Squaring the Circle

The right mix of patient insights, smart data, faster analytics, an innovation culture, and partnership strategies provide healthcare success that was once thought impossible.

Paul Simms, chairman, eyeforpharma

Today’s pharmaceutical industry leaders, movers, and shakers need to lean into a business model that combines smart data, faster analytics, and relevant innovations – with the patients’ needs and experience firmly at the center. It’s the most effective, efficient, and expedient equation to build trust between a pharma company and its patients.

Trust, stresses Paul Simms, international eyeforpharma chairman, is intimately connected to how a patient values a pharma company’s product. Honoring this intertwined relationship, eyeforpharma/Philly 2018 built this year’s conference theme around Know Your Patient. Deliver Real Value.

Shaping Trust

To deliver value, though, you need to know your value,” Simms adds. “You need to know what you bring patients, what you stand for, and who you are. That can be difficult – maybe impossible – to know without patient input. Understanding the value you bring to the table is built on real solutions through long-term collaborations based on trust and transparency.”

Pharma’s new value paradigm means ensuring that every patient’s voice — of every generation — is heard.

Delete patients from the conversation, Simms adds, and you’ve got a one-sided model that’s so yesterday. “Not long ago, the transaction ended after a sales rep sold the medicine. So, sales incentives were based on hitting your numbers,” Simms says. Back then, he adds, there was no concern as to whether patients understood how a medication worked, what results could be reasonably expected, what side effects to anticipate, whether the medication was affordable, or if compliance and patient lifestyle balanced.

“With smart data sourcing, analysis techniques, measured outcomes of health interventions, the ubiquitous patient records, and real-life patient stories filling the internet, everything is a click away,” Simms says. “With all this information available, companies have to understand pharma’s new value paradigm and embed it in their business plan; they need to be prepared to discuss, consider and implement what everyone knows. In other words, reward and recognition should only go to companies that provide more health to the population – not just more sales.”

This philosophy is the foundation of eyeforpharma, now entering its 16^th consecutive year here in the US.

eyeforpharma provides a hub for senior-level pharma executives, patient advocacy groups, health experts and patients to exchange ideas and stay up-to-date with shifting trends and practices. The two-day annual event provides commentary, events, reports, and other valuable expert-driven content to facilitate positive changes that help pharmaceuticals thrive in today’s patient-centric world. “We leverage this range of insights and opinions to provide unique features and thought-leadership, across the world,” Simms says.

Going Full Circle

“Building trust – and thus value – with patients and caregivers is more than the ‘flavor of the day.’ It’s also very much about building an economically successful company,” Simms stresses. “There’s no such thing as a closed door meeting any longer. If you say something during a meeting internally, the patient will find out. You have to operate as if the patient is in the room at all times. That’s a major reason we bring patients to our conference. Every speech on every stage will likely go back to some online community. You have to be honest and real.”

Do all this, Simms says, and you build a trustworthy and ultimately valued relationship with patients and caregivers alike. That trust is passed on to the product, which leads to market share and economical success.

So yes, it is possible to square the circle – providing you invite the right parties into the circle.