How deep does your patient-centricity go?

How inspired are you to put the patient at the centre of what you do? For over seven years, that's the question we've been asking people in pharma and life sciences.

The good news is that data from more than 10,000 responses shows that people working in the industry are significantly more likely to feel inspired to put the patient first than they were five years ago.

Today, we don't have to convince people that patient-centricity is important. There's a real desire to do the right thing by patients. But there's a difference between wanting to inhabit that thought and actually taking action.

A patient-centric mindset is only the first step

Most HCPs and industry professionals believe they are already putting the patient first. When we ask people to assess themselves prior to taking part in A Life in a Day, our a role-reversal simulation programme designed to measurably increase patient focused behaviours, on average they score themselves highly for both empathy (4.4/5) and patient centricity (4.3/5)

But so what?

How does this translate into action – and more importantly, does it have any impact on the people that matter most – the patients?

There's a gap between feeling patient-centric and taking action

A Life in a Day is a unique experience that asks you to walk in the shoes of a patient for up to 24 hours. Using a combination of an app, role play and medical props, we invite people to viscerally experience the impact of living with a disease at home, at work and overnight. It’s challenging, emotional and in some cases, profoundly eye-opening.

“As a physician and someone who has family members with the condition, I thought I knew everything about the patient experience, but I was wrong. Participating in A Life in a Day has given me a deeper understanding of our patients… this is a hugely valuable program.”

Global Medical Director, The Netherlands

Motivated by responses like this, we began asking people to identify what they were doing differently 30 days on, as a result of the experience.

Initially, the results looked promising. 76% agreed they had made changes since taking part in the program… However, when we asked what the changes were, the majority admitted that the most significant difference was “I’ve been thinking about patients more often.”

There's no doubt that influencing the way people think about patients is central to becoming truly patient centric… but is that enough?

We don’t think so.

We think it's about turning the thinking and feeling of being patient-centric into specific action and change. How do we drive the next step - the change from reflection to action?

The power of small changes

There were several reasons people gave for not being able to translate the feeling of being more patient focused into concrete action – but the one that stuck out most was that some participants weren’t sure what being patient centric really meant in relation to their role.

Unsurprisingly, this was more pronounced for people who didn't work in patient- or customer-facing roles. But in our view, it matters for everyone: if you work in the healthcare industry you have the potential to make a difference. So we adapted our approach.

The program now includes support to help people define tangible, role-specific actions they can take to increase patient focus, plus regular 'nudges' to embed behaviour change.

The results were instantaneous. 87% of respondents now say they have completed a patient-focused action within 30 days. Examples include:

• R&D quality teams have begun looking at new tools to reduce the complexity of information in clinical trials, and to be more 'patient-friendly'
• MSLs have introduced more QoL and patient wellbeing materials into their conversation with HCPs and regulators – reporting higher levels of engagement and understanding
• Compliance teams are asking colleagues to define the value of their projects in terms of patient benefit, increasing co-operation and shared understanding of organisational goals
• Sales teams have increased the number of patient-focused conversations by 26% - improving customer relationships and enhancing understanding of the impact of a treatment on QoL
• Marketing teams have changed the language, tone and content in patient materials and websites to reflect a new understanding of patient needs.

The changes may be small, but the potential impact is enormous.

Our goal now is to support our clients to share these examples back to the business to demonstrate what patient centric actions can achieve – and to inspire a culture that truly puts the patient first, not just in thought but in action.

Are you delivering tangible actions from your patient-centricity investment and initiatives? Are you applying them widely enough in your organisation so they can make an impact at all points in your development process? If not, it's time to address this.