Design thinking is a term used to represent a set of cognitive, strategic and practical processes by which design concepts are developed. Patients are demanding a stronger role in clinical research. They want to feel as though they’re involved in trial planning and the dissemination of results, and they want the trials themselves to be more user-friendly.
The demand for patient-friendly research has been growing louder every year. Pharmaceutical executives have tried to be responsive, but patients remain unimpressed with the results. In a recent Corporate Reputation of Pharma survey, 59 percent of patient groups gave pharma a “Fair-to-Poor” rating on engaging patients in product research. 60 percent gave the same rating for the industry’s efforts to engage patients in product development. Part of the problem is that pharma doesn’t consider the patient to be the customer. The industry focuses, instead, on the physicians who prescribe their drugs, the payers who cover the cost of their drugs and the pharmacies that dispense them. Ironically, the people actually taking their drugs fall off the radar.
This oversight means pharma misses out on valuable patient insight, including what might entice or deter a patient from participating in a trial. This information gap causes major financial losses. A report from Forte estimates that pharma companies lose an average of $36,000 for every patient who drops out of a trial, and that approximately 18 percent of patients drop-out of a trial before it ends.
Pharma can’t afford to keep alienating these customers and treating them as though their opinions don’t matter. Design thinking can help pharma turn this trend around.
Make the patient a partner
A recent consumer survey from PwC’s Health Research Institute found that 50 per cent of US consumers would share their data directly with a drug company, to help discover new treatments or ways to deliver care (57 per cent in the UK, according to research from MHP Health and Savanta ComRes). In addition, when asked about participating in pharmaceutical research to develop a treatment or vaccine for Covid-19, 58 per cent of consumers said they would be at least somewhat willing to do so.
The crisis has brought back to the fore the interconnection of all actions and the need for solidarity. Empowered patients and consumers are expected to take on a more active role in the health system than ever before.
Digital portal links pharma to patients
By leveraging the basic tools of design thinking—empathizing with end users, developing brainstorming solutions and getting feedback on iterations—pharma can solve its patient-centricity crisis and better serve their end users. It may sound simple but, in an industry typically concerned with data privacy and boasting a doctor-knows-best attitude, it can be difficult to recalibrate how patients are seen and valued. Adopting a design thinking attitude is a crucial step in the right direction.
Deliver change fast
With rapid change becoming the “new normal”, the pharma industry is in the spotlight and under increasing pressure to adapt and amplify speed-to-market. Processes that worked in the past will struggle to cope with the demands placed on businesses today. Anything that may have the power to simplify the innovation and communication development cycles needs to be taken into account.
Design thinking can be used to find those accelerators. It amplifies efficiency, by creating prototypes and testing to see how effective they are. It simplifies the process and aligns all stakeholders at every step of the way. It has also proven effectiveness. According to IBM, design thinking has the potential to deliver immense business outcomes, such as halving the speed-to-market and 75 per cent increase in efficiencies.
