Companies often say their most important resource is their people, meaning employees. But for healthcare companies – including drugmakers, device manufacturers and payers – that can just as easily refer to patients as well.
Enter the chief patient officer. Or head of global patient affairs. Or chief patient affairs officer. Or some other title. But whatever the wording, these executives serve the same function, which is to help healthcare companies engage not only with the traditional audience of the physicians who prescribe their products, but with the people who actually use them.
The MedCity ENGAGE conference, taking place Nov. 6-7 in San Diego, will include a panel, “The Rise of the Chief Patient Officer,” featuring Pfizer Head of Global Patient Affairs Roslyn Schneider, Medtronic Diabetes Chief Patient Officer Louis Dias and, as moderator, Clear Voice Consulting President Lygeia Ricciardi.
Despite its growth in the industry, the role remains a young one. French drugmaker Sanofi was credited with being the first major pharmaceutical company to embrace it, when it hired pediatrician Anne Beal away from the Washington-based Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute in early 2014. However, a smaller company, Belgium’s UCB, had beaten Sanofi to the punch when it hired Lode Dewulf as chief patient affairs officer in September 2012. Dewulf is currently chief patient officer of French drugmaker Servier, while Beal remains in her role at Sanofi.
Schneider, who joined Pfizer in 2006, worked with the company’s chief medical officer to create the role in 2014. The goal, she said, was to help fuel the movement toward making healthcare more patient-centered. She also thinks back to when she practiced medicine in the Lower East Side of Manhattan and ran an intensive care unit, when the most important question physicians asked themselves was what to do if taking a holistic look at what patients want and need, including what they’ve heard from their communities and families. “We were one of the first companies to have a designated role that has responsibilities and accountability like I have,” Schneider said.
A Deep-dive Into Specialty Pharma
A specialty drug is a class of prescription medications used to treat complex, chronic or rare medical conditions. Although this classification was originally intended to define the treatment of rare, also termed “orphan” diseases, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the US, more recently, specialty drugs have emerged as the cornerstone of treatment for chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.
Attend MedCity ENGAGE to hear from healthcare experts like Roslyn Schneider, Louis Dias and Lygeia Ricciardi. Hurry – early bird deadline ends September 13. Save an additional $50 with MCN50. Register now.
But in addition to medical practice, some patient-engagement executives come into the role via more surprising routes as well. Dias is a chemical engineer by training whose journey dates back to when he learned about consumers at Procter & Gamble and Johnson & Johnson. Early on at P&G, he said, he became intrigued with the kinds of cultural traits and learning and motivation processes that lead consumers to purchase products. “It’s a more complex feedback loop system than any chemical reaction I learned about in college,” he said. Among the lessons he’s applied to his position are that getting close to consumers is key to success and despite people being drawn to differences, research on patients from Minneapolis to Houston and from Japan to Brazil has revealed how much consumers worldwide are alike.
The rise of the role underscores its importance to healthcare companies. “The idea is that across the board in healthcare, we’re seeing a new position that didn’t exist five to 10 years ago, often in the C-suite and thus embedded in the leadership of organizations, helping bring the voice of patients in,” Ricciardi said.
From company to company, the line items of the role often differ, but the goals are the same, Schneider said. That also means the patient-engagement executives of various companies are often more cooperative than competitive, meeting regularly to exchange ideas.
The role enables patients and industry to become closer and understand what is important to each other, but not to the degree that it becomes inappropriate, Schneider added.
Some patients have been very excited about the opportunity to interact more with companies, Ricciardi said, adding that she’s seen patients and patient advocates particularly using social media to voice compliments and complaints, an avenue they didn’t have before. “It’s like ‘Boom, I’m going to take this on Twitter or Facebook and demand an answer and get some feedback,’ and that makes them feel more empowered and part of the conversation.”
Photo: mathisworks, Getty Images
