Pharma ‘cannot deliver patient centricity’
pharmafile | October 8, 2014 | News story | Research and Development, Sales and Marketing | European Brain Council, barcelona, eyeforpharma, mary baker
The former president of the European Brain Council Mary Baker believes pharma companies are focussing too much on patient centricity, and instead should widen their efforts to include the whole of society.
Speaking to healthcare firm eyeforpharma’s chairman Paul Simms before her return as a keynote speaker in its upcoming Barcelona 2015 conference, she says the industry is ‘somewhat misguided’ in its desire to focus exclusively on patient centricity.
Patient centricity, she explains, is something that has become a much lauded philosophy among the industry in recent years but says it is a ‘narrow worldview’. Rather, she argues, it is better to focus on a company’s role in the wider health system and society.
She says that in order to solve the problems within healthcare systems, as well as helping patients, pharma needs to look at the healthy who benefit from OTC medicines as well as other members of society but may be ‘sleep walking into illness’ in the future.
“If pharma companies pursue that they’re solely patient-led, patient-focused, patient-centric, they won’t be able to deliver”.
She argues that the role of pharma must be to impact not just the sick individual but also impact the child, parent and/or partner of that person. They are therefore not only responsible to the patient but the broader community around the patient and therefore society. Society, in fact, matters the most.
She explains: “I’m much more concerned about society – of which the patients’ experience is an incredibly important part, but should not be the exclusive focus.”
At the core of Baker’s assertions is the elephant in the room: that many markets have an unsustainable health system. At present, pharma companies of the world are simply not intrinsically involved in the major health systems of Europe – rather, they are peripheral.
“Health is viewed as a cost and this needs to be challenged and changed. Health is wealth and a healthy nation is a wealthy nation,” she says.
Pharma: a ‘primitive tribe’
Baker believes the root of the problem is that the pharma industry is working in ‘primitive tribes’ – representing only their own opinions which are becoming further entrenched.
Pharma companies need to be collaborating – not competing with one another, she says. Swiss firm Novartis should not for instance consider US giant Pfizer its competitor and vice versa; Baker says they should instead consider sources of unhealthiness as their greatest foes.
“Right now, anybody who gets up and speaks is doing so from their position as a payer, or a doctor, or a regulator – when actually we are all members of society and we need to act as one. When you have threats on the ship of health, you need all hands to deck.”
Ben Adams
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