Why real patient centricity is more essential than ever before

Ask nearly any pharma company these days if they’re patient-centric, and you’ll probably get an answer in the affirmative. But dig deeper, and you might find that patient centricity means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. And that some of those who think they have it figured out might actually be the furthest from the mark of real, meaningful patient centricity.

Sharon Suchotliff is an associate principal at ZS Associates and co-author with Hensley Evans, who leads the global patient and consumer health practice at ZS, of Reinventing Patient Centricity: Bringing patient-led business models to life. Suchotliff sat down with Deep Dive to discuss the current state of patient centricity in pharma, some of the common foibles and misconceptions, and how pharma companies can get themselves on the right track.

“I started my career in fashion and luxury lifestyle and I cut my teeth on brands like W Hotels, Marriott, and Mercedes. I understood customer experience, and what a good experience needs to look like,” she explains.

Suchotliff went back to school for an Executive Master’s in Public Health and Healthcare Management and studied with some of the experts behind crafting the US’s Affordable Care Act – the beginning of more than a decade of work on improving the patient experience.

“I started to think, what’s pharma’s role in all this? Why patient centricity in life sciences now?” she says. “Which led me to think about how we can help life sciences focus more meaningfully on people, on patients, and include them as part of thinking about, which products to develop, how to develop them, and what is needed, in a way that it actually has impact for people and the business.”

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