Focusing on Patient Centricity for the Future of Pharma

Last week we were delighted to welcome nearly 250 delegates to a webinar all about A Life in a Day and how empathy plays a key role in developing effective patient-centric strategies. Organised in conjunction with Pharma Times, we were told it was one of their biggest audiences in recent times! 

Titled Focusing on Patient Centricity for the Future of Pharma, Mark Doyle, creator of A Life in a Day, spoke about how our work is supporting the growth of patient-centric activities within pharma and healthcare. Mark was joined by Rose Woodward, co-founder of the Kidney Cancer Support Network and a patient herself, for an interesting and insightful discussion.

Watch the full webinar:

The role of empathy in patient centricity

In healthcare, the patient voice is arguably the most important. Services and care work best when a person’s needs are fully met and they feel heard, respected and valued.

Understanding what life is like for people with chronic conditions is vital so they can receive care and support tailored to their needs. During our webinar, Mark discussed how increased empathy, generated through our award-winning A Life in a Day programme, can support the pharma industry’s patient-centric ambitions and the business gains our clients are seeing as a result.

Overcoming patient centricity challenges

Mark started the webinar by discussing the three main challenges when it comes to successful patient centricity:

• No clear definition. Despite the term ‘patient centricity’ being used for some time, a clear definition of what this means still does not exist. If you can’t define patient centricity, how can you achieve it?
• Fear. Mark believes that, when it comes to talking to patients, quite a lot of fear exists within the pharma industry. This may be linked to regulatory, compliance or other issues, but this fear can stifle innovation in the patient-centric space.
• Commercial pressure. We know many companies want to develop and deliver patient-centric activity, but this is offset by the question of ROI. How will these align with commercial drivers and result in a good return on investment?

Empathy, understanding and confidence

Here at A Life in a Day, we believe there are three core ingredients to embracing patient centricity:

• Empathy for patients and the challenges and choices they face every day
• Understanding of the condition in question and how it impacts all aspects of a patient’s life
• Confidence in speaking to and about patients

For us, successful patient-centricity always begins with empathy. As Mark says in the webinar, if we can help people become more empathetic, that helps them understand the reality of living with a chronic condition much more and leads to people feeling more confident in their ability to have patient-focussed conversations.

A Life in a Day: how our experiences build empathy

Watch the full webinar for Mark’s full explanation of how A Life in a Day operates. It is an immersive and interactive simulation allowing pharmaceutical companies and healthcare professionals to step into a patient’s shoes to help them relate to the challenges and choices they face every day, and the impact these have.

We upend traditional learning techniques and instead deliver the programmes using a smartphone app, combining it with live role play  physical items and multimedia materials. The app uses artificial intelligence to ensure a realistic experience where the choices you make determines what happens next.

Our programmes are designed hand-in-hand with patients and healthcare professionals to ensure experiences are as accurate as possible. Results so far show statistically significant increases in empathy, understanding and confidence.

Rose Woodward also shared her knowledge as a patient representative and discussed with Mark her own experiences and thoughts on what constitutes successful patient-centric working, how much more the pharma industry needs to do to become fully patient-centric and how she feels A Life in a Day makes a difference.

As Rose said to Mark: “(A Life in a Day) is certainly the best way of people being able to understand just the continual pressure of dealing with a disease emotionally, physically, psychologically.”

Watch the full webinar video to find out how A Life in a Day can support your company to embrace true patient centricity by building empathy in a way that creates lasting impact.

Contact us for more information about our experiences and book a taster session