24-25 - PHARMA COMMS: Listening project

Our leaders agree: years of investment in patient-centricity are beginning to pay dividends. Comms now has a key role to play in ensuring the patient voice is heard throughout the therapeutic development life cycle & treatment journey.

“Patients are starting to have more of an involved role in choosing their drug or device, and taking more control of their overall healthcare and accessibility,” says Liz Hogben, Director, Global Marketing, Hollister Incorporated.

“They’re becoming more curious about research, especially if it applies to them,” adds Norbert Brunhuber, Director, Global Scientific Communications Strategy, Vertex Pharmaceuticals. “They’re going to want to read these studies. So, we need to help them understand: what’s a good quality study? What do your results say, and what kind of meaning do they have?

“Patients are being integrated into protocol developments now – in authorship on papers that discuss the studies that they may have been involved in.”

Stephen Head, Senior Director Patient Partnerships, Astellas, echoes that sentiment: “More companies are putting specific teams in place to bring in the patient voice, just like we’re doing at Astellas. We need patients’ voices early on in the development process to help us deliver the best solutions for them.”

“And outside the industry, if you look at regulatory bodies, if you look at societies, if you look at movements like PFMD [Patient Focused Medicine Development], these things are set up now in a way which is challenging the status quo.”

The healthcare communicators adding the most value in 2023 will be those working hand in glove across both agencies and in-house teams, as strategic partners on a shared mission. Our leaders are looking for their agencies to help them achieve purpose-led as well as commercial goals, improving health equity and outcomes for everyone.

“Whether you’re on the agency or client side, we’re all striving to achieve something positive in the healthcare industry,” says Liz. “Hologic, for example – specialise in cancer screening & diagnostics, yet their marketing tends not to be focused on their products and more about raising awareness of cancer risks and educating people on the importance of regular screening. It’s for the greater good.

“They’re doing everything they can, globally, to get people access to early detection and treatment. One of the things I really love about Hologic is they’re looking at emerging markets and thinking: how can we raise awareness there and get the same level of access to screening in these countries?”

“What really helps me the most is an agency that truly understands my team’s goals,” agrees Norbert. “They’re not just thinking about delivering the work that we’ve talked about, but they’re also thinking: what’s the purpose of this work?

“What other things could we suggest, even if they’re just ideas? And it could be tactics, it could be strategy. The point is to have that intimate knowledge. It shouldn’t happen only at the time when budgets are available.”

And for Tina Chale, Senior Director & Head of Environment Sustainability, also at Astellas, there are three things that build long-lasting partnerships: trust, understanding and mutual respect.

“An agency that’s willing to go above and beyond and to show that eagerness and enthusiasm is always, I think, very, very valuable – particularly to clients that are under time and budget pressures.”

Sustainability is high on pharma’s agenda. But healthcare communicators have a problem to solve: how to deliver comms in a format that works for everyone, while minimising our carbon footprint. Preventing digital exclusion will require a balanced approach, says Stephen.

“Patients want information in its simplest form. They often still like a paper copy – it matters to them, rather than being more digitally savvy.

“So how do we make sure that we leave no one behind? I think over the next few years we’re going to have to wrestle with our conscience as we think about being environmentally friendly and also apply good governance.”

“Our societal impact as well as our financial impact will be really important measures that we’re required to disclose in the future,” says Tina.

“So those companies that are investing now, in order to have a truly greener future, will be the ones I believe will survive. Not just from a sales and marketing perspective, but being the choice of consumers because we’ll be valued and perceived according to our environmental, social and governance (ESG) targets.”

For Liz, the primary concern is balancing sustainability and clinical efficacy. “Sustainability is coming into play when clinicians are making recommendations to their patients. They want to see lower emissions, but not to the detriment of the quality of the product. However, we are seeing ESG requirements increasingly influence tender decisions.

“People are now starting to really question what products they’re using at home as well. Therefore, we need to show ESG considerations, in a way that can be easily understood & be able to demonstrate that we are doing the right thing.”

Mental well-being should be a top priority for the whole pharma sector in 2023, our leaders suggest. But finding the balance in a hybrid work environment may not be easy.

Jim Kennedy, SVP People, Shionogi Europe, has observed a potential disconnect emerging between high employee engagement levels and employees’ sense of affinity, or connection, which is particularly notable at key points in the employee journey, such as when joining a new company. This was particularly the case under pandemic working conditions.

“On the one hand, I heard individuals say that their completely virtual recruitment and onboarding was the best they’d ever experienced in any company. But at the same time, in engagement surveys, people were also telling us that they didn’t feel particularly connected.”

This trend, which has also been observed by leading global HR commentators, looks set to continue. Where there is high ‘engagement’, it is not the case that high levels of ‘affinity’ will follow. It challenges how engagement has been historically defined.

“We need to find out what people are thinking, what they’re feeling, do our best to understand that, and then work with them to create solutions. Some of those solutions might be very different from anything we’ve done before.”

Norbert and Liz see opportunity in digital: to improve access and equity to information for everyone, globally – clinicians and patients. “Self-service education is a new way of working. Let’s try and accommodate those clinicians who can’t get to a congress for one reason or another, or are only interested in one part, in ways we couldn’t previously,” says Norbert.

“You can put all kinds of interesting virtual experiences together that wouldn’t be possible in the real world. That’s what the Metaverse is trying to accomplish. It creates a richer experience.

“Being able to walk into rooms and interact with other people and immerse yourself in things like animations – those will be exciting ways we can be more effective in our communications. It’s exciting, isn’t it?”

“Healthcare’s growing quicker in emerging markets than anywhere else in the world due to the rise in middle class and urbanisation,” says Liz. “However, access to healthcare isn’t great in many of the emerging markets so the way they communicate is through digital channels. Their use of health tech is advanced and can provide insights into how we connect more effectively.

“That’s the way we make the world smaller. It’s how we get equal access to healthcare for everyone, globally.”

Joining together on the mission to make the world smaller, as Liz puts it, is a recurring theme across all our leaders’ advice. Great comms can improve health outcomes for billions of people, engaging more clinicians along the way. And here in 2023, we have a bigger opportunity than ever before.