to better help us? Loew: knock on our door and connect with us.

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9.57 CET

Loew: the teams developing drugs can get really attached to their projects and it is hard to therefore stop them if they are not going to deliver for patients, but important to do so. The industry must balance the short- and long-term view on its portfolio.

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9.53 CET

Reallty good point from Delavault - the industry also has responsibility to better explain to patients what it is they do and how the drug development process works. For many, the pharma industry is still too much of a black box, without clarity around exactly what it does and why, which opens the door to criticism around commercial interests etc. Aabo reiterates that the industry must take a more 'humble' perspective and listen more as well as communicate better.

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9.49 CET

Grua explains about the network he established around the 'societal impact of pain', which brings together all healthcare stakeholders to find solutions. It is important not only for sharing collective widsom, but also collectively forcing change within healthcare systems for the better. I think we will see more of this as pharma's reputation improves (and I think it is improving). Aabo adds, very honestly, that she feels LEO Pharma, at some point, forgot to listen to patients and lost sight of what it's really like living with diseases like psoriasis. She has tried hard to move the focus away from just 'shifting products' and getting close to the patient again to really understand what solutions are needed - the industry needs to start listening and learning again.

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9.47 CET

Paul Tunnah @pharmaphorum
Sense from the panel is that patients really will/could be brought in to be central at all stages of development in pharma #e4pbarca

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9.44 CET

Loew sees a challenge with the EU healthcare system, in that it still rewards the 'act' not the 'outcome', e.g. reward for making a prescription, not for making a patient better. He sees the industry as playing a role in helping healthcare systems build the skills to shift in the direction of outcomes. Interesting topic for Sanofi in particular, given some of the recent CDF challenges in the UK, which is intended to be very outcomes focussed. My sense is that everyone 'gets' that the outcome is the most important thing, but changing process and shifting incentives to drive this is challenging on all sides.

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9.40 CET

Simms asks about how we deal with cynicism within the pharma old-guard on patient-centricity. Loew - "make it real", he doesn't believe in corporate videos using actors pretending to be patients - you need real patients meeting with employees to bring the message home. The industry must focus on removing the hurdles between getting drugs that really work to patients. Delavault adds to this by bringing up the topic of data transparency - all employees must contribute to listening and being transparent. So market access and transparency are key components of being patient-centric. Grua adds that 'patient ambassadors' are important too - epatients as we sometimes call them. In reality they are just people, like you and me, who are passionate about helping other people IMO.

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9.39 CET

Double Helix Disc. @DHelixDiscovery
Patientcentricrity requires #pharma to think long term. Nothing worse than engaging pts only to abandon them in a couple of yrs #e4pbarca

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9.37 CET

Ashfield Healthcare @AshfieldHealth
Gitte Aabo talking leading patient centricity with @LEOHealthySkin incentivising teams to live, breathe patients #e4pbarca

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9.33 CET

Aabo: "We are not here to generate profits, we are here to generate profits to drive better patient solutions." But like everyone in the industry this is balanced by shareholder / investor pressure and senior leaders walk a difficult tightrope between patients and profits IMO. Perhaps we need these investors to also be more patient-centric?

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9.31 CET

And now Paul Simms starts the interrogation, I mean questioning - "are all of you really patient-centric focussed leaders?". Consensus is "yes" but there is a "but", which is that this ambition needs to translate down into organisational, cultural and behavioural change and this takes time. Loew explains that the trap is to get too focussed on short-term incentives around sales, market share, budget etc. and forget the bigger picture for patients. He says "I want to bring the patient not just into Sanofi, but into the whole industry". Shame we haven't got a patient on this panel to counterpoint, but they are well represented here throughout the next 2 1/2 days.

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9.26 CET

Good to see a recurring theme in the video presentation being the need for industry leaders to really drive a shift in corporate culture to be more patient-centric, to make patients integral to everything they do. This is not about development, comms or marketing processes, but about a fundamental mindshift in the way the industry behaves. Patients - the industry is listening.

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9.22 CET

Paul Simms of eyeforpharma now welcomes the first panel to the stage. He is joined by Gitte Aabo (President, CEO, LEO Pharma), Patrick Delavault (Senior Vice President, Chief Medical Officer, IPSEN), Alberto Grua (Chief Commercial Officer Europe, Australia, North America & Global Product Supply, Grunenthal) and Davie Loew (Senior Vice President, Commercial Operations Europe, Sanofi). We start with a video capturing their thoughts on how pharma needs to better connect with the patient - encouraging to see them all talk about focus on the patient, not the medicine.

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9.15 CET

Alan Thomas @alanROYGBIV tweets: @LodeDewulf tells delegates at #e4pbarca to take Ties off #barrier free conference

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9.12 CET

Loew gets the audience involved and asks how many people in the room know someone with first a rare genetic disease (3 people), then cancer (lots), then rheumatoid arthritis (most), then asthma, diabetes and finally headache (everyone up). The point he makes is that we are all here in our business roles but we are all impacted by disease and must remember this. Now he asks everyone to take 3' and explain their personal story to their neighbour. Nice touch.

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9.09 CET

David Loew - Senior Vice President, Commercial Operations Europe for Sanofi - now takes to the stand. He tells a personal story about how his work was made a lot more real some years ago, when he was managing a major chemotherapeutic, and both his mother and mother-in-law were diagnosed with cancer and received his treatment.

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9.06 CET

Dewulf explains how the problems facing healthcare today are so big that no single entity can solve them on their own - we are entering the era of coalitions. It's all about customers, colleagues and coalitions (unsurprisingly at pharmaphorum we agree!). This requires genuine two-way communication between the industry and all other stakeholders. Ties off, sleeves rolled up - here we go.
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9.02 CET

Lode Dewulf takes to the stand, reiterating that you cannot work in pharma unless you take the patient seriously. He's starting with a car analogy - lots of people love their car but hate going to the garage, which shows similarities to the patient experience that pharma needs to understand. He notes that the four Ps of marketing (Product, Place, Promotion, Price) don't include the patient - the industry needs to be more people-centric.

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8.59 CET

Blair from eyeforpharma kicks things off, confirming the theme as being 'your customer is in charge'. But is this true to a point where the pharma industry has lost control? We will find out...

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8.53 CET

Please forgive any typos as I blog today - we will correct in the intervals :)

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8.52 CET

For anyone questioning where the patient is in these events I can tell you they are here. Already said hello to Jack Whelan and briefly waved hello to Alan Thomas, plus the first session about to be led by UCB's Chief Patient Affairs Office - the revolution has arrived!

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8.48 CET

All set to go with the live blogging from eyeforpharma Barcelona - let's pray for mercy from the Gods of wifi!

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21.05 CET

Safely arrived in Barcelona and ready to get the live coverage started tomorrow morning! Hope you can check in to keep up to speed with what's happening at the eyeforpharma event this year. See you in the morning - Adam and Paul :)

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