Time to take patient engagement to the next level
Patient engagement in pharma is evolving, with some companies doing it better than others. Envision Pharma Group’s Dawn Lobban and Sarah Avent discuss the need to engage with patients at every level for holistic inclusion of the patient voice in order for pharma to become truly patient-centric.
The Covid pandemic has sparked people’s interest in science and medicine and empowered the public to make important health choices. It’s also shone a light on the need to provide accurate and timely information and to engage the public at every point in the medicine development lifecycle.
More than anything, however, it highlights the importance of patient-engagement more generally in medicine development, a concept the pharmaceutical industry has been talking about for years. Says Dawn Lobban: “We know that clearly patients are experts at living with the disease, and if we want to understand what it’s like to live with a disease, then they are the people who can provide those insights.”
Indeed, there is growing recognition of the importance and value of patient engagement in medicine development. Not only can it benefit patients by better addressing unmet needs and improving outcomes, but it makes financial sense. For instance, a 2017 study by a team, including researchers from Janssen, Duke University and the Tufts Center for the Study of Drug Development, among others, found that compared with an investment of $100,000 in patient engagement, the increases in net present value and expected net present value (ENPV) could exceed 500-fold the investment, with the ENPV increase equivalent to accelerating a pre-phase 2 product launch by two and a half years1.
• Read the full article in pharmaphorum's Deep Dive digital magazine
