For many years the perception of “Big Pharma” has come with many negative connotations – an industry seen to be profiteering on the backs of people who need their pharmaceutical products and expertise. And yet, the current COVID-19 crisis is showing us that pharma is more than capable of stepping up to the plate.
We are now seeing a profusion of collaboration of rivals we would have never expected before and evidence that when pharma wants to get products out to market it really can work swiftly and efficiently. We need to give them credit for this as we are in existential times and facing a threat from a new virus.
It’s a win win for everybody at the moment but how can this amazing new spirit of collaboration and innovation be harnessed and embedded? We don’t want to look back on this era as one of missed opportunity. With the current practices and resolve to try and find vaccines and antigen tests there are so many opportunities for progression and the people that are looking on with the most interest are the ones at the heart of everything pharma does…the patients.
Perhaps this new environment will make pharma more comfortable having a conversation with wider society about what they actually do and how they do it– and this is almost certainly a good thing! People outside the industry don’t understand how pharma works. Everyone knows it is expensive to research, develop, trial drugs but no one actually knows how the money is spent in each of these stages and why the cost is so high.
In addition, costs associated with travel and face-to-face meetings have been cut, resulting not only in freed up funds but also time to spend on communications and patient centered projects. Pharma are taking time to realise the importance of working with patients and the mutual benefit this relationship brings to both sides of the table.
That’s where we come in…
At Talking Medicines we firmly believe that listening to the patient and understanding how medicines are taken at home is crucial in maintaining the pharmaceutical industry’s new found esteem and way of working. Using our Medsmart app and social analysis we can track patient behaviours, attitudes and personas – so you can start to build a picture of the types of individuals taking your medicines and how they take them at home. Allowing you to improve your patient communications and help your medicine users get the most out of your products.
If you’re interested in hearing more, please get in touch!
