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What Have And Haven’t Changed In Pharma’s New Normal?

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While navigating through the challenge of disruptive changes, several pharma marketers are now focusing more on creating, connecting, and leveraging all market and customer related data, across the organization. Astute ones are using state-of-the-art tools, platforms, and techniques to gain actionable insights on new demands of pharma markets. I wrote about it in my article - ‘Data: the new ‘Magic Wand’ For Pharma Business Excellence,’ published in this blog on October 01, 2018.

This process is helping them to fathom what areas the pandemic has changed and what it hasn’t. Their aim is to draw cutting-edge strategies accordingly for market effectiveness – outperforming competition. This article will explore that space with contemporary examples. Let me start with a few illustrations of some hits and misses for the treatment of Covid – as the world started learning to live with this menacing virus. This was enviable, as the requisite scientific date wasn’t readily available at that moment of truth. But the time has changed now.

Some hits and misses:

As the pandemic overwhelmed the world, and no well-documented treatment for infection caused by the brand new virus – Covid-19 was available, many drug players were given quick emergency approval by country regulators for some repurposed drugs. But most of those weren’t found effective as fresh clinical data started pouring in. For example, the World Health Organization (WHO), have, reportedly, indicated that remdesivir, hydroxychloroquine, lopinavir/ritonavir and interferon regimens appeared to have little or no effect on 28-day mortality or the in-hospital course of COVID-19 among hospitalized patients.

More recently, Gilead Sciences Veklury – a failed Ebola drug, repurposed for hospitalized Covid-19 patients, suddenly became a blockbuster drug, according to a September 17, 2021 report. However, in less than a year, alongside more research data - a study from Europe, published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases, showed that Veklury has no real benefit. The report also highlights: ‘Aided by a ringing endorsement from then-president Donald Trump, Veklury rang up sales of $2.8 billion in 2020, including $1.9 billion in the final quarter. But those sales slid this year to $1.5 billion in the first quarter followed by $829 million in the second quarter.’

Similarly, there are several areas that are seemingly getting transformed, triggered by the pandemic and the time for resorting to a hit or miss approach, is now virtually over. From pharma marketers’ point of interest, it will now be at one’s own peril for not challenging the pre-Covid business traditions, rules, and well-tried strategies on customer relationships and brand building models. This brings us to the question on what specifically have changed in the new normal as the pharma industry navigates thorough the Covid pandemic – for close to two years now.  

Pandemic-triggered changes in the pharma marketing area:

Changes are many and are being studied across the world. One such recent analysis, articulating how the pandemic triggered changes have redefined marketing, was published by the Harvard Business Review (HBR), on March 10, 2021. This paper came more than a year after the pandemic overwhelmed the world. This article listed some interesting macro-level changes, including the following:

  • Old normal: You are competing with your competitors.
  • New normal: You are competing with the last best experience your customer had.
  • Old normal: Customers hope you have what they want.
  • New normall: Customers expect you to have exactly what they want.
  • Old normal: Courting customers is just like dating.
  • New normal: Courting customers is just like online dating.
  • Old normal: Customers must sit at the heart of your marketing strategy.
  • New normal: Customers must sit at the heart of your customer journey.
  • Old normal: Agility is a technology process.
  • New normal: Agility is a modern marketing approach.
  • Old normal: Your brand should stand behind great products.
  • New normal: Your brand should stand behind great values.

To illustrate the point, let me now give a few examples of some micro-level changes in the same space.

Some transformation trends:

I am citing a few examples related to pharma’s traditional sales and marketing models. One such area is, quite a few companies are adopting connected data based and analytics-supported Omnichannel approach for customer engagement. The key objective is to deliver coherent and high-quality customer experience.

The need for new commercial models for the changing life sciences market, was also highlighted in an interesting article, published in the Pharmaceutical Executive on September 16, 2021. The authors identified six health care macro trends, demonstrating the value of transforming care delivery and shifting market behavior that prompt to reframe customer value propositions.

Taking a cue from this paper, I am listing below some of the current trends – as I see these and wrote before in this blog. Each one of these calls for well-connected data with analytics support:

  • Fostering a new genre of ‘customer-brand relationship’ to drive more targeted go‑to‑market strategies, enhanced agility/mobility of resources and highly personalized customer interactions.
  • Meeting the growing demand for value‑based care with novel risk‑adjusted and outcome‑based Price-Value-Models, supported by ongoing innovation in this area and sophisticated approach to value, affordability and outcomes.

Interestingly, despite Herculean constraints, many pharma players continued creating and delivering value, as the customers were expecting with changing situations.  

Drug-price sensitivity is increasing:

In the new normal, drug price sensitivity of customers is increasing manifold, for various reasons. A June 18, 2020 study, flags: ‘Nine in 10 Concerned About Rising Drug Costs Due to COVID-19.’ Although, this particular study (Gallup Poll) was conducted in the United States, general public apprehension is no different in other parts of the world, including India.

In my article of September 14, 2020, I also wrote that the concept of ‘fair pricing a drug’ is being deliberated by many experts around the world, since quite some time, till today. But it continues. Most recently, as reported on September 22, 2021, for different reasons related to its new Alzheimer’s drug - Aduhelm, including its hefty price tag of $56,000 annually per patient, ‘Biogen reps banned from D.C.-area neurology clinics.’

Regardless of such customer reactions, the pharma industry, as reported on September 17, 2021, continues to advocate – drug pricing pressure will stifle innovation, blocking patient access to needed medicines and dry up investment in important R&D on new therapies. Curiously, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), is spending more than $1 million on TV ads as part of a massive lobbying and communications campaign emphasizing the potential harm to patients seeking cures for deadly diseases, as the report highlights.

Innovation – remained mostly unhindered from old to new normal:

Customers’ expectations can’t be ignored indefinitely. Interestingly, the world has also witnessed it with Covid drug and vaccine innovation continuing even during the most trying times during the pandemic, even in India. It is, therefore, quite understandable why unfettered access to drug innovation is considered an oxymoron, by many.

The good news is, despite shrill voices over pricing measures, the quest for adding meaningful value to the healthcare space continues unhindered. As reported on September 19, 2021, both Pfizer and Merck are advancing oral antiviral candidates targeting Covid-19 into late-stage testing. Thus, I reckon, regardless of jarring noise from pharma lobbyists, drug innovation, willy-nilly, has to satisfy the diverse demand of health care customers.

Innovation needs to satisfy demands of diverse healthcare customers:

That, increasingly, drug innovations will need to be based on their ability to satisfy the demands of life sciences companies’ diverse customer-perceived value-based, was also echoed by the Pharmaceutical Executive article of September 16, 2021.

While doing so, companies will need to structure innovation in terms of health outcomes, affordability, and personalization, as the paper emphasized. It further added, ‘broader definition of innovation means products are no longer the central driver of value.’ Instead, innovation will be powered by an increasingly diverse stream of data that resides outside the confines of the traditional health ecosystem.

Covid pandemic accelerated the transition of this process of innovation, drawing its new focus on providing a seamless and holistic customer experience in the disease treatment process – supported by advanced analytics and this deeper understanding of customer segments.

Conclusion:

Many pharma marketers have possibly undertaken a sophisticated and credible market scanning exercise in the new normal, to assess by themselves what have or haven’t changed in their customer preferences and market dynamics. If not, I would encourage them to initiate it, at least, now.

Equally noteworthy, as the above HBR article wrote, in the post pandemic period: ‘Beyond geography, marketing messages need to be personally relevant, aligned to an individual’s situation and values, as opposed to demographics, such as age and gender.’

The objective is to create a personal connection between the customer and the brand promotional content, aiming to influence the prescribing and purchasing behavior, based on their psychographic to attitudinal characteristics. This process would require creating and screening lots of customized data, supported by sophisticated analytics.

From the above perspective, I reckon, deep insight on what have or haven’t changed in the healthcare environment alongside its customers, would be of fundamental importance for pharma marketers, in the new normal.

By: Tapan J. Ray  

Disclaimer: The views/opinions expressed in this article are entirely my own, written in my individual and personal capacity. I do not represent any other person or organization for this opinion.

Creating A Unique Patient Experience By Listening To Patients Voice – An Imperative In The New Normal

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Acquiring deeper insight on the patient journey through a disease treatment process to create and enhance end-to-end patient experience, never assumed such critical importance, ever in the past. Without this realization, I reckon, even digitalization of any scale in the pharmaceutical industry, is unlikely to yield desired results. The term ‘Patient experience’ is generally considered as ‘the summation of interactions that influence patient perceptions across the continuum of care, until now,’ as defined in an article, published by Aranca on February 28, 2020.

This isn’t a new concept. This subject was well-deliberated even before the pandemic crisis. For example, an article, published in the Pharma Voice on April 2014, had also highlighted this point. It wrote: “Too many companies continue to view the world as a physician-centric, and do not recognize the growing influence of the patient in treatment decisions. The evolution toward a fully integrated commercialization approach centering on the patient experience will continue to crystallize over the next five to 10 years. Within a few years the industry will universally have one goal that supports the patient experience, as there is a tremendous amount of attention being put on the patient today.”

Even thereafter, another paper, published in the Reuters Event Pharma, on August 17, 2017, also reiterated: ‘A greater understanding of the patient journey is rapidly becoming an essential tool for market access.’ It further elaborated that the use of patient journey data stands to benefit everyone:

  • Patients: through empowerment programs,
  • Pharma marketers and more widely, the Company: by targeting the right patient segment and the company more widely.

The paper concluded: ‘Given the potential benefits, pharmaceutical companies should develop a robust mechanism to design effective patient journeys, which could prove instrumental when it comes to bridging treatment gaps and improving quality of life for countless patients around the world.’

From this perspective, Covid-19 pandemic seems to have hastened the process with changing customer behavior and expectations in the new normal, thorough understanding of customer needs emerged as a key success requirement for pharma marketers. That said, customer experience has to be measured both qualitatively and quantitively through credible market research initiatives, capturing the patients’ views. Guessing the same, as was generally the common practice in the old normal, would no longer suffice. This article will dwell in this area.

The pandemic played a catalytic role:

That Covid-19 pandemic played a catalytic role to hasten the process of providing a unique patient experience during a patient’s journey through a disease treatment process in the digital world. This was vindicated by a ZS study, published on July 05, 2020. The analysis found – over the last three months several companies started looking at new ways to engage with patients. These include:

  • Forming patient panels – to continually check and monitor the quality of patient experience that the company is providing,
  • Connecting with patient advocacy groups – to get a pulse on critical needs
  • Leveraging the field force – to hear from physicians where their patients need the most help.

These are laudable initiatives for dovetailing patients’ views in the drug marketing strategy to provide a unique experience to patients during their end-end-to journey through a disease treatment process.

Measuring patient-experience – an integral part of digital sales and marketing:

Measuring patient-experience has always been an integral part, virtually of all types of sales and marketing using digital platforms. We experience it almost every day, such as, while buying a product through Amazon, buying grocery items through D-Mart, scheduling a doctor appointment through Practo, buying medicines through PharmaEasy, or even for availing a service through Urban Company.

The November 15, 2020 research report of DT Consulting has also reiterated this need. It found, patients seeking and receiving care, depend on a complex system of health providers—an environment in which pharmaceutical companies play an important role. ‘When seeking care, patients gravitate to experiences that other patients rated well; when receiving care, they prefer experiences that consistently meet or exceed their expectations,’ it underscored.

Why then all pharma digital initiatives for its customers aren’t in sync with such practices? It’s about time that pharma players also follow a similar path, to continually improve company offerings, based on what the customers expect from a company’s brand and services – regardless of whether they are doctors, patients or any other key stakeholder.

I re-emphasize, this initiative has to cover end-to-end of a customer journey starting from clinical development, brand launch and expansion of market access. In each of these stages, loose knots, if any, require to be tightened, after thorough deliberations, to delight the customers – and consequently rewarded by them, appropriately. While some progress can be seen in this area, pan industry progress in this space, still falls much short of other industries. A pharma company may continue to ignore its importance, even in the new normal, at its own peril.

The way forward won’t be a bed of roses, expect thorns to overcome:

The above ZS study also brought out some interesting facts, as follows:

  • 43% of participants cited difficulty identifying quantitative, measurable KPIs that fit within the organizational structure and practices,
  • 29% indicated a lack of tools and resources to help communicate tangible outcomes and the case for change
  • 22% cited organizational silos as the true barriers.

The good news is, as the study highlights, Covid-19 has proven that it’s quite possible to actually be more patient centric to create an exclusive brand experience for patients. But, many ‘organizations still have work to do, in getting there.’

Sermonizing what patients’ need, without involving them, may be counterproductive:

Things were quite different in predominantly a physician-centric world for patients, in the old normal. At that time, sermonizing the treatment needs of patients, blended with a heavy dose of respective company’s self-serving interest, sans patient involvement in the treatment decision making processes – worked. The same approach may not yield desired cost-effective outcomes, when the customer behavior, triggered by the pandemic, is fast changing, for various reasons.

‘Patients want more services before they are treated’ for a disease: 

Many patients have been asking for more services, especially from the pharmaceutical companies, even before they undertake the journey of getting a disease well treated by medical professionals, regardless of disease types. Till Covid-pandemic, this remained mostly an unmet need for many patients, as this is an arduous for most pharma players. Which is why, most drug companies did not want to jettison the traditional approach, in favor of being ‘patient-centric.’ Thus, the entire decision-making process for any disease treatment continued to remain ‘doctor-centric.’

This wasn’t an unknown need for most patients, either, as it was well documented through several research studies. For example, an Accenture survey of 10,000 patients had examined their unmet needs in seven different therapeutic areas across the entire patient journey. Its findings concluded, ‘patients want more services before they are treated for a disease, regardless of disease type.’ Interestingly, even when such services were available in some places, the vast majority of patients still are not aware of the availability of these patient services, the paper added.

The situation is different today:

Overall, the situation is different today, mostly because, during a long Covid-19 lockdown period, many patients started visiting the cyberspace to manage their health, in increasing numbers. With the experience thus gained, a large population, even in India, now consider digital as a primary channel to initiate the journey for their disease treatment, such as telehealth.

As judicious assimilation of knowledge has always been a source of wisdom, patients have now become wiser to demand more services from a drug company that will help them to get cured of diseases and maintain good health – the way they want. More importantly, patients have also realized that in most cases treatment alternatives to choose from, are plenty.

Thus, the above study of Accenture raised the following question for the pharma companies to ponder that is more relevant today than ever before: ‘Are pharmaceutical companies missing a significant opportunity to provide services at the earliest possible point in the patient journey – before they are even being treated for a disease?’ That’s why, ‘patients deserve as much focus, if not more, in pharma market research as ‘physicians.’

‘Patients’ deserve as much focus on market research as ‘physicians’:

In the old normal, medical reps, in general, used to expect their target physicians to educate the patients about the disease while prescribing their respective company’s brands. With many patients getting more and more informed in the digital world, pharma companies need to strategize a comprehensive patient engagement and educational campaigns, enabling patients to actively participate in their treatment decision making process, exactly the way they want, to improve quality of life.

From this perspective, collecting first-hand data on patient-experience, straight from the voice of patients, isn’t too common a practice for the drug companies, even today. It will rather be a new venture for many, to gain meaningful insights on the impact of their operational endeavor – from the patients’ perspective. This will, in turn, help organizations strategize more productive engagements with them, reaping a rich harvest.

The process starts with ferreting out patients’ needs from a variety of credible sources – after cross-checking and getting it vetted by focus groups of patients, in due course. Some pharma majors, reportedly, invite patients to narrate their experience in the disease treatment process, directly to medical reps at their sales meeting on virtual platforms. A few others have started patient-groups in the selected therapy areas, for the same purpose.

Nonetheless, pharma marketers to please ensure that their organizations need to genuinely care about the patients, making this onerous task deliver a win-win outcome for both. The key point to take note of is that its real purpose, in no way, should be achieving any company’s self-serving objectives, under this creative façade.

Conclusion:

Creating and enhancing the unique customer experience has been recognized as one of the key success factors in any industry, pharma business is no exception. Curiously, it could not draw as much focus as it should have been, until Covid-pandemic struck, triggering disruptive changes in the customer behavior and the overall commercial environment. The good news is, in tandem with their digital transformation process, several drug majors are now mulling about patient experience-driven marketing strategies.

For this purpose, the pre-requirement is to put in place a comprehensive patient experience measurement framework, to accurately understand the end-to-end journey of the patients in their disease treat processes. This would include, capturing their key unmet needs from various sources, including focus group studies of real patients, in various formats.

Prudent use of connected health applications and AI platforms may be of great help – supported by state-of-the-art analytics, to gain meaningful access to patients’ behavioral and attitudinal data for strategic use, in various digital platforms. This has the potential to deliver a quantum leap in business outcomes. From this perspective, I reckon, for creating a unique patient experience, listening to patient voice, is an imperative in the new normal.

By: Tapan J. Ray  

Disclaimer: The views/opinions expressed in this article are entirely my own, written in my individual and personal capacity. I do not represent any other person or organization for this opinion.

A New Pharma Marketing Combo Places Patients At The Center Of Business

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As discussed in several of my previous articles, most pharma players need to walk the talk on ‘patient-centricity’, coming out of prevailing high decibel lip-service. This is not an easy task, and far from being every company’s cup of tea.

Effective implementation of patient-centricity by an organization, entails understanding of behavioral science by today’s pharma marketers. Many of them, I am sure, have already studied it in Business Schools. Be that as it may, by harnessing this scientific knowledge, the insights that they will acquire on primary and secondary pharma customers, will be unique. The important cues that will come out of the insights, will help them create well- targeted strategic marketing game plans having a cutting-edge. When implemented on an ongoing basis, this will help catalyze a win-win business environment, for reaping a rich harvest over a long period of time.

In today’s article, I shall dwell on the increasing relevance of an interesting combo of behavioral science – predictive analytics and patient-centricity, for a sustainable business performance. This is especially for the millennial pharma marketers to try and implement. With blessings from the top management, this model will help them jettison – the increasingly counterproductive – ‘gratification model’ of pharma business, imbibing ‘patient-centric ones’ – that patients themselves can feel and will appreciate.

The basic requirements to make it happen:

The basic requirements of the pharma companies to make it happen is to gradually move away from its core strategy of ‘buying prescriptions’ that often happens through contentious means. No doubt, it has the power to create a temporary strong brand push. But is definitely not sustainable, as these usually go against patients’ health and economic interest.

For a sustainable demand for a pharma brand, pharma companies would need to design a strong ‘brand pull’ in the new paradigm. This would prompt drug companies acquiring deep insights on how to leave a cherishing treatment experience with the patients for the brand. This would, consequently, have a strong-positive rub-off effect on the corporate image, as well. Likewise, a doctor would also like to know, how to create similar patient-experience with his treatment, to draw more of them in the future. This is diametrically opposite to generation of demand for a brand through ‘payment to doctors for prescriptions.’

Pharma marketer’s understanding of behavioral science is necessary:

This is because, it helps to get targeted deep-stick studies done on the way pharma customers, such as doctors and patients, behave. The span of the behavioral study should commence from the onset of a patient’s search for a disease treatment process, right up to when the individual gets an ‘after treatment experience’ – good, bad or average. It is, therefore, necessary for a drug company, to become more patient-centric, rather than self-serving, for achieving the desired goals of pharma business, consistently.

This wisdom would enable pharma marketers developing the following five broad insights for being ‘patient-centric’:

  • Understanding the process of thinking of a type or a group of patients about making their treatment choices. It could often mean not going for any treatment at all, or not adhering to prescribed treatment.
  • What makes patients behave the way they do, while undergoing a treatment?
  • Understanding both mental and physical feelings of patients while suffering from certain disease conditions, for effective engagement with them.
  • What type of holistic treatment experience the patients would value most to cherish.
  • What type of treatment experience the doctors would value most to provide to patients to enhance their practice and professional reputation.

While doing so, pharma marketers would need to clearly harmonize the two areas – one pertaining to doctors, and the other involving patients. This is important for the purpose of a clear focus on a comprehensive brand strategy formulation, based on well-analyzed data.

The key point to note, however – a creative blend of behavioral science with new-age pharma marketing tools can bring a sea change in the business performance of a company, along with providing a delightful treatment experience to patients with its drugs.

Generation of a huge pool of customer behavioral data is the starting point:

The first step of making a patient-centric organization is the generation of a huge pool of data on customer-behavior dynamics. That said, making predictions on the company’s customer behavior for future outcomes of the brand performance, from this data pool, would involve the use data analytics, which for this purpose will be ‘predictive data analytics.’

The use of ‘predictive analytics’ in pharma marketing:

In my article titled, ‘Data: The New Magic Wand For Pharma Business Excellence’, published in this Blog on October 01, 2018, I discussed the importance of well targeted data-based decision-making process, across the pharma functional areas. Taking this idea forward, let me explain here the critical role that ‘predictive data analytics’ can play in acquiring insights of the trend of behavior of the customers, especially patients and doctors.

Simply put, ‘predictive analytics’ is a type of advanced analytics, which are used to get deep insights and making well-informed predictions, based on both past and current data feeds. In pharma, especially for the subject that I am discussing, it pertains to insights on doctor and patient behavior related predictions, encompassing the entire span of a disease treatment process. Skillfully executed, this will strengthen, at least, two critical success factors in the pharma business:

  • Acquiring predictable insights on the targeted customers’ behavioral trend and pattern any given time-frame.
  • With such customer insights making the organization ‘patient-centric’ for more effective engagement with its customers.

Combining the above two points, I can well say, by analyzing a huge pool of data from behavioral-science-based information – ‘predictive analytics’ helps acquire deep insights on predictable customer behavior, with high precision. These are so useful, not just for better engagement with doctors, patients and other stakeholders, but also in making the organization patient-centric, in true sense. Nevertheless, many still question - Is ‘patients centricity’ really feasible in the pharma industry?

Is ‘patient centricity’ really feasible in the pharma industry?

This question was also raised in the 2017 paper titled, “Patient Centricity and Pharmaceutical Companies: Is It Feasible?” -  published in Vol. 51(4) of the Therapeutic Innovation & Regulatory Science (TIRS). The paper captures patient-centricity as integrated measures for listening to and partnering with patients, and placing patients’ well-being at the core of all business initiatives. It represents a holistic approach to the disease management process.

The concept brand-oriented patient-centricity is not too difficult to understand. But, I reckon, the difficulty lies somewhere else. It is to fathom where and how a pharma player can predictably add differentiating value, for those patients who need a right kind of treatment. That’s why, the question of feasibility of ‘patient-centricity’ is being raised.

There is no doubt that such an effort presupposes considerable insights on patients’ behavior, alongside the requisite expertise to predict these, for different time-frames, with a great degree of precision. This not an insurmountable task, either, particularly in today’s paradigm – with state-of-the-art ‘predictive data analytic’ tools. This prompts me to believe, it is very much possible to make a truly patient centric organization, assuming that there will exist a strong will to survive in the business and prosper!

Are ‘predictive data analytics’ different from other analytics?

Yes, the following two key points make ‘predictive data analytics’ quite different from other data analytics:

  • General data analytics usually help acquire insights on the past and present.
  • Whereas, predictive data analytics help looking at near-mid and long-term future, regarding most probable customer behavior pattern and trend, with great accuracy.

Currently, with the ability to generate relevant and real-time big data pool, together with application of machine learning, data-mining and statistical modelling – predictive analytics have the power to help acquire future insights. This insight is totally data-based, sans any gut-feel. Thus, effective use of this process can enable pharma players effectively predict trends and behaviors of doctors and patients for meaningful engagement with them for their chosen brands.

Has potential to create a win-win outcome: 

To ensure a game-changing payback from this process, crafty dovetailing of the following three steps, complementing each other is critical:

  • Generate a huge pool of real-time data on doctors’ and patients’ behavior pattern, for a pre-selected time-frame.
  • With the knowledge of behavioral science, help analyze them with predictive analytics.
  • Understand from the results, the trend of behavioral dynamics of selected customers from the brand perspective.
  • Frame rewarding business strategies to create a win-win situation, involving both – the pharma players and the patients.

Some pharma players are on the ball:

One of the key reasons for imbibing patient-centricity, is the proliferation of ‘me-too’ types of brands – both patented and generics. It has started happening even in the market of high-priced oncology medicines, with not much difference in price between them.

In this situation, predictive data analytic tools can help understand multi-variable relationship between patient’s needs, their interaction with physicians, the oncologist’s prescriptions to them, type of physician-engagement of drug companies and patients’ experience before, during and after the treatment. This is not an easy task, nor all pharma companies have wherewithal of doing this, to gain brand market share, significantly.

With predictive data analytics, many pharma companies are keeping eyes on the ball, using it in different business areas, such as drug discovery. But not many of them, are using this combo-approach to make a patient-centric pharma organization. It is just a matter of time, I reckon, that global pharma will decide to move in this direction – fortified with deep pockets, but with a battered reputation, and facing a hostile pricing environment, across the world.    

Conclusion:

Customer insights, acquired through the crafty application of behavioral science, have immense potential to make sales and marketing decisions more informed, than what it is today. In tandem, it will help create a ‘worth remembering’ treatment experience for the patients with the brand used.

From this perspective, I reckon, skillful application of behavioral science to generate a huge pool of data, and their analysis with ‘predictive analytics’ will go a long way to create a truly ‘patient-centric’ organization.

When executed by a well-integrated expert team of market research, medical affairs and pharma marketing professionals, this new marketing-combo-approach has the potential to fetch a game-changing performance outcome, placing patients at the center of business. The net gain to the organization will be much more than the sum total of what each of these steps can ensue individually – remarkably enhancing corporate reputation, in tandem.

By: Tapan J. Ray     

Disclaimer: The views/opinions expressed in this article are entirely my own, written in my individual and personal capacity. I do not represent any other person or organization for this opinion.

For Patient-Centricity: Emerging a C-Suite Role

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Regardless of skepticism of many, the formidable power of physicians to take all treatment decisions for patients, is gradually getting moderated, globally. Although, its pace may vary from country to country. An increasing number of more informed patients are carving out a greater role for themselves in this important process.

The central focus for brand demand generation can no longer remain just on the doctors. This is because, as I wrote this in my article, published in this Blog on July 06, 2015: “Slowly but steadily the process of taking treatment decisions for the patients is undergoing a metamorphosis, where well informed patients no longer want to play just a passive role. These patients want the doctors to take a final decision on their treatment only after meaningful interactions with them.” Besides a broad prescription pattern, this includes the medicines that they will consume, including meaningful details on product cost against the benefits to be accrued.

The age-old practice of doing a little bit on patient education or compliance, are grossly inadequate in an evolving new scenario. The good news is, many pharma companies have started realizing that appropriate engagement with patients to deliver what they want and more, can lead to better financial performance.

Consequently, the ball game for prescription demand generation is showing early signs of a change – somewhat radical in nature. To spearhead this unavoidable metamorphosis for the organization, there surfaced a brand-new role of a CxO – The Chief Patient Officers (CPO).

This new senior management position is expected to direct organizational focus on patients. Understand their concerns, needs, wants and goals, particularly in the disease areas where the company represents. And finally, give shape to new multichannel well-coordinated platforms of patient engagement, for better commercial returns. In this article, I shall try to explore how this transformation pans out, if at all.

The direction is right, but patients must feel the change:

As I said before, some pharma players have started accepting the reality. The crucial need for an organization to become ‘Patients-Centric’ can’t be wished away anymore. For example, a 2015 “Industry Healthcheck” survey where 1600 pharma executives participated, found that 85 percent of respondents agreed that ‘Patient-Centricity’ is the best route to improve profitability, in the fast changing business environment.

It is perhaps well understood that the pharma industry has arrived at this point due to increasing access of the general population to easily available, all-kind of information on the cyber space, including health care. The enabling facility has already prompted many patients evaluating various treatment options for a disease, including choice of drugs and their cost.

As a result, pharma companies felt the necessity to have a new leader who will give a new perspective and direction in creating a new value for the organization, for a sustainable progress. This involves charting a comprehensive pathway to gradually shift the entire company focus on ‘patients for products’, and not on ‘products for patients.’

According to reports, a few global pharma majors, such as Merck and Sanofi already have their CPO in place, but patients are yet to feel any difference on the ground even for these companies, as many say.

What exactly is ‘Patient-Centricity?’ – Two perspectives:

It won’t be a bad idea to get to know two different perspectives on what ‘Patient-Centricity’ exactly is – one from a CPO and the other from patient groups, as follows:

A. 3 three pillars of ‘Patient-Centricity’ from the CPO perspective:

To get a ringside perspective to this question from the industry, let me quote from the first CPO - Anne C. Beal appointed in a top-10 pharma – Sanofi, on March 31, 2014, though the CPO position is in existence, since 2012.

On December 2014, at the 11th annual Patient Summit USA conference, Anne Beal, reportedly deliberated on the three pillars of her company’s patient-centric strategy, which I shall describe, as follows:

  • Utilizing patients’ input to get a better sense of their needs in order to design and deliver solutions that help fulfill them.
  • Engaging and supporting patients to ensure the solutions that the company delivers help enhance their lives and improve outcomes.
  • Involving with the company employees and supporting them to create an engaged community and patient-centric culture.

B. 9 attributes of ‘Patient-Centricity’ from the patients’ perspective:

‘Patient View’ – a UK-based research, publishing, and consultancy group, arrived at the ‘9 Key Attributes’ of ‘Patient-Centricity’. This is based on the analysis of feedbacks (2016-17) from 2,000 patient groups worldwide, 50+ different medical specialties in 100+ countries. The critical attributes of the same that patients want to see in a drug company can be summarized, as follows:

  • Demonstrate integrity and authenticity through all company actions.
  • Understand all the issues that patients face ‘beyond the pill’ and help in dealing with them.
  • Transparency in drug pricing policy, research, results, funding relationship.
  • Ensure that all patients are included in access strategies, regardless of the returns to the company.
  • Products to provide quantifiable value to patients.
  • Reliable supply and comprehensive patient safeguard.
  • Provide quality product information – Consistent, current, balanced and usable.
  • Patient group relation – good intention, effective governance, communication and training.
  • Ensure patients are engaged and their opinions are sought at each stage of R&D.

On a broader canvas, the two perspectives on ‘Patient-Centricity’ – one from the CPO and the other from the patients’ groups, do have some important similarities. Nevertheless, I reckon, the CPOs would still need to cover more ground to match patients’ expectations from a ‘Patient-Centric’ pharma company. 

Claimants of ‘patient-centric’ focus are many, but few deliver consistently:

Quite expectedly, there are many claimants for a ‘patient-centric’ organizational focus. Interestingly, few actually deliver consistently. This was vindicated in the article – ‘How patient-centric is the pharma industry’, published by PDD - a design and innovation consultancy firm on June 06, 2016.

The paper indicates both the up and downside of pharma company claims on ‘Patient-Centricity.’ The upside is that the hype has influenced, at least, some drug players to openly talk about the need to shift the company focus more on patients. A few have initiated some tangible action, as well. Whereas, the downside of it is the lack of consistency in the enthusiasm of ‘patient-centric’ actions by these companies. To illustrate the point, let me quote the following two examples from the article:

  • In the 2013 survey on ‘Patient-Centricity’ by the research firm ‘Patient View’, ViiV Healthcare (the GSK & Pfizer joint venture focused on HIV therapies), Gilead, AbbVie, Menarini and Janssen occupied the top 5 spots.
  • However, in the ‘eyeforpharma Barcelona Awards 2016 ’ that too focuses on ‘Patient-Centricity’, none of these companies featured in the “Most Valuable Patient Initiative or Service” category. Whereas, Sanofi took the top spot, and Merck, Roche, Novartis and TEVA were the remaining nominees.

The criteria of the two selection processes, apparently being similar, this is interesting. More so, when the ‘patient-centric’ focus of an organization is an ongoing strategy, with a ‘top priority’ tag attached to it.

Be that as it may, that some serious efforts being made by a few companies in this area, can’t be brushed aside, either, regardless of the fact that the CPO position came into existence, since 2012. It flagged, at that time, the criticality of ‘Patient-Centricity’ in the pharmaceutical business and possibly, sent a signal to pharma players for a course correction, in this direction, soon enough.

Conclusion:

In an interview, published in December 2016 issue of McKinsey Quarterly, LEO Pharma’s president and CEO, Gitte Aabo, aptly summarized the process of ‘Patient-Centricity’, as follows:

“Patient-Centricity means being deeply entrenched in the patient’s needs, not just thinking about how to develop new products and new features. It means reaching out to patients and considering treatments that will help them in whatever situation they find themselves in.”

However, since long, most drug manufacturers are apparently solely driven by commercial considerations, both for new drug discovery and also in generic product development. Subsequent marketing strategies are obviously an integral component of the same organizational thought leadership and value chain. Several examples from the current status of the R&D pipeline for multi-drug resistant antibiotics, or what is happening even with the generic drug pricing in many countries, including the United States, will vindicate this point.

That said, a mild wind of change on the sails of traditional pharma mindset seems to be slowly catching up, as some CPOs position themselves in the saddle. Hopefully, this will  ultimately make patients the centerpiece of pharma business. Can more of this kind of actions be construed as signals for imbibing ‘Patient-Centricity’ by the drug companies? Will its impact be visible and felt by all – in real life, soon?

By: Tapan J. Ray   

Disclaimer: The views/opinions expressed in this article are entirely my own, written in my individual and personal capacity. I do not represent any other person or organization for this opinion.

The Hype of Digitalization in Pharma Marketing

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Having access to the fountain of knowledge residing in the cyberspace, fueled by word of mouth information and aided by social media, patients’ behavior is fast changing globally. Its degree may vary. But the change is real. The good news is – in a digital world of today, people are talking about ‘digitalization’ to rejuvenate per dollar productivity even in the pharma business, while navigating through a strong environmental headwind.

But, the bad news seems to be, that many pharma players, especially in India, can’t possibly quite fathom, just yet, the profound impact of the changing customer profile. With the hype of ‘digital marketing’ and associated cacophony, most of them seem to be focusing on automation of various processes with digital tools, rather than a customer-centric pan-organization digitalization of business. In this article, I shall dwell on the relevance of such intervention in the pharma marketing model, including the processes, before it’s too late for an organization.

The reality – profile of pharma consumers is changing:

It is well documented today that the profile of pharma consumers is changing. There are several studies in this area. For example, the McKenzie paper of November 2014, titled “A digital prescription for pharma companies,” penned some important observations in this regard, as follows:

  • Consumers in the healthcare sector are becoming more informed, empowered, and demanding.
  • The vast majority of connected patients using an array of digital tools, to take control of their health and the health care services they access and buy.
  • Over 70 percent of patients who are online in the United States use the Internet to find healthcare information, and around 40 percent of people who diagnosed their condition through online research had it confirmed by a physician.
  • Patients equip themselves with information about product safety, efficacy, cost comparison, quality indicators from websites and online communities.
  • The more healthcare data become digitally accessible, the more patients will use it to weigh—and potentially reject—expensive health care treatments, as is particularly true in the United States.
  • These patients are demanding more information, so they can apply the same cost-benefit analysis and research techniques they use to purchase cars or phones when they purchase health care.
  • They are also making more informed, rational choices about where they put their money.
  • If pharma companies do not join the digital dialogue and influence the conversation, they will lose an opportunity to shape it, and they may be put on the defensive trying to refute the statements made by those that do take part.

In this evolving scenario, the expectations of pharma customers even in India, are also changing. It may not be as fast as in the United States, but certainly can’t be ignored in any way, for long term business success. Thus, I reckon, it would be futile to keep the basic process of business as tradition-bound as it has always been, of course, with some interesting tweaking here or there.

When everybody talks about digital intervention, what it is really?

To effect this desired change, all concerned are now talking about ‘digitalization’. It has already become a buzz word and is often considered as a ‘magic wand’ by many enthusiasts. There is nothing wrong in this hype, provided this process is properly understood. I tried to explain it in my article, published in this Blog on January 2018. Are we missing wood for the tree? Let me start with the current ‘digitalization’ focus of pharma marketing in this area, particularly in India – as I see it.

Where’s the current focus on ‘digitalization’ in pharma marketing?

Generally, the pharma marketing focus broadly covers two different categories:

A. Push marketing 

B. Pull marketing

A. Push marketing: 

In my view, ‘push marketing’ involves targeting physicians through Medical Representatives and other means, including several contentious ones. These ensure that the doctors “push” the identified pharma brands of the company while writing prescriptions for patients. Some experts call it an ‘inside out’ and brand focused strategy of the industry players to drive sales.

Many companies are taking major digital steps to introduce automation in this area, which are not transformative, but incremental and aimed at improving productivity. Such drive encompasses many areas of a pharma organization, including the field staff related functions. For example, replacing usage of paper-based items, such as detailing folders or reporting material, with algorithm-based digital tablet devices. These reforms help answer customer questions promptly, besides almost real-time entry of accurate doctors’ call related data into a remote computer server for continuous analysis and feedback.

Automation of such types may free enough time of the field staff for greater customer contacts in different ways, but may not be considered as digitalization of the organization. Moreover, these are not transformative in nature either, as the overall process of doing business remains the same.

Nonetheless, process automation and its re-engineering add significant, but incremental value to the business, as the organization continues to maintain similar ‘inside-out’ focus on brands. The re-engineered processes also become faster and more accurate to help improve productivity. However, patients’ knowledge-base, needs, demands, values and aspiration keep changing fast, which just process automation can’t leverage to excel in business.

B. Pull marketing: 

Unlike ‘push marketing’, ‘pull marketing’ targeting pharma consumers who are increasingly becoming more informed and want to get involved in their treatment decision making process, including selection of a drug. The evolving trend suggests, to succeed in business, pharma players would require focusing more on patients, using various digital tools and platforms of engagement, in different ways.

To make this process meaningful, it is essential for a drug company to venture into mapping the patient’s journey from end-to-end for a specific disease or a set of diseases. This means capturing real-life data right from the time patients feel the need for a medical intervention, through the search for the right treatment, to effective disease management or cure, including follow-up, if any. Thus, mapping this arduous and complex odyssey would demand application of state-of-the-art digital tools.

Thereafter, equally sophisticated measures structured on digital platforms and formulated accordingly, require to be and implemented on the ground. It then becomes the ground-rock to transform the company’s focus – ‘through brands to patients’ to – ‘through patients to brands.’ Dovetailing this new marketing concept to a pan-organization initiative will call for new insight and wherewithal of the right kind.

When implemented by the right kind of people, this approach will encouragepatients to “pull” the demand of the selected brands, as they participate along with doctors in the drug selection part of the entire treatment process. The informed patients won’t hesitate posing questions to doctors – why ‘this’ drug is being prescribed and why not ‘that’ drug?’ The doctor would require responding with convincing answers in that situation. Some experts have termed this process as – an ‘outside in’ strategy.

Difference in impact – one ‘Incremental’, the other ‘transformative’:

It’s important to reiterate that the impact of digitalization for an ‘inside-out push strategy’, is generally incremental. Whereas, the same for ‘outside-in pull strategy’ is expected to be transformative in nature, not just in the business performance, but also the way pharma business is viewed and conducted as on date, especially in India.

Conclusion:

As I understand, process automation may be based on digital platforms and even with the application of Artificial Intelligence (AI) or robotics, the overall business process remains unchanged. It brings greater efficiency in the same business processes, improving employee productivity, and usually adds incremental success to brand performance.

Whereas, digitalization helps create a new way of achieving excellence – gaining a new insight for the business. This happens, first through generation, and then detail analysis of an enormous amount of relevant customer-centric data. Effective interpretation and use of the same, help transform the business – giving shape to new business processes for organizational distinction.

Simply speaking, automation improves the business efficiency with its key focus on ‘pushing brand prescription demand’, as much as possible. Whereas, digitalization aims at business transformation for a long-term organizational effectiveness. It creates a new purpose for business based on changing customer profile, across the organization. A sharp focus on delivering research-based and well-targeted customer values help ‘pulling brand prescription demand’, the decision of which is often jointly taken by the doctors and the patients or will happen that way even in India, sooner than later.

In this perspective, what we see in pharma marketing, generally in India, is automation of various types, of course, by using digital tools, platforms and even AI, in some cases. There isn’t anything wrong in that. But, digitization would call for much more. First, the core organizational focus to shift from being ‘brand-centric’ to ‘customer-centric’ for financial achievements, and then effectively delivering customer values through each ‘company-brand-customer interface’ and beyond that. This is essential for sustainable excellence of pharma players in the digital age.

By: Tapan J. Ray  

Disclaimer: The views/opinions expressed in this article are entirely my own, written in my individual and personal capacity. I do not represent any other person or organization for this opinion.

‘Diversity And Inclusion’: A Missing Link For Indian Pharma

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Inadequate access to affordable health care to a vast majority of the population has been a favorite topic of debate, since long, globally. This discourse is generally centered around the least developed and the developing world, such as India. However, in the recent time, the reverberations of the same can be heard even from the most developed countries, like the United States.

Possible solutions in this area generally encompass several tangible issues, e.g. high cost of drugs and care, alleged unethical practices of the providers, infrastructure bottlenecks – to name a few. Curiously, despite the availability of an increasing number of innovative drugs, state of the art facilities and diagnostics, brilliant healthcare professionals and so on, disparities in the degree of access to all these, between different members of the civil society, keep steadily mounting.

This cascading socioeconomic issue, creating a widening the trust deficit, especially on pharma, throws a critical management challenge for long term sustainability of business, if not survival too.

Transformation to a customer-oriented, profit-making organization:

Building a profit-making organization is not an easy task. However, transforming a profit-making organization to a profit making through customer-centric policies, is several times more challenging. That’s because, making a true external customer-centric organization gets kick started from a significant cultural change within the organization. Systematically creating a pool of requisite internal customers (employees), with diverse background, experience, gender, belief, perspective, talent and, more importantly, ably supported by the organizational vision of inclusion, forms the nerve center of this transformative process. No doubt, why the quality of ‘Diversity and Inclusion (DI)’ culture of an organization is assuming the importance of a differential success factor in business excellence.

The August 25, 2016 E&Y article, titled “Embracing customer experience in the pharmaceutical industry” epitomizes its relevance by articulating: “It is the companies that focus on continuously delivering a better customer experience to build a trusted and transparent relationship over time that will win in the market. They will not only acquire customers that will remain loyal, but also win advocates that will refer the company or brand to more customers.”

The missing link:

It is now being widely established that creating a culture of ‘Diversity and Inclusion (DI)’ across the organization, is of critical importance to maintain sustainable business excellence, with a win-win outcome. Going a step forward, I reckon, although, this is an arduous task for any organization, but an essential one – even for long-term survival of a business. However, today, the very concept of DI is apparently a ‘missing link’ in the chain of sustainable organizational-building initiatives, particularly for most Indian pharma companies.

The role of DI in making a customer-centric business:

Health care customers, like many others, are generally of diverse backgrounds, financial status, ethnicity, gender, health care needs, expectations, and also in their overall perspective. Thus, to make a customer-centric organization for greater market success, and drive product and service innovation accordingly, pharma companies need to deeply understand them, empathetically. A competent pool of well-selected employees with diverse backgrounds, race, ethnicity, gender, perspectives, could facilitate this process, more effectively. However, the company should also create an environment and culture of inclusion for all to listen to each other’s well-reasoned views – expressed uninhibited and fearlessly for this purpose.

In making this process more effective to add a huge tangible and intangible worth to the business, pharma players need to untether the employee potential through empowerment, making them feel valued and grow. This would also help immensely in charting newer pathways of all-round success in many other high-voltage complexities of pharma business.

‘Why diversity matters’?

That diversity within an organization matters in several ways, has been established in several studies. For example, the February 2015 article, titled “Why diversity matters”, of McKinsey & Company says, “More diverse companies are better able to win top talent, and improve their customer orientation, employee satisfaction, and decision making, leading to a virtuous cycle of increasing returns.” The analysis found a statistically significant relationship between a more diverse leadership team and better financial performance (measured as average EBIT 2010–2013).

Why is inclusion so important?

In a large number of organizations that include Indian pharma, senior management staffs generally seem to appreciate hearing more of what they want to hear. This culture quickly percolates top-down – encompassing the entire company, probably with a few exceptions. Personal ‘likes’ and ‘dislikes’ of various nature and degree spread wings within many organizations. Such a situation is created from intrinsic apathy to patiently listen to and accept another employee’s viewpoint – even on critical customer-centric issues. Employees, in that process, also get branded as ‘argumentative’ and often ‘disloyal’, if not a ‘socialist’. The major decisions often get biased accordingly – sometimes unknowingly.

Whereas, inclusion entails empowerment and close involvement of a diverse pool of employees with dignity, by recognizing their intrinsic worth and value. Moving towards a culture of inclusion would require creation of an organizational desire to communicate professionally and learn how to listen to each other’s well-thought-through arguments with interest.

The business should accept that it is not really important in getting along with everybody on all issues – every time. Neither, does it make sense for professionals to develop personal ‘likes’ or ‘dislikes’ on other fellow colleagues, based on issue-based differences, while finding out ways and means to improve organizational performance, image or reputation. Inclusion helps employees to learn to work closely, despite personal differences on all important issues.

Has Global pharma industry started imbibing DI?

Yes, many global pharma majors, such as, GSK, Novartis and Merck and several others, have started practicing DI as a way of organizational life and culture. Some of them like GSK India has put it on its country website. But, generally in India, the scenario is not quite similar. Though, many head honchos in the country talk about DI, the February 16, 2017 edition of Bloomberg/Quint carried a headline “Most Indian Companies Do Not Value Diversity At Board-Level Hirings,” quoting Oxfam India.

A voluntary survey of ‘company diversity’ conducted by US-based DiversityInc at Princeton, ranks the companies on four key areas of diversity management: talent pipeline, equitable talent development, CEO/leadership commitment, and supplier diversity. It revealed an interesting fact in its 2016 study. The survey reported, while diversity continues to improve in the overall perspective, its ‘Pharma 50’, as a group, ‘is right in the middle of the industry pack when benchmarked against the Fortune 500.’  The survey also brought to light significant differences in the levels of gender, national, and ethnic diversity even at the company boards and executive committees of individual companies. Nonetheless, some global pharma entities are taking significant steps in this direction. But, these are still early days in many organizations.

Conclusion:

The E&Y article quoted above, also says that pharma “customers are becoming resistant to push sales and marketing, and are instead preferring to relate to the overall experience provided in their pull interactions with the company. The customer experience will be the next battleground for the pharmaceutical industry. The deployment of a customer experience capability is a transformational journey in often unchartered territories. The key to success is to start early and drive a process that is both rigorous and iterative, allowing the organization – and its customers – to learn along the way and always to be ready with the next best action in place.” DI, I reckon, plays a critical role in attaining this goal.

Pharma companies are also realizing that building a profit-making organization with blockbuster high-priced, high-profit making molecules, such as Sovaldi is possible, but this may not be sustainable. It isn’t an easy task either, not anymore. There lies the urgency of transforming a profit-making organization to a profit making through customer-centric business entity. This process, I repeat, is several times more challenging, but the business success is much more sustainable.

Organizational transformation of this nature is prompting the global pharma majors to use Diversity and Inclusion (D&I) while achieving their key financial and people goals. Both D (Diversity) and I (inclusion) work in tandem for taking any fairness-based organizational decisions, irrespective of whether it’s staff or customer decision.

DI has the potential to help an organization to create and chart new and more productive pathways almost in all functions within the company – right from R&D, communication, service delivery to market access. In all these initiatives, customer focus to occupy the center stage – for a win-win outcome – significantly reducing the degree of difficulty for access to affordable medicines. DI is not a panacea to mitigate this problem totally, but would help significantly, nonetheless – with the help of employees with diverse background but having fresh eyes. Many global pharma majors have initiated action in this direction. However, in Indian pharma business generally, DI still remains a missing link, as it is seen today.

By: Tapan J. Ray

Disclaimer: The views/opinions expressed in this article are entirely my own, written in my individual and personal capacity. I do not represent any other person or organization for this opinion.

Increasing Consumerism: A Prime Mover For Change in Healthcare

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Increasing ‘consumerism’ has already become a strong prime mover to reckon with, even in healthcare, including the pharma industry, across the world. Patients’ longing for better participative treatment experience at an affordable cost, has started gathering momentum as a major disrupting force in the healthcare space of India, as well.

In this article, which discusses a different topic from what I said in my last article that I will write this week, let us try to fathom today’s reality in a fast expanding area, primarily by connecting the emerging dots, both globally and locally. However, before doing so, it won’t be a bad idea to recapitulate, in the general term, what exactly is ‘consumerism’ – and then looking at it in context of healthcare.

What it really means?

The Oxford dictionary defines ‘consumerism’ as: ‘The protection or promotion of the interests of consumers.’ As an example, it says, ‘The impact of consumerism emerges as a factor of stabilization, as do the different understandings of stability and stabilization.’ Whereas, consumerism in healthcare is an assertion of patients’ right to be a key participant in their healthcare decision making process. As aptly put by Healthcare Success: “It is a movement from the ‘doctor says/patient does’ model, to a ‘working partnership’ model.”

Should pharma strategic marketing process, not take care of it?

When the above question is asked differently as: If the pharma strategic marketing process is effective, why is healthcare consumerism increasing across the world, including India? To find an answer to this, let’s go the basic of the definition of ‘marketing’. American Marketing Association (AMA) defines it as: ‘‘Marketing is the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large.’ A more specific definition of pharma marketing (Olszewska A. Strategic management in pharmaceutical marketing. Chemik 2006: S91-4.)is: ‘A management process that serves to identify and meet patients’ needs in a profitable way.’

This prompts the key question, if the above basic process of ‘marketing’ is followed by the pharma industry as it ought to be, why should there be an increasing trend of ‘consumerism’ in Healthcare, in general, and the pharma industry in particular?

The major drivers:

NRC Health through various surveys, has captured the major drivers of consumerism in healthcare. I am listing below a few of those, as I understand, just as examples:

  • Significant increase in health care cost to payers, including the patients.
  • Consumers are the fastest growing payer in the industry.
  • They foot most costs of their health premiums and out-of-pocket co-pays.
  • As consumers have more money at risk, they want to get more engaged with their own treatment decision for the best value for money.
  • One-way monologue for treatment doesn’t not enough for most patients.
  • 3 of 10 patients defer necessary treatment to avoid self-confusion and expense.
  • 4 out of 5 find difficult to compare costs Vs. drug quality.
  • 3 out of 4 feel their health care decisions are the most important and expensive
  • Patients face difficulty to compare cost, quality, and access to physicians.

In my view, sooner than later, the emerging situation in India will also be no different, especially with its increasing digitally empowered population.

Is pharma marketer cognizant of this emerging trend?

It will be unfair to make any sweeping statement that they are not. This is based on what I see and experience around, mostly in the global arena. But locally, although significant publicity of a large number of pharma training programs appear in the social media, most of these are apparently based on the ‘buzz of the time’.

Besides a few sporadic exceptions, generally the Indian pharma marketers still appear to believe in the same age-old model – what the ‘doctor says/patient does’. As a result, increasing consumerism keep haunting the industry – the Government often responds – mostly with sound bites, though, the industry keeps lamenting on the ‘ease of doing business’ or the lack of it, in India. The much avoidable cycle continues.

A prime mover for change in healthcare:

Increasing health care consumerism is a prime mover to usher in significant changes in this space. These changes are mostly unexpected and disruptive, but usually good for the patients. I shall illustrate this point here with just two examples, out of many. The first one comes from three global corporate head honchos of unrelated business, aimed at their own employees. And the other is related to all patients with the initiative coming from within the healthcare industry, including pharma.

The first example of an unexpected move comes from the announcement of three corporate behemoths – Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan Chase, saying they would form an independent health care company for their employees in the United States. This was reported by The New York Times (NYT) on January 30, 2018. The alliance signals how frustrated American businesses are not just with their health care system, but also rapidly spiraling cost of medical treatment – the report said. The NYT also quoted Warren E. Buffett of Berkshire Hathaway as saying:“The ballooning costs of health care act as a hungry tapeworm on the American economy.”

The initial focus of the new venture, as announced, will be on “technology solutions” that will provide U.S. employees and their families with “simplified, high-quality and transparent healthcare at a reasonable cost.”  They also plan to “bring their scale and complementary expertise to this long-term effort.Nevertheless, it is unclear how extensively the three partners would overhaul their employees’ existing health coverage to reduce healthcare cost and improving outcomes for patients. They may simply help workers find a local doctor, steer employees to online medical advice or use their muscle to negotiate lower prices for drugs and procedures. While the alliance will apply only to their employees, these corporations are so closely watched that whatever successes they have could become models for other businesses – NYT commented.

The second examplecomes from an article, titled ‘Consumerism in Health Care’, published in NEJM Catalyst on January 11, 2018. It says, another important change that is a direct outcome of the consumerism of health care is personalization of care to facilitate health outcomes. However, ultimate personalization, that is, a “one-to-one relationship” between a company and an individual appear increasingly possible with the data and analytics that are now within the reach of many global pharma players, the paper says. However, most Indian pharma players, I reckon, still lack wherewithal that’s required to build capabilities to deliver high degree of personalization for patients.

As a result, pharma industry, in general, is still charting in the primary stages of delivering personalization, although, progress made by some global players in this direction is quite encouraging.

Consumerism in healthcare to gather momentum in India:

A September 2016 paper, titled ‘Re-engineering Indian health care’, published jointly by FICCI and EY points to this direction. The results of their survey done as a part of this study indicates, the aspirations of the middle and upper classes are evolving and their demands for convenience, participation and transparency in the health care delivery process are indicative of the shift from being a docile patient to an informed “health consumer.”

Thus, it is irrefutable today that digitally empowered patients are fast increasing, even in India. This is fueled by rapid expansion of broadband Internet in the country – a bottomless source of information. In this scenario, would the general pharma marketing assumption in India - what the ‘doctor says/patient does’, still yield results? Indian pharma marketers may need to possibly do some crystal gazing in this area – sooner the better.

Conclusion:

Accepting the reality of increasing consumerism in the healthcare space, both globally and locally, pharma players, especially in India, need to clear all clutter in the pathway to reach out and directly interact with their end-customers – the patients, aiming at improving clinical outcomes, the way patients would want – individually or in a cluster.

In a nutshell, what do patients want through increasing consumerism: Personal and meaningful involvement in their healthcare decision making process, based on requisite credible information from independent expert sources. Thus, what pharma the players should gear up to be: Cultivating a truly patient-centric approach in their business. And, there lies the real challenge for many in the industry, as it will mean all marketing and related organizational decisions will revolve around in-depth understanding of the patient’s mindset, along with their associated needs, want and health aspirations.

While moving towards this direction, providing personalized care by leveraging optimally selected modern technological platforms, will be a cutting-edge tool for pharma business excellence and achieving sustainable all-round growth – over a long period of time. As I see it, increasing consumerism will continue to remain a prime mover for unexpected, but welcoming changes in the healthcare space, at least for a medium term. It is to be taken rather seriously, with as much care as it deserves.

By: Tapan J. Ray    

Disclaimer: The views/opinions expressed in this article are entirely my own, written in my individual and personal capacity. I do not represent any other person or organization for this opinion.

Leveraging Artificial Intelligence For Greater Patient-Centricity

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‘Artificial Intelligence (AI)’ – the science of simulation of intelligent behavior in computers, has the potential to leave a transformational impact on virtually everything that we see and feel around us. As many will know, the modern definition of AI is “the study and design of intelligent agents where an intelligent agent is a system that perceives its environment and takes actions which maximizes its chances of success.”

Let me begin with a couple of exciting examples on the application of AI for general use. One such is Siri the voice-activated computer in the iPhone that one can interact with as a personal assistant, every day. The other is the self-driving features with the predictive capabilities of Tesla cars; or even the well-hyped Google driver-less car. Alongside, Google is also in pursuit of creating AI with ‘imagination’ through its ‘DeepMind’. It develops algorithms that simulate the human ability to construct plans.

Pharma’s emergence in the AI space:

The unfathomable potential of AI is being slowly recognized in the healthcare arena, as well, including pharma industry. It’s gradual emergence in the space of ‘intelligent learning’, often called ‘machine learning’, ushers in a new paradigm of learning from a vast pool of highly credible real-time data. Innovative applications of this process can fetch a game changing business performance. Its scope spans right across the pharma value chain – from Drug Discovery, including Precision Medicine; Clinical Trials; Pharmacovigilance; Supply Chain Management, and right up-to Sales and Marketing.

Pharma’s emergence in the AI space is quite evident from Reuters report of July 3, 2017. It wrote that GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) has inked a new USD 43 million deal with Exscientia to help streamline the company’s drug discovery process by leveraging AI. With this deal in place, Exscientia will allow GSK to search for drug candidates for up to 10 disease-related targets. GSK will provide research funding and make this payment, if pre-clinical milestones are met.

Again, on July 27, 2017, Insilico Medicine – a Baltimore-based leader in AI, focusing on drug discovery and biomarker development, announced a similar agreement with the biotechnology player Juvenescence AI Limited. According to this agreement, Juvenescence AI will develop the first compounds generated by Insilico’s AI techniques, such as Generative Adversarial Networks in order to generate novel compounds with desired pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic properties.

Several other pharmaceutical giants, including Merck & Co, Johnson & Johnson and Sanofi are also exploring the potential of AI for streamlining the drug discovery process. It would help them to significantly improving upon the hit-and-miss business of finding new medicines, as Reuters highlighted.  Eventually, these applications of AI may be placed right at the front-line of pharma business – in search of new drugs.

I have already discussed in this blog – the ‘Relevance of AI in creative pharma marketing’ on October 31, 2016. In this article, I shall mainly focus on leveraging AI in health care for greater patient-centricity, which is emerging as one of the prime requirements for excellence in the pharma business.

Imbibing patient-centricity is no longer an option:

In an article published in this blog on the above subject, I wrote that: ‘providing adequate knowledge, skills and related services to people effectively, making them understand various disease management and alternative treatment measures, thereby facilitating them to be an integral part of their health care related interventions, for better health outcomes, are no longer options for pharma companies.’

The craft of being ‘patient-centric’, therefore, assumes the importance of a cutting-edge  of pharma business for sustainable performance.

What exactly is ‘patient-centricity’?

BMJ Innovations – a peer reviewed online journal, in an article titled, ‘Defining patient centricity with patients for patients and caregivers: a collaborative endeavor’, published on March 24, 2017, defines ‘patient-centricity’ as: “Putting the patient first in an open and sustained engagement of patient to respectfully and compassionately achieve the best experience and outcome for that person and their family.”

Thus, to deliver the best experience, and treatment outcomes to patients, their participation and engagement, especially with the doctors, hospitals and the drug companies assume significant importance.

The June 2017 ‘Discussion Paper’ of McKinsey Global Institute, titled ‘Artificial Intelligence the Next Digital Frontier’ also captured this emerging scenario, succinctly. Recognizing that health care is a promising market for AI, the paper highlighted the enormous potential in its ability. The power of which can draw inferences by recognizing patterns in large volumes of patient histories, medical images, epidemiological statistics, and other data.

Thus, AI has the potential to help doctors improve their diagnoses, forecast the spread of diseases, and customize treatments. Combined with health care digitization, AI can also allow providers to monitor or diagnose patients remotely, as well as transform the way we treat the chronic diseases that account for a large share of health care budgets, the paper underscored. This poses the obvious question: what exactly AI can possibly do in the space of health care?

What can AI do for health care?

In a nutshell, the application of AI or ‘machine learning’ system in health care generally uses algorithms and software to approximate human cognition in the analysis of relevant, yet complex scientific and medical data. In-depth study and interpretation of these in a holistic way would be of immense use in many areas. For example, to understand the relationships between prevention or treatment processes and outcomes, or various debilitating conditions affecting people with the advancement of age, to name just a few.

This necessitates the generation of a huge pool of relevant and credible data from multiple sources, storing and analyzing them meaningfully, and then garnering the capabilities of ‘machine learning’ with the application of AI. Such a process helps in zeroing-in to a series of complex, interdependent strategic actions to go for the gold, in terms of business results. Using conventional methods, as exist today, other than imbibing AI or ‘machine learning’, may indeed be a Herculean task, as it were, to achieve the same.

Invaluable business insights thus acquired need to be shared, across the various different functions of a company, for greater patient-centricity within the organization.

Moving from ‘patient-engagement’ to ‘patient-centricity’:

While making a significant move from just ‘patient engagement’ to being ‘patient centric’, one-size-fits-all strategy is unlikely to yield the desired results. The process of gathering adequate knowledge and understanding of any individual’s disease management skills, which mostly depend on complex multi-factorial, interrelated and combinatorial algorithms, will be a challenging task, otherwise.

Thereafter, comes the need to deliver such knowledge-based value offerings to target patients for better health outcomes, which won’t be easy, either, in the prevailing environment.

Considering these, AI seems to have an immense potential in this area. Some global pharma players are also realizing it. For example, GSK is reportedly engaged with IBM’s Watson in the development of AI-enabled interactive digital Apps for its cold and flu medication to provide relevant information to patients.

Conclusion:

Patient-centricity would soon be the name of the game for pharma business excellence. However, to be truly patient-centric, especially in the sales and marketing operations, pharma players would require to source, process and analyze a huge volume of relevant data in several important areas. These include, target patients, target doctors, environmental dynamics, demographic variations, regulatory requirements, current practices, competitive activities, to name a few.

In this strategic business process, AI or ‘machine learning’ will help accurately mapping the ongoing dynamics and trends in virtually all critical areas. It will help ferret out the nuances of turning around the competitive tide, if any, and that too with immaculate precision. In that sense, AI is likely to emerge as a game changer in imbibing patient-centricity, in the real sense. Consequently, it carries a promise of delivering significantly better outcomes, yielding higher financial returns, alongside.

Although, some concerns on AI are being expressed by several eminent experts, it is generally believed that on the balance of probability, it’s crucial potential benefits far outweigh the anticipated risks. In my view, this holds good even for the pharma industry, especially while leveraging AI for greater patient-centricity, better disease prevention, and more desirable treatment outcomes – improving the quality of life of many, significantly.

By: Tapan J. Ray 

Disclaimer: The views/opinions expressed in this article are entirely my own, written in my individual and personal capacity. I do not represent any other person or organization for this opinion.