Evidence-based PatientView guide on how to improve drug-treatment information—what patients expect from pharma No Images? Click here Evidence-based PatientView guide on how to improve drug-treatment information—what patients expect from pharma
Drug-treatment information: significant room for improvement To ensure successful participation in their healthcare treatment, patients need clear, accurate, and helpful information—which they can comprehend sufficiently to be able to discuss topics of importance about their treatment with health professionals. As the UK’s Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) notes: “Good information helps patients to participate more fully in concordant decision-making about medicines prescribed for, or recommended to, them by healthcare professionals. Self care—a key [UK] government objective—relies heavily on patients having sufficiently high-quality information on which to base their decision-making”.[1.] Other regulators around the world have expressed similar sentiments. The provision of effective, useful, and timely drug-treatment information by a pharmaceutical company also contributes significantly to how patients (and patient groups) perceive the corporate reputation of that company. Such a fact can hardly be surprising, given that drug-treatment information represents one of the most-important ways in which pharma can legitimately have direct contact with patients. At issue is whether the drug-treatment information currently supplied to patients is adequate, and fulfils the important purpose of being clear, accurate, and helpful to the recipient patients. Unfortunately, evidence available at the moment seems to suggest that it is not:
What drug-treatment information do you believe patients in your therapy area/specialty would LIKE TO RECEIVE from pharmaceutical companies, BUT ARE NOT GETTING? Percentage of all responses (ordered highest to lowest) Source: PatientView's drug-treatment-information guidance document, October 2019 About this drug-treatment-information guidance document The main source of information that patients have about their prescribed medicines remains the mandatory leaflets found inside medicine packaging. Each leaflet is written to conform to strict legal and scientific guidelines, as determined by regulators. But these leaflets may often be read only once by the recipient patient (if at all). Responding to the challenge of making drug-treatment information more patient centred is a complex task—but a vital one. To support such efforts, PatientView has therefore produced for industry an evidence-based guidance document on how to improve drug-treatment information from a patient perspective. Feedback was collated from 2,000 patient groups during 2018-2019, including a July-August 2019 survey of 280 patient groups on the specific subject of drug-treatment information. The PatientView drug-treatment-information guidance document provides a detailed and thorough review of the key issues of importance to patients in the provision of drug-treatment information. The final output of the guidance document is … (1.) The mapping of the drug-treatment-information needs of patients (across different therapy areas, and different countries/regions of the world). (2.) A list of patients’ fundamental unmet needs in the area of drug-treatment information. And ... (3.) A series of 116 questions designed to enable companies to self-evaluate the patient centricity of their product-information strategies, and to inform their planning of future drug-treatment-information support for patients. The definition used in this guidance document is PatientView’s own: “Information provided by pharmaceutical companies relating to a licenced product”. This definition encompasses the distribution, and the supply, of medicines. Patients have nine fundamental unmet needs from their drug-treatment information
The nine fundamental unmet needs of patients are further specified in the drug-treatment-information guidance document by a series of 116 questions that each company can ask itself. These self-evaluation questions are drawn from priorities identified by patient groups through PatientView’s pool of research.
Pharmaceutical companies are generally reluctant to intervene unilaterally in the task of improving drug-treatment information. This guidance document, however, shows ways in which they can Without adequate drug-treatment information, patients continue to face poor health outcomes. Yet pharma companies are usually wary of trying to 'improve' their drug-treatment information on a unilateral basis, due to the strict regulatory restrictions on industry-patient communication that exist in most countries. The patient groups participating in the PatientView July to August 2019 Drug-Treatment-Information survey state that pharma has a responsibility to provide not only the basic, legally-required drug-treatment information, but also to add value and context. One way, for example, in which added value and context can be created is by ensuring that the information is meaningful to sub-sections of the patient community—for instance, older patients, younger patients, patients with co-morbidities, those with a disability, etc—and to provide such distinctive information through channels convenient to patients. Already, many patient groups (some of which are identified in this drug-treatment-information guidance document) have themselves taken on the responsibility of providing drug-treatment information to address the unmet needs of the patient communities they serve. However, these patient groups rely on co-operation from pharmaceutical companies to achieve their goals. Many pharmaceutical companies today are committed to being more patient centric. Those which have made the decision understand how the approach benefits not only patients, but also the corporate reputation of their own company. This new guidance document provides data-driven advice on how the complex issue of providing outstanding drug-treatment information can be achieved. CONTENTS OF THE DRUG-TREATMENT-INFORMATION GUIDANCE DOCUMENT (SAMPLE PAGES available below) 180 pages. INTRODUCTION to the drug-treatment-information guidance document. SECTION I: How to address patients’ unmet needs in drug-treatment information—an evidence-based approach. SECTION II: Summary of the results of a PatientView July-August 2019 global survey of patient groups on drug-treatment information. An introduction to the self-evaluation questionnaire of 116 questions for pharma companies interested in improving drug-treatment information. APPENDIX I: Full results of the global survey of patient groups on drug-treatment information, 2019. APPENDIX II: The nine fundamental unmet patient needs in patient drug-treatment information. Plus the full-fledged self-evaluation questionnaire of 116 questions for pharma companies. APPENDIX III: A selection of the evidence supporting patients’ nine fundamental needs in drug-treatment information. APPENDIX IV: The ‘who, how, what, and why’ to improving drug-treatment information.
To download sample pages, click here: SAMPLE PAGES FOOTNOTE: This drug-treatment-information guidance document is the third in a series that provides a ‘deep dive’ into the ways that companies can improve their corporate reputation through being patient centric. The other two documents are …
As an evidenced-based approach to meeting patients’ needs in complex areas (and given the strong correlation between effective patient centricity and corporate reputation), this 2019 drug-treatment-informationguidance document also sits alongside PatientView’s annual survey on the Corporate Reputation of Pharma. END OF PRESS RELEASE |