PREVIEW EMBARGOED PRESS RELEASE APR 18: What 1,500 patient groups from around the world think of 46 pharma companies in 2018

EMBARGOED PRESS RELEASE: 6am GMT, THURSDAY, APRIL 18TH 2019

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~ Contact: Alex Wyke ~ Tel: +44-(0)1547-520-96 ~ Email: report@patient-view.com

ABOUT THIS 2018 REPORT AND SURVEY

Results drawn from survey conducted: November 2018 - February 2019.
Survey conducted in 18 languages: Danish | Dutch | English | Finnish | French | German | Greek | Hungarian | Italian | Japanese | Korean | Portuguese | Polish | Russian | Spanish | Swedish | Traditional Chinese | Turkish.
Profile of 2018's respondent patient groups:
- 1,500 respondent patient groups.
- From 78 countries.
- Covering 102 medical specialties.
- 61% are national patient groups. And
- 9% are international patient groups.
Patient-group partnerships with industry: 1,218 of the 1,500 respondent patient groups (81%) worked/partnered with at least one pharma company.
Industry-wide analyses: the pharma industry as a whole assessed at a wide range of activities important to patients and patient groups; its performance compared with that of other healthcare sectors.
Company analyses: 46 pharma companies analysed for performance at 12 indicators of corporate reputation.
Seven leading pharma companies • Eisai; • Ipsen; • Janssen (Pharmaceutical Companies of Johnson & Johnson); • Merck & Co / MSD; • Novartis; • Pfizer; and • ViiV Healthcare tell their own stories about their patient-centric strategies, and about their activities in the field of patient-group relations, during 2018 (plus their plans for 2019).
Report length: 157 pages.

London, April 18th, 2019.

The 'Corporate Reputation of Pharma, 2018' Global report is based on the findings of a PatientView November 2018-February 2019 survey exploring the views of 1,500 patient groups worldwide (one of the highest response rates attained by this annual survey). The report provides feedback (from the perspective of these patient groups) on the corporate reputation of the pharma industry during 2018, as well as on the performance of 46 pharma companies at 12 key indicators that influence corporate reputation (all of importance to patients and patient groups).

The Corporate-Reputation survey is now in its 8th annual edition—thus, 8 years of historical data on corporate reputation and levels of company patient centricity are available. In addition, for the first time, PatientView has produced a separate analysis of the corporate reputation of 13 of the biggest of these 46 pharma companies, to enable peer-to-peer comparisons between the larger companies.

The 46 companies assessed for 2018:

AbbVie I Acorda Therapeutics I Allergan I Almirall I Amgen I Astellas Pharma I AstraZeneca I Bayer I Bial I Biogen I Boehringer Ingelheim I Bristol-Myers Squibb I Celgene I Chiesi Farmaceutici I CSL Behring I Daiichi Sankyo I Eisai I Eli Lilly (Lilly) I Ferring I Gedeon Richter I Gilead Science I Grifols I Grünenthal I GSK I Ipsen I Janssen (Pharmaceutical Companies of Johnson & Johnson) I LEO Pharma I Lundbeck I Menarini I Merck & Co / MSD I Merck KGaA I Mundipharma INovartis I Novo Nordisk I Octapharma I Otsuka I Pierre Fabre Laboratories I Pfizer I Roche I Sanofi I Servier I Takeda (including Shire) I Teva I UCB I Vertex Pharmaceuticals I ViiV Healthcare.

HOW DID INDUSTRY FARE?

In 2018, patient-group attitudes towards the pharma industry as a whole remained on a par with those they held in 2017

Patient groups viewed the corporate reputation of the pharma industry as largely unchanged in 2018 from 2017, with 41% of 2018’s respondent patient groups stating that the industry had an “Excellent” or “Good” corporate reputation, and ranking pharma 3rd out of nine healthcare sectors for corporate reputation. In 2017, 43% of respondent patient groups had thought that the pharma industry as a whole had an "Excellent" or "Good" corporate reputation.
53% of 2018’s respondent patient groups believed that the pharma industry was “Excellent” or “Good” at making high-quality products (a figure slightly down on the 57% of 2017).

— BUT:

Levels of patient engagement in pharma R&D, 2018 v. 2017

8% of the 1,218 respondent patient groups that work with pharma stated that they were engaged in companies’ drug research/drug discovery—that is, before clinical trials begin (the equivalent figure in 2017 was 13%).
14% of the patient groups that work with pharma stated that they were engaged in companies’ clinical trials (the equivalent figure in 2017 was 13%).
7% of patient groups that work with pharma stated they were engaged in companies’ drug-development activities—that is, after clinical trials were completed (the question was not asked in 2017).

In 2018, only 9% of the respondent patient groups stated that pharma as a whole was “Excellent” or “Good” at having fair pricing policies. (This question was not asked in the 2017 survey, but the equivalent figure from the 2016 survey was 11%.) 2018 saw the beginning of President Trump’s Congressional hearing on drug pricing, with top drug executives providing testimony. Some pharma companies have responded to demands for lower prices in the US and elsewhere by publicly stating that they are stabilising annual price increases [for case studies from contributor companies, see the Global report's Appendix 1 supplement]. Other companies have not committed to such restrictions.

PatientView’s ‘Patient Engagement in R&D: Still a Challenge’, published in December 2018, drew together the comments of thousands of patient groups on the subject of pharma’s engagement in R&D. From the feedback received, patient groups clearly feel that they (and the patients they represent) should be more actively engaged in the whole repertoire of activities that surround corporate R&D. Companies and regulatory agencies are trying to respond to the trend with the support of patient groups, through consortia like: • the European PARADIGM (Patients Active in Research Dialogues for an Improved Generation of Medicines); • the Food and Drug Administration’s PFDD (Patient Focused Drug Development); and • the global PFMD (Patient Focused Medicines Development). However, as shown by the answers to PatientView’s 2018 Corporate-Reputation question on the types of relationships that patient groups have with pharma [see accompanying figures], only a small fraction of the respondent patient groups that work with pharma have been engaged in the process of pharma R&D.

HOW DID COMPANIES PERFORM?

The companies most familiar to patient groups

The number/percentage of patient groups claiming familiarity with each individual pharma company gives an idea of the company’s corporate brand awareness within the patient community in 2018. By this criteria, Novartis is the company best known among patient organisations in 2018, with as many as 1,011 of the 1,500 respondent patient groups claiming familiarity with it. This result is a first for Novartis, since, in all previous years, Pfizer has been the company best known to patient groups worldwide (in 2018, 981 of the 1,500 respondent patient groups claimed familiarity with Pfizer). The 2018 survey found that Novartis also had the largest number of respondent patient-group partners (at 399), with Roche (339), and Pfizer (320) next in line, respectively.

Companies with the "Best" corporate reputation (out of 46 companies) in 2018, as assessed by patient groups familiar with the company

Ranking is measured by patient groups familiar with a company. Such patient groups provide feedback on the public-domain persona of the companies.

ViiV Healthcare ranked overall 1st for corporate reputation in 2018 among 46 pharma companies, according to the 121 respondent patient groups claiming familiarity with ViiV. ViiV was also ranked 1st in 2018 for all twelve individual indicators of corporate reputation.
Gilead Sciences was ranked overall 2nd for corporate reputation in 2018 (up one place from overall 3rd in 2017) by the 284 patient groups claiming familiarity with it. This higher ranking suggests an end to the hostility that patient groups felt following the launch of its high-price hepatitis drug, Solvadi in 2013.
Janssen was ranked overall 3rd for corporate reputation in 2018 (up two places from overall 5th in 2017) by the 666 patient groups claiming familiarity with it, a considerable achievement for any large multinational pharma company.
Novartis ranked overall 4th for corporate reputation in 2018 (the same as in 2017) by 1,011 patient groups claiming familiarity with it

Big leaps

Some companies witnessed significant rises up PatientView's rankings in 2018:

The biggest surprise is an almost unprecedented leap of 30 places (from overall 37th in 2017 to overall 7th in 2018) by Takeda, boosted by its acquisition of Shire. Several Japanese companies have stepped up efforts to improve their patient centricity during the past few years. The relative standing at corporate reputation held by Japanese companies in 2018 can be seen in the table below.

Another surprise is Chiesi Farmaceutici, which rose 21 places (from overall 40th in 2017 to 19th in 2018). 36% of the respondent patient groups stating familiarity with Chiesi were based in Italy, and might be measuring Chiesi’s corporate standing in Italy as much as the company’s work with patients (though, if this was the case, the same should probably have happened in previous years).
Bristol-Myers Squibb owes its jump of seven places (from overall 31st in 2017 to 24th in 2018), in part, to a significant increase in B-MS’ integrity, as reported by the respondent patient groups familiar with the company.
Boehringer Ingelheim has been making a slow but constant annual climb in overall ranking during the last few years. Respondent patient groups familiar with the company have marked Boehringer up from overall 33rd in 2015 to 15th in 2018.

Among the 13 biggest pharma companies: those with the "Best" corporate reputation in 2018, as assessed by patient groups familiar with the company

Setting out the rankings of only the 13 largest multinational pharma companies (calculated by re-ranking the 13 companies for each of the 12 indicators, as determined by the patient groups familiar with them) provides a different perspective on how these largest pharmaceutical companies fare for corporate reputation against what they see as their own corporate peers. By this assessment ...

Janssen emerges as having the best overall corporate reputation (judged by patient groups familiar with the company) among the 13 major peers in 2018. AbbVie held this rank in 2017.
AbbVie ranks 2nd (according to patient groups familiar with the company) among the big 13 in 2018.
The major multinational pharma company showing the best improvement in ranking for corporate reputation among the 13 peers (again, judged by patient groups familiar with the company) is Sanofi and Amgen, rising two places—from 8th in 2017 to 6th in 2018; and 11th to 9th, respectively.

NET PROMOTER SCORE: HOW COMPANIES PERFORM AMONG PATIENT-GROUP PARTNERS

Another measure of companies' corporate reputation is undertaken by PatientView, the standard management tool called Net Promoter Score (NPS). PatientView asks the patient groups that work or partner with a company an NPS question: whether they would recommend the company it works with to another patient group—the answer being on a scale of 0 to 10 (with ‘10’ being a definite recommendation of the company, and ‘0’ being definitely no recommendation of the company). 2018’s NPS only included a company when a minimum of 30 of that company’s respondent patient-group partners answered the NPS question about it. Scores above 40% are considered Excellent; 20-39% very good; 10-19% healthy; 0-9% average. Negative scores are considered poor.

Company NPS, 2018 v. 2017, ordered HIGH to LOW

Results from the 2018 NPS:

In 2018, Lundbeck came top for the second year in a row, with an outstanding NPS of +72% (even higher than the 60% the company attained in 2017).
Novo Nordisk gained 2018’s second-highest NPS, 39%.
ViiV Healthcare was given a high NPS of +35%.
Roche, too, attained a high NPS of +35%.
Bristol-Myers Squibb saw the sharpest rise up 2018's NPS tables, rising 14 percentage points, to reach +12%.

In general, the companies ranking highly at NPS also sit in the top tier of PatientView's Corporate-Reputation rankings. Deviations from PatientView's rankings occur when companies' performance across all 12 indicators are inconsistent.

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~END OF PRESS RELEASE~