"Patient engagement is very much one of our focus areas," Julie Adrian, managing director of European operations, said..
She says that some of this is driven by regulatory changes—the regulators themselves are more interested in patients' voices. "The [U.S.] Food and Drug Administration and some of the regulatory bodies here in Europe are really looking at things like patient-reported outcomes as a parallel in trials to clinical outcomes... the FDA is convening advisory panels just to hear from patients—they had never done that before, it was all about the drug and the data on the drug," she described.
There is also a chance to help clients fundamentally change, and improve, their application of drugs through patient engagement. Adrian described one client—she did not name it—whose decision to switch its use between Type 1 diabetes and Type 2 diabetes was taken off the back of patient consultation.
"They felt like they were contributing more to societal health than they would have otherwise—and also likely got a commercial gain," she commented.
This content is repurposed from Sam Burne James article on PRWeek.
