What is Go-To-Patient Strategy – 2033?

Preamble

Let us all face the reality! As patients become more informed, more AI savvy, digitally intelligent, and as lifestyle disease are likely to affect at a young age, these patients will be become more and more involved in their own healthcare, their health outcomes. Based on a report in MINT (released by Sample Registration System 2018, prepared by the Registrar General and Census Commissioner of India and Indiatimes) India may have a population of 700 million in the age group of 18 to 35 years by 2033 (which is over two times today’s population of USA). And the longevity of the people of Bangladesh and India is increasing and so also their digital intelligence.

The success of the pharma industry will be closely related to engaging with patients and the caregivers at home.

Look at the importance of the care-givers at home in conditions such as endometriosis or PCOD and we can understand their significance. 

It has been predicted by medical scientists and forward-looking pharma marketers that biopharmaceutical products will dominate our industry. Individualised patient care will become the order of the day. Currently, biopharmaceuticals account for approximately two-thirds of all FDA approvals. Look at Fierce Pharma news regularly for such news! 

Individualised patient care is a patient-centered care model that simply asks the patient their priorities as they embark on treatment. 

And the concept is not not new. For instance, in women with hypo-thyroidism even a mcg of levothyroxine can make a lotof difference. Therefore we have levothyroxine in odd strengths of 12.5 mcg or even 88 mcg.

Right from the days of Maharishi Charak, Maharishi Shushruta and Hippocrates, providing healthcare has been doctor-centered, where the doctor ‘knows best’. With individualised patient care, the healthcare provider takes into consideration the preferences and values of the patient. This approach promotes flexibility in care provision between the doctor and the patient.

And that’s the basis of this blog, “What is a go-to-patient strategy – 2033?”

What is go-to-patient strategy – 2033?

 I heard this term from Sanjeev Navangul, a pharma thought leader, for the first time in 2019.

A go-to-patient strategy is a framework for how a pharma company will bring its products to the patients and engage them for a superior PDx or patient-doctor experience. A go-to-patient strategy is the plan to get patients, care-givers-at-home, and doctors both aware of and excited about your PDx idea. It will guide us through the process of getting our product into the hands of padocumers (i.e. patients, care-givers-at-home, and doctors).

A go-to-patient strategy helps us understand what the patient needs, the doctor needs and even the healthcare provider at home needs in order to provide top class PDx.

And this is essential.

What can pharmaco’s do in a go-to-patient strategy?

1. Draw a padocumer engagement plan.

 The first step in an effective padocumer engagement strategy is to identify their needs and ensure they are met. And the most important is providing emotional support to the patients and their care-givers at home.

 Digital patient and caregiver education, health screenings, dietary or medication monitoring, scheduled check-ups, and continuous counsellor support are some activities a pharmaco can think of. In the padocumer engagement plan, do not miss out anything which can be of support to patients and caregivers.

2. Communicate with patients and caregivers-at-home in a simple language

Communicate with patients and caregivers-at-home in a very simple manner.

Do not be myopic. We can learn from outside our industry! It’s important to remove the intimidation factor in patient engagement. Much of the jargon medical professional’s use can leave patients either feeling lost or actually scared due to the inaccessibility of the language.

That’s where pharmaco’s can step in and take a lesson for Apple Inc. which sells sophisticated products using simple communication. I recently re-read the biography of Steve Jobs for the third time. Steve Jobs recognized that consumers were frustrated by how all the other technology brands designed their products in a lab without any thought for the consumer and saw how they communicated their technology.

Steve Jobs made the most significant contribution to the Apple brand strategy in how he starts with the consumer experience and then work back to the technology. The Apple brand strategy that we see today builds everything around the brand idea of “Apple makes technology so simple that everyone can be part of the future.” 

That’s a big lesson I learned and the pharmaco’s too can learn.

3. Define the outcomes for every individual patient

It is care that is planned to meet the particular needs of one patient, as opposed to a routine applied to all patients suffering from the same disease. A study from the University of Illinois and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs found that “patients’ health outcomes improve when physicians individualize care and take their patients’ life circumstances into account.”

In the coming age of biopharmaceuticals and biosimilars, every patient will have different needs, especially young patients with life-style disease problems. Some may need more education on self-care and home-care. Patients who exhibit more emotional strain will need a different approach. Since patients will need to have a clear standard of recovery to meet, outcomes and care should be built around monitoring a patient’s journey to their individual recovery goals. 

Besides our brand managers, the knowledge workers, our medical representative for 2033 and beyond should be trained for this.

4.  Automate patients and caregivers reminders

Many doctors say that two of the most time consuming aspects of traditional patient engagement are routine check-up calls and task reminders. While necessary, ensuring that patients follow daily, scheduled wellness tasks can become difficult for doctors who have to monitor multiple patients at the same time.

I love the way Ogilvy sends automated reminders for their webinars! I loved the way they sent reminders for their 27th April 2023 webinar “Ogilvy On: Health on Her Terms… At Every Life Stage” The language they used was so endearing and no one would have liked to miss it.

Another lesson for the pharmaco’s from an advertising agency.

With the power of AI, task reminders like keeping them informed on dietary prompts, ordering refills of insulin or a biopharma product can be automated, freeing up time for essential in-person patient care. Automated messages can also empower patients with a strong time-management aid.

5. Monitor remotely to reduce non-essential in-person contact

This is very important in the Bangladesh and Indian context, especially in hospitalized patients or those recovering at home post a complicated procedure. 

See the mad rush to ‘meet their near-and-dear ones’ in hospitals during the visitor-hours!

Patients and the care-givers-at-home deserve and have a right to privacy from unsolicited visitors. Just like tele-consultation for doctors, pharmaco’s can arrange tele-home, tele-hospital, visits for such visitors.  

6. Arranging finances for ninety percent of patients in Bangladesh and India who have to pay from their own pockets

A true go-to-patient strategy will not overlook this aspect. Today the cost of newer biopharmaceutical products is tremendous, beyond our imagination!

Can you just imagine finance companies participating in patient-centered activities initiated by a pharmaco? Banks and finance companies can be involved in patient-centered activities by providing patients with EMI’s, finance and public banking. a pharmaco strong in biopharmaceuticals or biosimilars can work closely with banks. This is a societal challenge, and requires steering investments and innovation towards achieving concrete public purpose goals – not just car-loans or mobile-phone loans. This needs not just any type of finance but patient, long-term, and transformative public finance.

The relationship between a patient, pharmaco and a bank for healthcare financing should not—and does not—have to be fraught. A pharmaco can certainly intervene and come to the rescue of those 90 percent patients have to bear the out of pocket expenses for medical and healthcare.

That’s a true patient-centered activity by a pharmaco

7. Patient adherence

The fact that patients disregard medical advice has been acknowledged for centuries. In the fifth century BC, Hippocrates, had forewarned physicians when he wrote: “Keep watch also on the faults of the patients which often make them lie about the taking of things prescribed.”

Recent research has shown that patient-centered interactions promote adherence and lead to improved health outcomes.

Doctors as well as pharmaco’s know that patients who are prescribed medications do not necessarily take them as prescribed. Indeed, variation in patients’ medication-taking is an age old conundrum. But what the pharmaco’s haven’t realized is that non-adherence can cause huge sales revenue losses. Rather than pressurising the sales force for generating more prescriptions, they should look for ways to enhance patient adherence. Capgemini Group looked into patient adherence and discovered that the average adherence rate is less than 60 percent for all following the initial prescription.

In its 2017 report, Capgemini said that “According to our analysis, the US pharmaceutical industry alone loses an estimated $188 billion annually due to medication non-adherence. This represents 59% of the $320 billion in total US pharmaceutical revenue in 2011 and 37% of the $508 billion annual potential total revenue.”

However since there is no corresponding data for Bangladesh and India, we can only extrapolate and calculate the losses.

It is also a national loss as significant man days are lost due to illness and medical conditions following medication non-adherence. 

However, the problem of adherence cannot be resolved overnight. Doctors, patent-support groups and pharmaco’s have to work in close collaboration.

Making use of go-to-patient strategies doesn’t just cut down the labor and time-cost of physical patient engagement, but it also opens up new avenues of efficiency. A go-to-patient strategy should be the mainstay of pharmaceutical marketing in Bangladesh and India for 2033 and beyond.

Acknowledgment

1. While writing this blog, I referred the notes I had made on talks and presentations from industry stalwarts who spoke on Zoom and Microsoft Team webinars. I thank these stalwarts from our industry.
2. I also thank Fierce Pharma, Pharma Times, Capgemini, and McKinsey whose reports I have read and internalized.
3. And last but not the least, my students and mentees from Bangladesh and India who always gave me moral support.
4. Microsoft Bing Image Creator whose help I took for the title-image.