“Partnership is not a posture but a process – a continuous process that grows stronger each year as we devote ourselves to common tasks.” John F Kennedy.
Collaboration between the pharmaceutical industry and patient organisations has always been important and should always continue to be so.
At the current time, the pharmaceutical industry is the most patient focused it has ever been, with around 80% of the top pharmaceutical companies citing a patient-centred approach as a core value in their organisation. It’s a broad term that takes different forms and has varying levels, but what does a truly patient-centric approach mean?
Patient centricity and patient engagement are inherently linked but are different. For Makara Health, patient centricity is the mindset and patient engagement is the delivery, the ways in which patient centricity is delivered. With impending, industry-wide changes to measurements and reporting guidance for patient-focused drug development (PFDD) encouraging an end-to-end patient strategy, are pharmaceutical companies across the board ready for this upcoming change in 2025? To be truly patient centric throughout the product life cycle, industry must:
- Consistently embrace a patient-centric mindset and keep the patient front of mind
- Consider how to interact in every way with the groups that represent those patients
Makara Health undertook an in-depth listening exercise at the beginning of 2023 to uncover how critical partnerships between the pharmaceutical industry and the third sector can be enhanced for the good of patients. There are some great partnerships out there, however, taking the time to fully understand the patient-group perspective on how they can be improved and deepened enabled Makara to develop their inaugural Good Patient Partnership Guide. It contains concise insights and clear, tangible recommendations for industry professionals striving to initiate or improve their engagement policy and process. And, for those already doing great work who are looking to up their game in this space, the report offers ‘great’ and ‘stellar’ recommendations.
If you want to know more about the insights and recommendations, you can access the guide at makarahealth.com/patient-partnership.
Written by Claire Paling and Victoria Morton-Green, who are part of Makara’s Patient Strategy and Insights team.