Reshaping pharmaceutical marketing: the patient in the crosshairs?

Let's be honest, the 'patient at the centre' transition has sometimes been misrepresented by some marketers and worse some agencies.

If until now we have put the doctor at the centre of our communication process, there was a reason for it. The doctor is a professional who "promotes-prescribes" our products, a.k.a. drugs, on the basis of the clinical and therapeutic specifications of "his" patient-client on the basis of the medical-pharmaceutical sales representative that we propose to him: I could not put it any more succinctly. He listens to us (please) because we bring him 'therapeutic solutions' to 'his patient-client problems'.

If, and it is not obvious, you agree with the above, we can say that the exchange takes place between the company and the doctor through the sales representative who updates the clinician in a virtuous path for both. The doctor is invited to updates through courses and events, has a constant and consolidated relationship with the local pharmaceutical sales representative in Italy, trusts the scientific communications based on clinical studies that are presented to him, verifies through his own clinical practice the results and, following his professional conviction, starts prescribing, continues to do so or stops.

All these premises are intended to prepare you to listen to a paradigm shift from 'doctor at the centre' to 'patient at the centre'. Translation: the patient is now at the centre? Well, wrong. As a colleague recently pointed out to me, there is a subtle but fundamental difference between customer centricity and customer centric.

In English the difference is that centricity is a noun which we could translate as centricity, being at the centre. Centric is an adjective and could be translated, I guess, as centric. Linguistic nuances aside, these express different visions of pharmaceutical marketing in Italy.

One puts the patient at the centre, he is the new target of the message. All the "muscular" actions we have taken in the past to push messages are now directed at patients. We reach them everywhere, while they are doing something else, with the message we want them to receive, with communications that we have decided are good for them. Paternalistically or commercially, our vision in this case is to define (after thorough evaluation as well) what message works best to sell and then fire it wherever possible.

The other puts the patient at the top of the list: of our research processes, of services to support them and their caregivers, to improve adherence and adapt care pathways. And to build new competences in the patient to improve his ability to manage the treatment (not only pharmacological) of the pathology independently, in order to have a longer life expectancy and a better quality of life. From this perspective, patient advocacy projects take on a different guise. Patient advocacy is an English term which is commonly used to indicate projects which involve the patient in the identification of needs starting from an ongoing relationship with them and not from market analysis or surveys; development of skills so that they are more autonomous and aware in their choices and in their understanding of the therapeutic process; involvement of the patient in an active way in the autonomous and conscious evaluation of their own treatment pathway. Sometimes a simplification in the therapeutic pathway, a platform that reduces distances can be a real help for a patient. Other times, more articulated projects in which the patient is enabled to talk to experts and peers who are experiencing the same pathology have had excellent results.

Thus, the patient is not the target in the crosshairs, but the point of observation of the pharmaceutical company.
It is not the consumer at the end of the value chain, but the starting point of any marketing plan. Increasingly in the management of rare diseases, in addition to the challenge of early disease recognition and diagnostic doubt, patient advocacy projects have taken on an important value. 

On this vision of Networking Marketing of patient centricity, Merqurio in recent years has created several projects that have captured the interest of all actors in the field. We like to think that we have contributed to improving the well-being, health and life of many patients.