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Modular Content For Pharma

Mark Violi | 06.03.25

Originally published in MedAdNews, June 2025

 

Introduction

As the pharmaceutical industry responds to growing customer demand for information and pressures to contain costs and improve return on investments, it’s no surprise many have embraced Modular Content as a strategy to create, manage, and distribute personally relevant content at scale efficiently.

“Modular content” refers to the creation of standalone, reusable “content modules” that can be mixed, matched, and customized based on specific requirements. These modules can be tailored for different customer segments, market needs, target audiences, and communication channels. The approach promises advantages in terms of efficiency, personalization, scalability, reduced costs and time.

However, rolling out a successful modular content strategy in a complex, regulated industry requires more than just the creation of content. It demands a holistic approach involving planning, training, regulatory buy-in, process implementation, change management, and technology.

Early adopters of modular content have been building capabilities for several years, but many organizations are just beginning. This article shares key lessons learned from leaders in the field so new adopters can learn from the pitfalls they encountered and benefit from their successes. To provide a well-rounded perspective, we consulted members of The Stem network and key industry leaders including Merck (Brian Everhart), Grunenthal (Mubasher Hassan) and Joe Falcone (The Stem, formerly Bristol Myers Squibb). Their insights highlight critical lessons learned and strategies in transitioning to a modular content way of working.

 

Step 1

 

Step 1: Prepare the Change 

One of the most common pitfalls in implementing modular content is underestimating the preparation and change required. Without properly planning, organizations risk inefficiencies, compliance setbacks, and duplication of effort.

Resistance to change is common. Whether its internal teams struggling with new workflows or regulatory teams adopting a new way of reviewing content, a structured approach to change is necessary.

A: Executive Alignment
Leadership must be fully aligned with the long-term benefits of modular content, since it is resource-intensive and time-consuming in the beginning. It’s critical for senior leaders to actively support the initiative and drive it forward. This support should extend to MLR (Medical, Legal, Regulatory), IT, and Brand/Marketing.

Joe Falcone explains why leadership buy-in is critical: “Leadership saw modular content as essential, but the story wasn’t initially clear. Without a well-communicated vision, people just brushed it aside….It moved at a slow crawl for two years because leadership wasn’t fully ready and the right resources took more time to put in place than they had hoped. They wanted other organizational changes to settle first… Without a strong, well-communicated vision and structure, people just saw it as another initiative to set aside.”

Quote 1

Change communication should begin with leadership. Key stakeholders in marketing, medical, legal, regulatory, and IT must understand the broader vision, the benefits, and the challenges involved. “Leaders need to know what’s changing, why it matters, and how to support their teams,” Falcone emphasized.

A well-defined vision must be reinforced through clear messaging, ongoing engagement, and structured education tailored to each function’s role.

B: Ensure Mindset Shift Is Understood Among Key Stakeholders

\Shifting to modular content requires a fundamental change in how stakeholders—across global and local teams—approach content planning, creation, and approval.

Hassan explains: “Traditionally, content is created in a linear way, but with modular content, each module must represent a single, standalone key message. Adapting to this way of thinking doesn’t happen overnight.

Each function needs to rethink traditional workflows and embrace a more strategic, reusable content approach.

  • Global Teams: Must shift from static content created in silos to dynamic content modules that are re-used across markets.
  • Brand Teams: Need to embrace speed and efficiency gains of modular content, particularly in how they brief agencies. Rather than commissioning full creative pieces, teams request modular components that can be assembled and adapted quickly for different channels, segments, and markets.
  • Medical, Legal, and Regulatory (MLR) Teams: Need to embrace a new way of working: when fully assembled content is reviewed and approved, they will also be setting business rules and approving the Modules used to reuse these assets in the future. This will enable them to recognize previously reviewed modulars when incorporated into the next asset submission. It also gives them greater control and traceability across campaigns while streamlining the review process.

By proactively addressing these mindset shifts early, teams can align on the new ways of working, accelerating adoption and minimizing friction during implementation.

 

Step 2

 

Step 2: Get the Fundamentals in Place First

A. Set Up Foundational Capabilities

To successfully implement modular content in pharma, organizations must first establish the core infrastructure that enables scalability, efficiency, and compliance. This foundational phase ensures that content is properly structured, workflows are optimized, and technology is in place to support seamless content reuse.

B. Build Tagging/MetaData/Taxonomy – Lexicon

Develop a structured system to categorize and organize content efficiently. Define a standardized taxonomy and metadata framework that aligns with business objectives and user needs. Ensure consistency in tagging across content types to facilitate discoverability, reuse, and personalization.

C. Select a Content Authoring Partner

Identify and collaborate with a content authoring platform or partner that aligns with your modular content strategy. Consider capabilities such as structured content creation, AI-powered automation, and seamless integration with existing systems. Ensure the partner supports multi-channel content delivery and version control.

D. Establish new workflows

Design and implement streamlined workflows to support modular content creation, management, and distribution. Define processes for:

  • Ingesting and organizing new content within the library
  • Breaking down content into reusable modules
  • Harvesting and repurposing existing assets
  • Reviewing and approving content 

E. Enable a Claims Library

Set up a centralized claims library to ensure accuracy, compliance, and consistency in content messaging. Establish governance rules, verification processes, and integration with content management systems. Ensure seamless retrieval and tagging of approved claims for easy reuse across various content modules.

Hassan underscores the critical role of establishing a claims library as a foundation for modular content implementation: “Digital claims are a key aspect of modular content. At the time, we didn’t have them enabled, so the project became three initiatives in one: implementing digital claims, modular content, and a new co-creation model. For smaller organizations, I’d strongly recommend starting with digital claims first—don’t jump into modular content without that foundation.”

 

Enable a Module/Content Library

Establish a structured module library. A Module/Content Library is a centralized, organized repository of previously reviewed content modules (and the individual elements within those modules – referenced claims, images, and reusable text blocks) that can be easily accessed, localized, and reused by markets or teams across different regions. It serves as the backbone of the modular content process, enabling efficient creation and adaptation of final assets. By using reusable modules, teams can quickly assemble tailored, compliant, and brand-consistent content without having to start from scratch for each new market or campaign, ensuring faster time-to-market and consistency across global communications.

A key challenge with building this library upfront is overcoming the perception of “double work,” as markets must continue publishing content while also building modular assets. A more effective approach is to have agencies extract modules from existing content, allowing the library to grow organically without disrupting workflows.

Hassan (Grünenthal) shared insights on their approach to building a library of modules:

“To really see these benefits, you need a library of modules. Once you have that, you can start leveraging them effectively. However, building that initial library is a huge undertaking. Markets might feel like they are putting in a lot of effort without immediate results because while they are creating modules, they are also publishing content. It can feel like double the work. Initially, we thought markets should create their own library, but we quickly revised that approach.

Instead, we asked markets to continue creating content as usual while the agencies they worked with were responsible for developing modules from that content. This way, as content was produced, the module library grew naturally – and this approach proved highly effective.”

Establish DAM, if not already in place

A Digital Asset Management (DAM) system – a centralized platform for storing, organizing, and managing digital content – is essential for the successful implementation of modular content in pharma. If not already in place, it should be prioritized to ensure efficient storage, retrieval, and governance of modular assets.

Key considerations when establishing or optimizing a DAM system include:

  • Structured Metadata & Tagging: Ensure all modular assets are properly tagged for easy searchability and reuse across regions and teams.
  • Version Control & Compliance: Track asset updates and approvals to maintain compliance with regulatory requirements.
  • Integration with Other Systems: Connect the DAM with content management systems (CMS), Medical, Legal, and Regulatory (MLR) platforms, and workflow automation tools for seamless content lifecycle management.
  • Governance & Access Control: Define permissions to ensure appropriate access for different teams while maintaining content integrity and compliance.

A well-implemented DAM enables content efficiency, global consistency, and regulatory compliance, making it a cornerstone of any modular content strategy in pharma.

 

Step 3

 

Step 3: Conduct a Pilot

Begin the implementation of your modular content strategy with a small scope pilot. Testing the process with a pioneer market and a limited number of brands allows teams to try modular approaches in a controlled environment, build confidence, uncover roadblocks, and create early success stories to fuel broader adoption.

 A. Select the Right Pilot Brand, Channel, and Content

Choosing the right pilot can make or break the initiative. It’s essential to begin with a brand that is open to experimentation, has a manageable volume of content needs, and ideally, has leadership support.

When selecting a channel for your pilot, prioritize one that offers high content velocity, clear metrics, and manageable complexity – such as email or banner. These channels often require frequent updates and localization, making them ideal for testing modular content’s ability to improve speed, consistency, and reuse. 

Choose content that is high-impact, frequently reused, and lends itself well to modularization – such as core brand messages, product value propositions, or disease education materials. Ideal pilot content should be relatively stable (to avoid frequent changes during the pilot) but broad enough to apply across channels or markets.

B. Harvest Existing Content

Start by mining existing brand assets for reusable content elements. Review slide decks, emails, sales materials, and web copy to identify frequently used messages, claims, and visuals.

This step is not only efficient, but also helps ease stakeholders into the modular approach by showing how existing content can be repurposed rather than reinvented.

C. Seed Claims and Modular Library

With content harvested, the next step is to populate a claims library and a modular content library. Begin with a minimal viable library (MVL) that includes:

  • Pre-approved claims, correctly referenced and tagged with relevant metadata
  • Core messaging modules categorized by channel and content type

 

Step 4

 

Step 4: Engage the Brands & Markets with Rollout 

With the foundations established and a pilot plan in place, it’s time to bring modular content to life across brands and markets. This step focuses on activating teams, scaling the approach, and embedding modular ways of working into day-to-day content operations. Success hinges on close collaboration between global and local teams, co-creation of content, and agile training to build confidence and drive adoption.

A: Co-Create with Brands and Markets

Global Therapeutic Areas (TAs) play a central role in modular content strategies, as they are responsible for creating content that meets both brand objectives and local market needs. To ensure effective adoption, global and local brand teams must collaborate from the outset. Close alignment and continuous communication between these teams ensure that content is both relevant and delivered on time, making it easier for local teams to adapt it to their specific markets.

Hassan reinforced this point: “We started co-creating content with markets instead of forcing a global-first approach. This made adoption much smoother. Now, regarding how global and local modules work together: we have both established brands and growth brands. For established brands, most content is already created, and global provides a basic toolkit for markets. Some markets, being more advanced, have additional needs, so they create their own local modules. The delta between global content and market-specific needs is covered by local module creation.”

Shifting away from a top-down content distribution model, Grünenthal embraced a more collaborative approach: “We moved away from the ‘global dumps content onto markets’ model. Instead, we adopted co-creation—where global works with markets to develop modules that are immediately relevant. This makes content more localized and effective.”

Quote 2

B: Be Agile in Training

One of the most common oversights in modular content adoption is underestimating the need for continuous, and right-sized training. As teams transition to modular content, many struggle to understand how modular components fit together, making structured and ongoing education essential.

Effective training should start with the fundamentals, focusing on the core principles of modular content—its flexibility, reusability, and potential for personalization. Rather than overwhelming teams with complex guidelines upfront, organizations should take a phased approach, gradually introducing more advanced topics as processes mature. Training materials must remain adaptable and continuously updated to reflect evolving modular content strategies and platform enhancements. Given the dynamic nature of modular content, resources should be designed to accommodate ongoing changes and improvements seamlessly – in essence, Modular training should be created.

To sustain adoption and engagement, training should be delivered in bite-sized, ongoing sessions rather than one-time, intensive programs. Regular reinforcement and providing teams on-demand resources for just-in-time needs helps teams stay aligned and maintain momentum as they become more comfortable with modular workflows.

Brian Everhart (Merck) highlighted the importance of keeping training and documentation agile:

“We spent a full year testing our approach to Modular Content. What we learned is that you don’t need to over-document every detail. Keep training materials practical, focused, and adaptable.”

By focusing on what is necessary rather than overcomplicating processes, organizations can make training more effective, ensuring that modular content adoption remains a smooth and scalable transition.

 

Step 5

 

Step 5: Scaling Considerations

Building the Content Factory and Leveraging Automation

Once modular content has been piloted and adopted by key brands and markets, the next challenge is scaling. At this stage, the focus shifts from initial adoption to efficiencies at scale – a modular content “factory” model that combines process efficiency with intelligent automation to drive scale without compromising compliance or creativity.

A. Establish a Content Factory Model

A content factory is not a physical space – it’s a scalable operational framework that brings together modular processes, skilled resources, and enabling technology. It’s where volume meets velocity, and where modular thinking becomes embedded in everyday content creation.

Key elements of a pharma content factory:

  • Centralized module creation and management with clear governance
  • Pre-approved, reusable content elements for faster assembly and localization
  • Design and layout templates aligned to different channels and use cases
  • Defined roles and responsibilities across global, regional, and local teams
  • A focus on quality, consistency, and compliance at every stage

This model allows content teams to efficiently serve diverse market needs while maintaining alignment to brand strategy and regulatory standards.

B. Embrace Automation and AI to Accelerate Scale

To truly unlock the potential of modular content, automation and AI must be leveraged across the content lifecycle—from creation to assembly, translation, and performance analysis. These technologies reduce manual effort, speed up approvals, and enhance personalization at scale.

Key automation and AI enablers:

  • Generative AI (Gen AI) for generating original content elements like claims, CTAs, visuals, and headlines, as well as personalized variations for different audiences, channels, or markets. This speeds up content development and supports scalable personalization while staying aligned with brand and regulatory guidelines.
  • AI-assisted authoring tools that recommend language, claims, or layouts based on approved assets
  • Automated tagging and metadata assignment to ensure accurate and scalable content organization
  • Rules-based content assembly engines that dynamically create emails, websites, or presentations using approved modules
  • Translation memory systems that reuse prior translations for rapid localization
  • AI-powered MLR pre-checks that proactively flag potential compliance issues – such as unsupported claims, off-label language, or missing references – before content reaches formal review, helping reduce back-and-forth cycles and speed time to approval
  • Performance analytics that attribute engagement to specific modules, enabling smarter content reuse

By coupling modular foundations with the right AI tools, pharma companies can move from linear production to dynamic, on-demand content delivery.

 

Conclusion

Modular content holds transformative potential to reduce content development costs while driving personalization and efficiency. The proof is in the results early adopters have achieved. According to Hassan, “With modular content, we gain better consistency in messaging, improved traceability, and real insights into what content is resonating. Instead of just tracking clicks, we now understand how specific content elements perform…we’ve seen a 20-25% reduction in agency costs and up to 40% reduction in content creation time. Some emails that used to take over a week now take just 30 minutes to finalize.”

Implementing a modular content strategy in pharma is complex but achievable with the right approach. By integrating the main steps described in this article, pharma companies can achieve greater efficiency, compliance, and personalization.

 

Authors

Gregg Fisher, Managing Partner, The Stemgfisher@thestem.com

Pedro Santos is a Lead Strategy Consultant, The Stem

with contributions from Joe Falcone and Stephanie Taubin, The Stem

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Modular Content Done Right

The Promise of Agentic AI Content Systems in BioPharma & Life Sciences

Mark Violi | 05.15.25

Introduction

Since the explosion of Generative AI (GenAI) in 2022, daily breakthroughs in AI features and solutions have become the norm. Keeping pace with this change is a formidable challenge.   This shift mirrors the space race of the 20th century, with GenAI emerging as a modern Sputnik, poised to redefine entire industries.

In this high-stakes race, tech companies are moving swiftly to deploy advanced AI models capable of autonomous reasoning and action. At the edge of this revolution is Agentic AI — autonomous agents designed to handle repetitive work with limited human oversight.


Evolution of GenAI in Content Management: From Assistants to Agents

In the three years since GenAI’s rapid integration into content operations, there have already been two distinct waves of AI transformation.

First Wave (2022–2024)
This initial phase saw the widespread adoption of Generative AI (GenAI) solutions designed to assist us in content-related tasks, as well as integration of Gen AI features into other content operations tools such as content authoring tools and automating review tools. These assistants and AI-infused operations tools support content creation, editing, version control, review and approval leading to the generation of derivative materials at a faster pace. Although still reliant on human input and oversight, the assistants and tools represented a step forward in streamlining the content development process.

Second Wave (2025+)
Building on the foundations laid by Gen AI tools, the current wave is characterized by the rise of AI agents—autonomous systems capable of executing complex content workflows with minimal human intervention. These agents can manage processes such as content assembly, regulatory alignment, version control, and multi-channel distribution, with human checkpoints as needed. Agentic AI marks a shift from assistance to autonomy, relieving us of repetitive tasks and to allow us to upskill and focus on more strategic work. 

What differentiates the two waves are: support versus autonomy. Whereas the Gen AI assistants and tools help to reduce production time, it always plays a supportive role. Agentic AI solutions on the other hand are more autonomous due to a smart system referred to as the ‘brain’. It enables the agents to reason, plan and retrieve both static and dynamic data with minimal human intervention.

Deploying an agentic system offers many business benefits to organizations. One of the most significant is the ability to modernize content infrastructure without requiring a complete system overhaul. “Agents will essentially become the middleware connecting all content systems,” explains Jason Sundberg, Commercial Content Strategist, and a member of The Stem network.

Assistants versus AI Agents
The assistants and AI agents both run on a generative AI foundation. However, the AI agent provides greater independence, flexibility and adaptability compared to the assistants.

AgenticAI

 

When to Pilot AI Agents

The first step should be identifying a high-need, high-impact project to conduct a pilot. Consider a certain section of a longer process versus trying to tackle the entire process at once. This could involve creating a more seamless method for repurposing content across different channels and communication objectives, managing version control, or ensuring a submission-ready document for MLR (Medical, Legal, and Regulatory) review. Regardless of the approach, the benefits are clear: reduced time to market and significant cost savings.

Joe Falcone, Content Operations Excellence Consultant at The Stem, sees the value in piloting these solutions sooner rather than later. “At first, these Agentic AI solutions are going to be pretty basic, just as we saw with the GenAI solutions and tools. But we also saw how fast these solutions improved over time. We’ll see which solutions survive the shakeout, but it’s worth doing a pilot to get the solution integrated into the organization.” And there is an appetite for doing pilots according to Joe because “…some teams that are thinking of creating modular content hubs are thinking of skipping modular entirely and going all-in on AI. While that sounds nice, the reality is that we should be doing both as they are complimentary not in competition, and getting these pilots off the ground sooner rather than later will likely yield rewards.”

 

Possible scenarios include:

A brand approaching Loss of Exclusivity (LOE) requires aggressive marketing and sales efforts but does not need new label or messaging updates. AI-driven content repurposing can maximize the impact of existing assets while optimizing distribution across channels.

A small brand with a limited marketing budget must generate omnichannel content efficiently and cost-effectively. AI-powered automation enables scalable content creation while maintaining consistency and compliance.

A regulatory label update that does not alter the brand concept may require slight messaging variations to reflect the change. AI-assisted content adaptation ensures accuracy, speeds up the update process, and streamlines MLR review.

A global brand with local adaptation must maintain a singular branded concept while ensuring regionally relevant messaging and compliance with local regulatory guidelines. AI can help tailor content for different markets without compromising brand integrity.

Sales enablement efforts require personalized digital content, including emails and Interactive Visual Aids (IVAs), tailored for specific healthcare professionals. AI-driven customization enhances engagement and ensures alignment with sales strategies.

Rare disease brands with limited budgets face challenges in patient identification and disease education. AI-powered content systems can help create targeted, educational materials to support awareness, diagnosis, and engagement efforts efficiently.

Patient access programs with regional differences by state require precise, localized content to help patients navigate insurance coverage, copay assistance, and reimbursement pathways. AI can generate region-specific materials that account for variations in state policies, payer requirements, and patient assistance programs, ensuring accurate and up-to-date information for patients and healthcare providers.


Illustrative Example of Agentic AI Derivative Content Development Workflow

To provide an example, the image below shows how an Agentic system could streamline the development of derivative content using 7 specialized agents, each responsible for a specific task within the content creation pipeline. Once deployed, these agents, working together, complete the entire end-to-end workflow up to MLR submission. Teams can determine the optimal points in the process to insert human-in-the-loop (HITL). As part of the deployment, establish both qualitative and quantitative KPIs to measure time and cost savings and evaluate the impact of agentic workflows. For a detailed explanation of what the agent is actually doing, refer to the end notes.

AgenticAI

AgenticAI

The benefits of this agentic system are speed of completion: From the initial input to the first human intervention, the system will require up to 5 minutes, instead of hours or days.

While the workflow is largely automated to minimize human involvement, human input remains essential at key points—particularly at the beginning and end of the process, as the content is finalized for MLR review.


Who Should Oversee Agentic Systems

Depending on the content maturity of Biopharma and Life Sciences companies, content operations are a shared responsibility including content operations, IT and omnichannel teams. Similarly, the decision to deploy and responsibility for setting up agents should be taken by this cross functional team. Once active, a decision needs to be made as to who would manage the agents. For a larger company, this could fall to the content factory function or marketing operations or for a smaller company agentic management could become a junior brand marketer responsibility. Note also that agents have the impact of reducing dependence on expensive human resources involved with content factory contracts.


How to Get Started

Introducing Agentic AI into content operations doesn’t require a full-scale overhaul. There are data challenges that need consideration with respect to data, metadata and business rules. It starts with a clear understanding of where these solutions can deliver the most value—and building from there. It also means staying flexible and preparing content to be optimized for generative engines. Below are key steps to guide the initial adoption:

  • Identify a high-impact use case
    Start with a workflow that is both resource-intensive and ripe for automation. This could include content repurposing, version control, label updates, or preparation for MLR review. These areas offer clear opportunities for efficiency gains, faster execution, and measurable outcomes.
  • Evaluate existing infrastructure
    Take stock of current systems, workflows, and team responsibilities. Understanding your content ecosystem will highlight where integration with Agentic AI can streamline operations without creating disruption.
  • Align cross-functional stakeholders
    Content operations often sit at the intersection of regulatory, brand, medical, and IT. Early alignment with these groups ensures shared goals, proper oversight, and smoother implementation. Collaboration from the start accelerates adoption and increases the likelihood of long-term success.
  • Define success criteria
    Establish what success looks like—whether that’s reduced time to market, improved compliance accuracy, or cost savings. Clear metrics help evaluate the performance of AI systems and guide future scaling decisions.
  • Conduct a focused pilot
    Test the system on a defined use case with manageable scope. A pilot provides a low-risk environment to assess real-world application, integration with existing tools, and the agent’s ability to operate with limited human intervention.
  • Learn, refine, and scale
    Use insights from the pilot to fine-tune processes, identify additional opportunities, and gradually expand the agent’s role across content workflows. This stepwise approach ensures each phase builds on real outcomes, not assumptions.
  • Build team readiness
    As Agentic AI assumes more of the executional workload, content teams will shift toward strategic oversight and orchestration. Preparing teams for this change through training and upskilling will unlock new value and drive adoption.
  • Leverage specialized consulting partner for project strategy and set-up
    Working with a consulting firm that understands both the AI landscape and the regulatory demands of life sciences can accelerate implementation. These partners offer strategic insight, technical know-how, and real-world experience to guide AI integration effectively.


Conclusion

Agentic AI marks a new era—not just for content workflows, but for how life sciences organizations operate at scale. Unlike earlier GenAI tools that required continuous human input, Agentic AI introduces autonomy, adaptability, and intelligent orchestration into processes that were once manual, repetitive, and siloed.

This isn’t about adding yet another tool to the tech stack—it’s about introducing the connective tissue to improve how work gets done. From accelerating time-to-market to enhancing regulatory precision, Agentic systems have the potential to fundamentally transform operational efficiency across the enterprise.

For companies ready to lead, the time to pilot is now. Early adopters will not only shape the standards of AI integration in life sciences—they’ll gain a competitive edge that compounds over time. 

Appendix:

Initial Input: The workflow begins with “User Instructions” (blue box on left), which serves as the starting point for content creation.

Data Processing: Instructions are processed through an agentic workflow that sends the instruction to a RAG Retrieval System

RAG Retrieval System: A Retrieval-Augmented Generation system accesses relevant information (i.e. text, images, ISI boilerplate, indication, claims document etc.)

Human In the Loop: The human in the loop allows a team of stakeholders representing various disciplines to review and provide comments on the generated content. Following the review, the comments are uploaded into the AI process and automated revision occurs. At this point, the AI is instructed on the format type of each of the assets and dimensions of the content.

MLR Decision: The final decision diamond appears to be “MLR Approval” (Medical, Legal, Regulatory).

Completion: The workflow concludes with Launch Materials and omnichannel deployment of content.

 

Authors

Gregg Fisher, Managing Partner, The Stemgfisher@thestem.com

Noriko Yokoi is a Lead Strategy Consultant, The Stem

 

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AgenticAI

Building the Partnership Muscle: The Key to Delivering Successful Patient Experience Solutions

Mark Violi | 01.23.25

Originally published in Med Ad News December 2024

As an industry, biopharma understands the immense benefits of patient engagement. Enhanced health literacy leads to more informed treatment discussions and better outcomes, while improved clinical trial experiences propel scientific progress. Patient engagement is not only a sound business strategy but also an ethical approach to patient care.
 
Unfortunately, the promise of a better patient experience sometimes falls short when biopharma delivers solutions in isolation. In particular, the lack of co-design with patients and the lack of solution interoperability with healthcare systems leads to slow adoption of new solutions by physicians and recruitment/retention challenges with patients. The consequence is fragmented patient experiences that fail to realize anticipated commercial benefits.
 
In this article, we explore a more integrated approach to planning and operationalizing patient experience design, drawing on the expertise of consultants and clients. Through collaborative partnerships and ecosystem thinking, we look at how the industry can design exceptional patient experiences that drive real business value, including digital, omnichannel, and other patient experience solutions.

 

THE BUSINESS RATIONALE: WHY PATIENT EXPERIENCE MATTERS TO PHARMA

For clinical trials

Imagine a scenario where patients feel like superheroes when joining a clinical trial. They understand what to expect before signing up. Their needs around transport and the inability to sit for long hours are addressed up front. Documents are completed before arrival, and they are offered healthy snacks and engaging materials during treatment. Trial milestones are celebrated, and at the end of the trial, there is a celebration to honor participants.

In this scenario, trial recruitment is faster and easier, and drop-offs are significantly reduced, easing the pressure on biopharma teams to hit targets. Recruitment times are shortened, which would bring valuable new treatments to patients sooner.

Today, this scenario might seem out of reach for many biopharma companies in the absence of tight partnerships with CROs, investigators, and clinical trial site staff.

“Clinical trial patients should be celebrated,” says Paul Landerville, U.S. early asset lead, Boehringer Ingelheim. “They are taking a chance on a potential new treatment, but not all trials end well for patients – not everyone gets the new treatment. I see them as explorers, and the industry calls them subjects. If we could improve their trial experience, remove the burdens, create some fanfare when they are halfway through the trial, [or] have a special day for them at the end of the trial. It would help them feel more valued.”

For patient support

In another scenario, imagine patients staying on treatment longer despite adverse events, gaining a sense of control living with their disease, and achieving improved health outcomes.

Patients enroll in a disease management program offering care team support, a patient mentor, and messaging delivered from within the EHR system tailored to their experience, which include setting expectations up front about potentially burdensome side effects. A user-friendly digital solution tracks their disease journey, with milestones patients celebrate with family, peers, and care team.

This scenario might also seem out of reach for many biopharma companies, and uncommon for most patients today, but it is achievable through careful collaboration with digital health providers, physicians or hospital systems, and patient advocacy groups.

“We have research to show that patient motivation is similar to a battery,” says Natalie Bloomfield, a global patient engagement leader. “After diagnosis, patients may be running on empty, as the process of diagnosis and treatment initiation can be exhausting and traumatic. It takes multiple milestones to recharge their battery, to see treatment progress, feel informed so they can understand their disease and treatment, and transition from their ‘old normal’ to a ‘new normal.’ Patients need solutions that create connections, enable sharing experiences with similar patients, and practical, personally relevant support – all of these things are necessary, they aren’t ‘nice to haves.’ But executing these solutions in isolation is the challenge.”

 

BARRIERS: SYSTEMIC ISSUES THAT HINDER SOLUTION DEVELOPMENT

Clinical trials

Many pharmaceutical companies outsource clinical trials to CROs who are focused on efficiency rather than patient experience. As a consequence, inadequate attention is paid to each step of the journey that patients (and the clinical trial site staff) experience, leading to suboptimal trial enrollment and completion rates and a longer-term reduction in the pool of willing trial participants.

If patients don’t know what to expect, and if the pharmaceutical sponsor together with the CRO and site staff do not understand patient expectations throughout the trial experience, the trial experience will not meet patient expectations.

Patient support programs (PSPs)

Pharma-sponsored PSPs often fall short due to high costs, limited scalability, perceived compliance risks, and difficulty measuring impact. Many PSPs end up as basic messaging programs, missing the mark on delivering meaningful value to patients, or too complex to use, or redundant with other solutions available in the market. Physicians and nurses may also see them as intrusive rather than complementary tools for better patient management.

Meanwhile, hospitals and group practices often don’t have the resources, time, or incentives to manage each patient optimally with customized patient engagement solutions. And, advocacy groups don’t see PSP implementation as directly in their purview.

 

PSP

 

“A key problem with pharma-sponsored patient support programs is that every time we try to create a great patient experience, to build peer-to-peer support, there is a lot of hesitation in terms of compliance risk,” Bloomfield says. “And then we go with the safest option, which doesn’t work. Meanwhile, the ideal solution cannot be delivered in a vacuum; it requires the close cooperation of multiple players: physicians, nurses, advocacy groups, health-tech, and pharma.”

 

OPPORTUNITIES: HOW LEVERAGING PARTNERSHIPS CAN SUPPORT DELIVERY AT SCALE

As we have seen, there are a number of constraints on biopharma’s ability to act alone to build optimal patient experiences, and equally there are resource constraints that sometimes prevent physicians and the wider hospital/healthcare systems from collaborating with pharma. Some of these constraints, such as those connected to institutional incentives, are not easily overcome. However, many constraints, including overcoming compliance risks, cost concerns, ability to measure, and failing to meet patient expectations can be overcome through systems thinking (understanding patient needs holistically across the interactions) and cross-stakeholder leadership and partnering to improve the situation.

collaborate

“Intervening in the care path directly as a pharma company is difficult and probably not desirable,” says Marta Lago Arenas, a customer experience consultant. “The opportunity is to collaborate. For example, providing insights, [and] supporting studies or experiences where a new approach is designed, implemented, and tested can improve outcomes in a compliant and evidence-based way. Pharma partners with providers and healthcare systems to create improvements in patient experience and evaluate the approach.”

 

REAL-WORLD EXAMPLES

Here are just a few examples of how systems thinking and partnering across the health ecosystem have made a real difference in patient engagement in clinical trial and patient support settings.

Boehringer partners with pharmacy chain and trial solutions provider to make clinical trials more accessible

To reach underserved communities in the United States, global biopharma company Boehringer Ingelheim is partnering with Walgreens pharmacies and Emvenio Research, a decentralized trial network, to improve clinical trial recruitment and retention, as well as increasing diversity in Phase III obesity and type 2 diabetes trials. The project aims to educate Black and Hispanic adults, who are more likely to be impacted by these diseases, on clinical trials and empower them to utilize this treatment pathway. By bringing trial sites directly to communities, Boehringer hopes to engage patients where they are in their journey, and make trials more accessible for a wider group of patients.

best practice

Amgen partners with hospitals and digital health to improve adherence

Global biopharma company Amgen led a consortium partnership to empower patients at high risk of cardiovascular disease to take control of their recovery treatment plan and reduce the likelihood of further hospital admissions postheart attack. The program, called Rehab+, was based on digital tele-rehabilitation, with Liva Healthcare providing the app technology. Amgen partnered with rehabilitation hospitals in Spain, including La Paz in Madrid, Vall d’Hebron in Barcelona, and Virgen de la Victoria in Malaga, and Zuyderland in the Netherlands. The program was endorsed by the Spanish Society of Cardiology, Netherlands Society of Cardiology, and Foro Español de Pacientes (Spanish Patients Forum).

Partnering with a health-tech company to embed messaging in clinical workflows

MyCareCompass, a digital health solutions designed for oncology care teams, partnered with Kettering Health Network to decrease cancer patient fear and anxiety, improve patient satisfaction and outcomes, and decrease healthcare resource utilization and costs. The collaboration allowed for rich insights from oncology nurse navigators to understand gaps in patient education and associated impact, content aligned with health literacy best practices and cancer patient engagement data, full integration within Kettering Health’s EMR platform and operational workflow, and auto-deployed educational videos and content to patients from Kettering via email/SMS.

 

DELIVERING ON THE PATIENT EXPERIENCE PROMISE

Pharmaceutical companies are well positioned to coordinate the delivery of next-generation patient support thinking and solutions given their unique strengths including scientific innovation, financial resources, and specialized disease insights. Below are recommendations for flexing Pharma’s systems-thinking and ecosystem partnering muscles in service of better patient experiences.

 

ADVICE FOR SENIOR LEADERSHIP

Recognize friction and limitations of developing solutions in isolation, and the benefits of a multi-partner approach.

Measure what you need to change. To create solutions that are scalable across therapy areas and markets, understand what you need to change and build success metrics around that. For instance, if treatment adherence is the key issue, identify benchmarks and set concrete performance objectives for a successful program before initiating any partnerships.

Utilize cross functional squads. Involve market research, patient engagement, clinical operations or medical affairs, and communications and IT team members, but ensure there is clear accountability and responsibility in the squad.

Embed ecosystem partnering into job accountabilities. Partnerships may be in place with agencies or digital health providers to support partnerships, but consider explicitly tasking internal teams with ecosystem thinking and partnership formation. Consortiums including hospital or healthcare systems, patient organizations, health tech, and innovation networks should be encouraged. You could even consider creating a role specific to ecosystem integration.

Take an agile approach to partnering. Using lean methodology to build, measure, and learn enables your team to deliver solutions faster, but you want to learn first before you build. Leverage existing knowledge from market research and data from existing or previous programs to drive early decision making, and build solutions in a modular and agile way so new data can be utilized to pivot or adapt quickly.

making it happen

 

ADVICE FOR MEDICAL, COMMERCIAL, AND PATIENT PARTNERING TEAMS

Leverage an ecosystem approach to codesign solutions that extend beyond a single market.

Share and learn from partners. Leverage pharma’s market research strengths to understand the intersection of patient journey and care pathway, and share what you learn with partners. Partners may have valuable knowledge to exchange including behavior change approaches, clinical practice data, and gaps in services for high-priority patient needs.

Engage partners early. Too often, partners may not be consulted until near the end of program development, almost always as a validation of the thinking that has gone into developing the program, rather than in shaping the program from the beginning.

Include nurses and front-line staff. Nurses are often overlooked in solution development but they are critical to delivering a great patient experience. Front-line hospital staff are often under-resourced and welcome digital tools and innovations that will enable them to do a better job for patients in critical care or emergency situations.

Leverage digital health partners and start-ups. As you consider build versus buy versus partner, think carefully about buy and partner. The ecosystem of digital health companies and start-ups is well developed and expanding quickly. Chances are there is a provider that would be eager to partner and would save time, energy, and money.

As you embark on 2025 strategic planning, give extra consideration to how you can embed ecosystem thinking and a partnership mindset into your patient engagement ambitions. The building blocks of successful patient engagement solutions are in place, they are just distributed across the healthcare landscape. Let’s continue to flex our partnership muscles to give our patients the solutions they deserve.

 

Authors

Gregg Fisher, Managing Partner, The Stemgfisher@thestem.com

Debbie Denison is a Lead Strategy Consultant, The Stem

 

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Building the partnership muscle

Improving Healthcare Provider Connections: The Power of Moments in Biopharma Engagement

Mark Violi | 07.01.24

Originally published in Med Ad News June 2024

In recent years, biopharma companies have been keenly focused on improving customer engagement as a means of bolstering competitive advantage, elevating customer access, engagement, and business impact.

While there is no shortage of customer engagement initiatives underway, we observe that most of these efforts fall short of being truly “customer-centric.” Instead, they tend to be driven by the promise of technology and narrowly focused on brand or business needs, rather than embracing an “outside-in approach” that puts the customer first.

Reflecting on the industry’s interactions with healthcare professionals, Toon De Baere, senior director of digital customer engagement at AstraZeneca, observes, “I believe we struggle as an industry because we think inside out. Our focus is typically on disseminating product-centric messages. Instead, we need to understand the pivotal moments that matter to physicians to craft experiences that make those moments more meaningful and memorable.”

In this article, we look at how biopharma leaders can design distinctive experiences for customers leveraging insights from behavioral psychology. We draw inspiration from “The Power of Moments” by Chip and Dan Heath and look at how memorable and impactful moments are crafted leveraging principles of elevation, insight, pride, and connection.[1] (This article will look at moments for healthcare providers, but a later article in the series will look at patients.)

Tripping Over the Truth

Building bridges: amplifying HCP engagement through transformative learning

In “The Power of Moments,” the idea of “tripping over the truth” prescribes the transformative effect of encountering an undeniable and impactful truth, leading to a transformative shift in perspective. The book’s three-part recipe – (1) clear insight (2) compressed in time and (3) discovered by the audience itself – provides a blueprint for helping audiences confront realities. For physicians, this type of discovery could lead to more informed treatment decisions and richer understanding of patient needs.

 
Tripping Over the Truth

Noemi Pasquarelli, global medical science director for multiple sclerosis at Roche, encapsulates the benefits of “tripping over the truth.” She explains, “Education is individual for every healthcare professional, there are many different learning styles and levels. For example, when you are at a congress and you reveal new data for the first time, how you contextualize that data may impact perceptions around how it can be used in clinical practice. Rather than just presenting efficacy and safety data, we need to help physicians put the data into perspective and anchor it back to their own practice.”

Consider the following two strategies to design create moments that help HCPs “trip over the truth”.

1. Immerse HCPs in patient perspectives to drive shared decision making.

Moment Creation: Bring the physician closer to patients and enhance understanding of patient needs and treatment goals during or following a key congress where new data is presented. Help them have their own “aha moments” by creating a post-congress session, or have these materials available at your booth.

Rationale: One of the barriers around shared decision making is the lack of patient perspective on the part of the physician. Thanks to social media accelerating information transfer, patients are now coming to their doctors more informed about new and pipeline treatments which may influence a doctor’s decision, but physicians often still lack a palpable connection to the patient experience. Understanding the patient perspective can help HCPs better understand patient preferences and communicate new information in a way that drives collaborative decision making.

Example: A great example of this approach was provided by Khurrum Ahmad, senior director, brand lead at Otsuka Pharmaceuticals. Earlier in his career, while working on a binge eating product, his team uncovered a gap in physician understanding of the vicious, compulsive thought process a patient goes through with binge eating. “The aha moment for me was how do you get a physician to see the compulsive nature of patient thoughts, and truly appreciate how deep this trauma goes?” Khurrum explains. “Through virtual reality goggles, we enabled physicians to experience a day in the life of a patient. In a short one-and-a-half minute video, they could hear the thoughts of that patient, understand the triggers and patterns of thinking about food, overeating, and the resulting negative thoughts of shame and guilt.” Khurrum’s team utilized the VR goggles at different psychiatric congresses, enabling psychiatrists to “trip over the truth” in a minute and a half. “From the pre- and post-survey, we could see physicians connecting the dots, and that by understanding the burden of disease better, how they could have better conversations with patients.” As a consequence, a key barrier to prescribing treatment was addressed.

Tactics to consider helping providers “trip over the truth” in the period surrounding a congress include:

  • Voice of the patient at booth: Integrate patient perspectives through video, patient-physician fireside chats, or immersive VR experiences, bringing to life specific challenges or unmet needs that may help to change perspectives.
  • Session post-congress: Delve into framing risks, benefits, patient goals and preferences from the patient’s perspective. Provide guidance on how to discuss the data with well-informed patients who may have already encountered the information through other sources.
  • Repurposed content post-congress: Extend the impact beyond the congress experience by repurposing content that can be shared with a broader physician community through medical science liaisons (MSLs), sales forces, and digital channels.

Tripping Over the Truth

2. Amplify the voice of early treatment adopters.

Moment Creation: Drive behavior change for late adopters of new therapies by creating patient case studies featuring early adopters of new treatments. Clinicians who are first to adopt a new treatment, drug class or digital therapeutic contribute patient case studies that share their early experiences with the product with those who are “on the fence”.

Rationale: By strategically addressing resistance, skepticism, and misconceptions within a case study, brands can help clinicians “trip over the truth” and make informed, timely decisions about new treatments. Also, peer-to-peer learning speeds up the adoption process, getting new treatments to patients faster.

Example: Many of the clinical support tools today are primarily driven by guideline updates and lack peer-to-peer engagement. We supported a client in developing an interactive patient case tool where oncologists could follow a patient’s clinical journey and learn about how the patient was managed throughout their journey and the resulting outcomes. It provided expert opinion on eligible treatment options and the rationale behind their choices. The tool was adopted by two international oncology societies for use in their own patient cases.

Tripping Over the Truth

Tactical considerations

Technological capabilities have greatly improved in recent years, and the concept of strategically positioning a case study tool around early treatment adoption, especially with AI integration, has yet to be explored. This is an area of innovation whose time has come.

An early adopter case study tool could include educational information to aid in treatment decision making:

  • Videos from researchers or investigators involved in the clinical study.
  • Expected side effects and ways of addressing them.
  • Methods of patient stratification used in treatment decision-making.
  • Practical guidance on how clinicians can smoothly integrate the new treatment into their existing workflows.
  • Interactive surveys to benchmark the current practices of each clinician against their peers.
  • Ability for clinicians to comment or ask questions of the case study creator (discussion capabilities).
  • AI to generate and summarize case studies; and beyond these basic features, AI could be used to detect patterns in pathology images and assess treatment plans based on outcomes of investigations and patient history/comorbidities.

Conclusion

The promise of well-designed “moments” in biopharma customer engagement can inspire and guide biopharma leaders towards genuine customer-centric approaches. By embracing insights from behavioral psychology and understanding pivotal moments that matter to healthcare professionals, biopharma leaders can craft distinctive and memorable experiences that go beyond disseminating product-centric messages.

To act on these insights, biopharma leaders should consider creating a “moments” playbook to provide concrete direction on how to integrate moments into brand strategy and tactical planning. Considerations for teams include:

  1. Excellence teams: Integrate behavioral psychology and moment design into customer experience (CX) curricula training, baking this into the customer-centricity agenda internally. Utilize playbooks to train cross functional brand teams to adopt an outside-in approach that leverages the pillars of elevation, insight, pride, and connection.
  2. Cross-functional brand team: Enhance the importance of strategic brainstorming within the organization through tactical ideation sessions in collaboration with agencies and other partners, incorporating principles of moment design and behavioral psychology.
  3. Impact and intent measures: Look beyond engagement metrics to integrate customer centric measures such as intent and impact, to gauge whether designed moments are moving the needle. Voice of customer tools such as surveys and social analytics (social listening) can be leveraged to measure impact. For intent, desired actions should be integrated into tools, content, and assets. Call requests with MSLs, webinar registrations, case study comments, and input could all apply in the examples given.

Keep your eyes out for our next article on the Power of Moments, which will focus on patient engagement.

[1] Heath, C. and Heath, D. (January 1, 2017). “The Power of Moments.” Random House UK.

 

Authors

Gregg Fisher, Managing Partner, The Stemgfisher@thestem.com

Debbie Denison is a Lead Strategy Consultant, The Stem

 

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Improving Healthcare Provider Connections

Agenda 2024: Now What?

icoder | 03.04.24

Revolutionizing Biopharma: Gregg Fisher Explores AI’s Impact in PharmaLive’s Latest Feature

Gregg Fisher, founder and managing partner of The Stem, shares his expert insights on the pivotal role of artificial intelligence (AI) in revolutionizing healthcare communication and patient care to PharmaLive’s “Agenda 2024: Now What?” feature.  

Fisher highlights, “NBx (or next best) is fast becoming a standard approach for improving biopharma field force productivity,” reflecting on the transformative potential of AI and machine learning algorithms to improve the quality of customer insights, the relevance of sales force targeting and the impact of omni-channel customer interactions.

Fisher shares several best practices for successfully deploying NBx solutions, including:

Organize and Plan

  • Vision: Define clear rationale of NBX value to drive brand objectives. Clarify NBX is the “Intelligence Engine” that provides a continuous, dynamic approach to customer engagement.
  • Governance: Define roles across functions to support decision making and collaboration. Assign sponsors and core team responsible for delivering the NBX program.
  • Program management: Use agile, “sprint” focused, management for quick builds, learning, and experiments from proof of concept to soft launch to builds. Drive alignment with cross-functional teams for clear scope of work, due date expectations, and regular communications for awareness and agreement to project deliverables.
  • Vendor selection: Select for expertise in data science with predictive and generative AI/ML to allow for  growth in complex use cases and data. Assess strategic guidance from real-world experiences with data sources, agile design approach, reuse of system connectors, KPIs, and experimentation process for new and refined use cases.
  • Field engagement: Drive early and consistent field engagement for buy-in and continued learnings for ongoing NBX value. Use peer-based communications, training, and case studies to build trust in “real-world” field usage.

Design and Build

  • Use case planning: Start with “User Story’ real-world design as input to use case requirements. Triangulate multiple, real-time data signals to increase the value of customer intelligence.
  • Data and systems architecture: Define an architecture that is flexible with modular, configurable and adaptable features. Prioritize reuse of data connectors for similar data objects to minimize implementation complexities.
  • Omnichannel integration: Optimize pre-Launch learning from HCP activity (i.e., channel preference, content affinity and knowledge level) to leverage during launch phase to personalize engagements. Design an activity scoring system across “data signals” to assess HCP targets and digital utilization value to reduce “noise” to field.
  • Field interface: Reduce admin and simplify NBX response for field users. Plan for efficient view and access for NBX across Territory, Customer, and First-Line-Manager dashboards.

Measure and Optimize

  • Success metrics: Differentiate between response KPIs and quality KPIs. Take an “ROI” approach to each Use Case to verify the value based on outcome intended.
  • Operating model: Design an operating model to establish processes to evolve and refine use cases. Educate internal stakeholders and field end-users on the update process and schedule for expectation setting and refinement validation.

Fisher’s commentary sheds light on the urgency for the industry to transition from experimentation with AI to its full-scale deployment, aiming to leverage its capabilities for more personalized and efficient healthcare solutions.

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Agenda 2024

Practical Applications for ChatGPT and Other Large Language Models in Biopharma

Mark Violi | 02.22.24

Originally published in PharmaLive.com 2/16/24

ChatGPT is the fastest-growing application in history, exceeding 100 million users within two months of its launch on November 30, 2022. Within a year, the application has catapulted artificial intelligence into the mainstream, thrilling and terrifying pundits and the public with its potential. Whether it becomes a bigger boon than the Gutenberg press, as Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella predicts, or results in a dystopian future as Geoffrey Hinton, the “Godfather of AI,” believes, one thing is clear: the “AI Revolution” isn’t just hype.

Whether passing the bar, destroying companies, or spewing “hallucinations,” the awesome power of generative AI, spearheaded by ChatGPT and its rapidly spawning competitors, reverberates throughout society, across industries. Biopharma is no exception. Accustomed to disruption, despite the many limitations and risks imposed by tight regulations, biopharma is eager to benefit from these new capabilities.

Numerous articles have focused on potential applications throughout the drug development and commercialization life cycle, but few have elucidated tangible short- and long-term applications demonstrating its feasible and effective implementation. So we set out to explore specific use cases with industry experts (including Stem consultants and clients) to enable biopharma companies to integrate generative AI across five core functions: clinical operations, medical affairs, sales, marketing, and patient support. 

Clinical operations: “Take existing systems to the next level”

clinical operationsThe pre-launch phase of the drug development process is arguably the most data- and stakeholder-intensive, lending itself to the benefits of AI. From protocol designs to site selection and management, patient recruitment and retention to drug supply management and adverse event reporting, data collection and analysis to risk management, the sheer volume of data and touchpoints can be overwhelming. Given the magnitude, it should come as no surprise that chatbots have already been used in this context for years.

“AI and chatbots have been integrated within clinical operations for at least the last 10 years,” explains Shwen Gwee, a digital health leader and consultant who has been a senior advisor to major companies and a member of the MIT Hacking Medicine team. “My work with Memorial Health was an example, utilizing technology that analyzed patient history and treatment journey data to predict at which point in their clinical trial participants might experience challenges. The chatbot also proactively engaged participants based on that data to boost study adherence.”

Gwee describes protocol design as another area of clinical operations where legacy AI is now ripe for ChatGPT. “Study designs are written by humans, who either base it on a template or personal experience. That misses opportunities to optimize designs by factoring in everything from patient types to site requirements and past study results. Choosing optimal inclusion and exclusion criteria based on leveraging and analyzing the data from complex disease areas and patient populations will soon be possible with this advanced AI.”

Until recently, specialized chatbots relied on decision trees that responded to specific queries with pre-approved content. They were adept at churning predefined output, making recommendations, and even being predictive. “ChatGPT from OpenAI and their GPT-3 and -4 powered cousins can deliver the power of truly ‘Generative’ AI to biopharma,” says Gwee. “Next-gen chatbots are vastly more complex and natural in their language responses, raising a new set of concerns.”

Regulatory and legal teams demand accuracy and compliance, ensured by reviewing all content in advance. Since the generative power of ChatGPT and its brethren lies in the ability to create customized responses to diverse queries, what assurances can companies have that a bot’s output will never be violative, or become subject to any of those publicized “hallucinations”? “My guidance has been to feed only pre-approved content into any system,” assures Gwee. “They must pull from a restrictive, proprietary, and closed data set.”

Medical affairs: “Listen before you chatbot”

medical affiarsJennifer Riggins, medical affairs thought leader and expert in medical communications and digital solutions, agrees. “Healthcare professionals don’t have a lot of trust when they don’t know where your clinical answers come from. I’ve seen criticisms around authorship, the belief that robots can’t be an author of scientific papers, or even clinical trial results. So, in addition to only pulling from a closed data set, make sure sources are cited, every claim and detail thoroughly and precisely referenced. Trust is largely based on transparency.”

Like clinical operations, medical affairs is complex and multifaceted, with numerous touchpoints where generative AI could add tremendous value. “An immediate beneficiary would be HCP medical information queries and searches.” For most companies the process is time consuming; with a ChatGPT plug-in, HCPs across multiple specialties can receive instantaneous and personalized support.

Riggins cites examples of this kind of controlled and compliant interaction in the travel and finance industries. “An open-ended interaction that can provide dynamic, efficient, and effective responses to a diverse array of queries would be amazing in med affairs. HCPs might have questions about dosing, patient support resources, sales rep visits, drug supplies, what have you. With everything monitored and recorded, appropriate responses made, risks such as adverse event reporting and other issues could also be better managed and mitigated.”

Unsolicited questions about off-label information are another potential challenge and implicit opportunity. The line between drug promotion and professional education is well-delineated, while an important role of the medical affairs team is to provide HCPs with all the data they need to succeed. “Teaching a bot how to differentiate between solicitation and awareness is subtle, but with the new technology entirely feasible. Welcome to the brave new world of med affairs!”

Making medical affairs liaisons more efficient is another benefit that Higgins cites. “Scheduling calls, keeping track of updates, and finding the right information are all challenging. The advanced search and engagement capabilities that could work so well for HCPs apply doubly so for our internal specialists. Speaking of which, content authoring tools would also be eagerly embraced, saving time in terms of standardization, repurposing, distribution, and authentication. Big companies might someday pool their archives for a truly scalable solution.”

Sales and marketing: “Personal non-personal promotion”

sales & marketingToon De Baere, senior director digital customer engagement Europe/Canada at AstraZeneca, has a similar vision. “Imagine all pharmaceutical companies providing important clinical information for their products, housed in a centralized, company-agnostic database. Physicians, liaisons, even patients could connect using an interface that independently answers their questions, provides resources, and helps manage these customer engagement relationships. The data would be open-ended, but all pre-approved and compliant.”

In terms of content creation, De Baere is even more focused. Sales and marketing materials are often created in a laborious, time-intensive manner. The review cycles are long, and aside from some market research, the content is rarely analyzed for its effectiveness, or personalized for audience segments. “We’ve struggled to handle increasing complexity with our existing teams. Internal use of AI can heighten efficiencies to get even more done with everyone we have, and external use of AI can boost engagement and personalize each interaction.”

“We’re experiencing a total paradigm shift,” adds Glenn Butcher, another senior industry digital leader. “Before we know it, AI will be ubiquitous throughout our organizations. From content creation to regulatory approval, tactical development to media engagement, we’ll be able to see things and do things we never imagined. Yet, I don’t think that the next six months will be that different from today. Many still assume magic is happening in that black box. So, experts will need to educate all our people on how to think about these things in a more mature and meaningful way.”

Despite the knowledge and skepticism gap, Da Baere and Butcher see immediate opportunities in sales rep management and logistics. Akin to the enhanced operational capabilities suggested by Gwee and Higgins, rep tools such as reminders, schedulers, and even Veeva-integrated ChatGPT functionality could tremendously simplify tasks and provide reps with more impactful collateral. On the receiving end, HCPs could engage with next generation eDetails and practice management tools, which can provide additional dimensions of compelling detail to the data. 

“In the old days, we literally spent years and the limited resources of huge teams trying to script every single answer to a chatbot script,” Da Baere says. “This new generation that’s powered by GPT scripts itself, in a way, and all we need to worry about is the data itself. And unlike a Google search, the bot interaction is like you are really having a conversation. Soon we will wonder why we’re building brand sites and doing ‘non-personal’ promotional campaigns.”

Patient support: “The chatbot will see you now”

patient supportThe potential for improved patient and caregiver engagement seems even more exciting. “In essence, you will not need a patient support program anymore, because your ChatGPT solution would be your patient support program,” Da Baere explains. “All the support resources could be available through the bot, making a website far less engaging, and essentially redundant.” Da Baere also speculates that actual conversations could populate the bot, thereby helping to formulate answers to difficult care questions that are expressed consistently, naturally, and empathetically.

As the power of generative AI expands into patient support and direct-to-
consumer marketing, sensitivity to regulatory and privacy consideration will be vital. Like the evolution of social media engagement and marketing for pharma, integration and adoption must be methodical and iterative. As consumers gradually increase their own utilization of ChatGPT-integrated devices, digital services, and brand experiences, biopharma companies will have an opportunity to meet them in the middle, and by then hopefully be ready in a manner that remains risk-averse and compliant.

“Based on my experience integrating earlier versions of these bots,, my guidance is to start with medical affairs,” Gwee says. “Their data is thoroughly vetted, their audience is professional, and their channels of communication are closed. With limited exposure and approved content, you can then experiment with specific touchpoints, get the legal and regulatory folks accustomed to this new way of communicating, and build the plane as you fly it. Don’t hesitate to bring in outside help, just like the early days of digital and social.”

“This won’t happen overnight,” Butcher insists. “Transformation is inevitable, but it needs to be ushered in with leadership and education.” Da Baere adds, “Disruptive change can only happen from the top, down. I’ve never seen anything effective happen from only grassroots interest or support. Senior leadership must first understand and embrace the possibilities, and then mandate a careful, focused approach to figure out what might work. Outside experts and consultants will have to be brought in at first, so that we can learn and take things from there.”

The good news is that within only the past year, ChatGPT-based startups have mushroomed, integrated across every milestone of development and commercialization. From bots that make EHR information and HCP-patient interactions more conversational, to medical records management and managed care processing more efficient, to introducing the tech as a point-of-care diagnostic and treatment tool, and all the way to the pharmacy, generative AI is entering the treatment journey from every angle. A bit late to the plate as usual, biopharma is stepping up. 

Implementation: “One step at a time…”

With the FDA having issued its perspective on drug research and development, the floodgates are already open for ChatGPT into every biopharma function. The ability of AI to integrate, analyze, and simplify voluminous, complex clinical data is unparalleled, but how does one simplify the value proposition, and initiate an implementation within your own organization?

  • Step 1: Educate senior leadership
    The technology is nascent, and its applications are beta tests at best. Bring in experts to describe the generative AI landscape and demonstrate best-in-class examples of ChatGPT in action at various touchpoints and for various audiences.
  • Step 2: Choose a pilot program
    Work with internal and external stakeholders to identify a potential “quick win” implementing a ChatGPT experience. Gwee recommends starting with medical affairs, but the decision is up to you and your organization’s sweet spots.
  • Step 3: Crawl, walk, chat
    Get buy-in from leadership, specialty teams, and regulatory from the beginning. Determine realistic success factors, and test, test, test before exposing the new technology to any external audiences, especially patients and caregivers.
  • Step 4: Measure, analyze, iterate
    Work in agile sprints, and stay flexible.  Your goal is to create your own internal generative AI/ChatGPT expertise that can then be repurposed and scaled throughout your organization, evolving as you go.  medadnews

 

Authors

Gregg Fisher, Managing Partner, The Stemgfisher@thestem.com

Mike Spitz, Lead Strategy Consultant, The Stem

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Driving Sustainable Omnichannel Change

Mark Violi | 10.11.23

Originally published in Pharmaceutical Commerce 9/29/23

A look into ways to approach change management using three factors.

The change of pace in biopharma customer engagement continues to accelerate, with artificial intelligence (AI) being just the latest tool. As life sciences companies race to shift to omnichannel customer engagement, many may find that they need help.

We find that the hurdles organizations face vary based on their maturity. Less mature organizations struggle with basics of securing senior management support and crafting strategy, while more mature organizations struggle with knottier issues of execution.(1) A universal challenge is moving beyond pockets of innovation to enterprise-wide transformation.

Operationalizing omnichannel requires shifting mindsets and behaviors, pivoting ways of working, recalibrating performance, and finding funding. Taking a whole organization on this journey requires a purposeful change and transition management effort.(2)

In this article, we share insights from the trenches gleaned from clients and experts on how to approach change management along multiple dimensions. We distill three key success factors to move toward omnichannel reality:

  1. GIRFT(3) the strategy

  2. Ace the customer roadmap

  3. Make change a personal journey

 

GIRFT-ing the strategy

In an age of agile thinking, the approach of “get it right first time” (GIRFT) sounds old-school. But not when looking at defining a global strategy for customer experience. It often takes years get the strategy right before scaling to global operationalization.

Ipsen provides an instructive example. Aurelie Rognon, director of global customer experience notes: “We spent a year working with one brand globally and locally, with different markets, to define an omnichannel strategy: what it means, what needs to change, what we need to avoid. This enabled us to have a win with a big brand, to show how we can make it real and embed it in the global and local brand strategy.”

GRIFT-ing The Strategy  

Luca Frangoni, global head of content & omnichannel excellence at Boehringer Ingelheim (BI) offers another example. BI created an “omnichannel blueprint” which provided the direction for capability-building and change management. In BI’s definition, the blueprint incorporates:

  • KPIs and success measures

  • Aligned language, end to end process, integrated data flow and platforms

  • Change management concept

  • Governance rules to ensure integration across product and capability teams

  • Communication guidelines on omnichannel

The result was common process, platforms and language across customer experience, advanced analytics, and content management. According to Frangoni, the blueprint was critical to help the organization work in an aligned way and recognize that “omnichannel change is long-term.”

In global organizations, articulating a clear strategy is critical to transition people’s mindset and behavior, by demonstrating value. Co-creating with stakeholders is a best practice that builds a common understanding of customer focus and experience and to provide a solid foundation for operationalization.

For organizations who are working on their omnichannel strategy, be sure to:

  • Identify relevant roles in the organization to take ownership of the omnichannel strategy, e.g., global head of franchise, customer experience lead, omnichannel director

  • Co-create and show what effective omnichannel strategy means e.g., through testimonials from general managers (GMs) concept boards, events, training

  • Forecast impact and set expectations early with GMs, by including budgeting plans

 

Acing the roadmap

There is no one-size-fits-all recipe for getting to the future state. Some organizations benefit from small steps, while others leapfrog, monitoring and evaluating results along the way. In both cases, the need is to move the whole organization along without getting stuck.

Creating a capability roadmap is a best practice for bringing together different functions and aligning on changes to customer experience over time. It’s also a way to understand the process and technology changes that will occur over time to create the evolved experience.

Ace the roadmap

Daan Vens, the Innovation and Business Excellence Director BELUX at AstraZeneca, attributes a lot of his success to his roadmap. He created a “crawl, walk, run” roadmap that articulated how AZ would change local customer interactions, starting with basic interactions and evolving from there.(4) Importantly, he took an outside in approach that showed how the customer experience changes, he then linked process and technology changes to get there. This approach allowed his team to accomplish a lot in an organization known for its sales force effectiveness (SFE) culture.

“It’s all about the customer roadmap. It’s so simple and few organizations apply it. It may be less shiny at step one, but it’s much more effective in the long term.” says Vens.

To build an effective roadmap:

  • Focus first on how customer experience will change over time; then overlay process and technology requirements to get there

  • Run road-mapping sessions with medical affairs, market access, legal, privacy, regulatory MMLR functions and commercial together

  • Stay focused to achieve a level of mastery in one phase before moving onto the next

  • Assign accountability for building the roadmap, e.g., business excellence director, head of business operations, commercial & digital director

  • Appoint an accountable role for change management e.g., change officer, change management director, omnichannel operations lead, VP omnichannel

 

Making change a personal journey

Lasting transitions are achieved by taking people on a journey—extracting the personal drivers from the strategy story. Simply put, define what change means for each person so that benefits are tangible. According to Susana Bento, global omnichannel operations lead at Grünenthal, we “naturally start seeing wins on the journey and we celebrate. As we glimpse adoption, we make all the noise we can.”

Omnichannel change is deeply experienced by sales teams—first line sales managers (FLSMs) are critical to manage the transition journey by bridging the gap between headquarters and sales representatives. “We need to get first line sales managers on board early because they answer rep concerns, e.g., What does it mean for me? What am I expected to do differently?” according to Vens.

Make change a personal journey

 

“The marketing teams, as content creators, are also challenged,” according to Susana Bento. She says, “As the omnichannel operation evolves, demand for rapid creation of diverse and personalized content delivered grows. In most organizations, marketing teams struggle to cope with this demand. A classic example is the modular content operation, which puts pressure on marketing and medical teams, and MLR functions. Here, change management is key to ensure adoption of new processes.”

While organizations have made quick progress implementing capabilities, bringing people along moves slower. This frequently becomes the greatest challenge, because not everyone understands what omnichannel is. According to Aurelie Rognon, this means repetition is important. “Repeat again and again, through all communications: what we’re going to do, how it’s going to help, what’s in it for us.” Aurelie says.

As you think about the people side of change management:

  • Partner with impacted functions to build the personalized omnichannel capability framework and learning plan, e.g., for marketing, sales, medical, HR—through omnichannel centers of excellence, customer experience trainings, cmnichannel capability forums.

  • With HR and L&D, build an omnichannel competency framework, update impacted roles across the organization and execute learning journeys.

  • Run VoC (Voice of Colleagues) polls, implement improvements and celebrate success.

Most of the ingredients to accelerate from omnichannel strategy to reality are now available, even considering variations among brands and countries. Those who have started to shift mindsets, behaviors, attitudes, and ways of working have already seen the impact.

 

Authors

Gregg Fisher, Managing Partner, The Stem – gfisher@thestem.com, The Stem

Anca Davies-Rusu is a member of The Stem network and a thought leader in omnichannel customer strategy and an agile change practitioner.

 

References

  1. According to Nov 2022 McKinsey survey of 100 Life sciences digital and analytic the organizational hurdles for use of digital and analytics have shifted since 2020 from strategy formulation and executive sponsorship to issues of execution and change management.

  2. “Change” happens to people, even if they don’t agree with it. “Transition”, on the other hand, is internal: it’s what happens in people’s minds as they go through change. Change can happen quickly, while transition usually occurs more slowly.

  3. Getting It Right First Time (GIRFT) is a tried and test concept e.g., in the UK, NHS England designed a GIRFT national program to improve the treatment and care of patients through in-depth review of services, benchmarking, and presenting a data-driven evidence base to support change. https://gettingitrightfirsttime.co.uk/

  4. Daan’s approach was inspired by Ranjay Gulati. https://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/the-outside-in-approach-to-customer-service

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Driving Sustainable Omnichannel Change

The Stem Celebrates 10 Years

icoder | 06.09.23

Ten years ago, The Stem was born as a new breed of consultancy serving customer engagement innovators in biopharma and Health.

Our concept was simple: to enable our clients to partner with the world’s leading independent talent to help them navigate fast-moving changes in customer engagement.

Back then, we anticipated two parallel mega-trends: 

  1. The evolution of bio-pharmaceutical customer engagement, fueled by shifts in technology and patient/customer behavior.
  2. Changes in the nature of work leading to a growing independent talent force capable of working effectively in a distributed fashion.

We called ourselves a “networked consultancy” to capture the essence of a business model which would provide clients with high quality consulting services, delivered through teams of seasoned independent talent, drawn from a global network.

Our vision was to “Harness the collective wisdom of independent talent to improve health experiences”.

We wanted clients to work directly with world-class experts, and we wanted our independent consultants to be able to work on innovative projects that would change the nature of Health customer engagement.

This month, we celebrate our 10 year anniversary and I couldn’t be more proud of what we have accomplished.

After 10 years, we have:

  • Delivered over 500 projects.
  • Partnered with over 37 clients.
  • Engaged with over 250 consultants.
  • Worked in over 35 countries, across 6 continents.

 

The Stem Celebrates 10 Years

None of this would have been possible without our clients and network consultants.

I am truly grateful to our clients for believing in the strength of our model, the expertise of our talent, and trusting us to work on their most challenging customer engagement projects. 
 
And, I am humbled by our consultants. Your talent, dedication, innovation, versatility and camaraderie never cease to amaze me, and we owe our success to you.

Gregg Fisher
Founder & Managing Partner, The Stem

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

About the Stem

Founded by Gregg Fisher in 2013, The Stem is a global management consulting firm specializing in customer engagement strategy and operations in the health & life sciences sectors. The Stem’s unique “networked model” draws on a senior leadership team and the industry’s most seasoned independent talent, offering clients a nimble, cost-effective and refreshing alternative to traditional consultancies, without sacrificing control.

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The Stem Celebrates 10 Years

Harnessing the Value of AI In Customer Engagement

Mark Violi | 05.17.23

Gregg Fisher, The Stem’s Founder and Managing Partner, recently had the chance to interview both clients and practitioners on the state of Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning as it applies to customer engagement in BioPharma. Ganes Kesari, one of The Stem’s thought leaders on AI/ML, joined in the conversations.

We identified 4 promising use cases for AI/ML in customer engagement, and 4 critical success factors for execution, and captured these learnings in this article which was recently published in Pharmaceutical Executive. Special thanks to Tom Gaschler and  Eduardo Cornejo for contributing.

Read the article on PharmaExec

Harnessing the Value of AI In Customer Engagement - Use Cases Harnessing the Value of AI In Customer Engagement - Critical Success Factors

 

Authors:

Gregg Fisher, Managing Partner, gfisher@thestem.com, The Stem

Ganes Kesari, Chief Decision Scientist, Innovation Titan; Consultant, The Stem

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Harnessing the Value of AI In Pharmaceutical Customer Engagement

If you build it, will they come? Seven Steps To Driving Enrollment in Next-Generation Patient Support Programs

Mark Violi | 02.17.23

Originally published at Pharmaceutical Commerce

Leading brand and commercial organizations are making significant investments in building next generation patient support programs. These programs integrate modern digital, data and behavior science techniques to differentiate brands in a competitive environment, while improving adherence and supporting patient outcomes. But, too often, these programs struggle to realize their promise because of underwhelming enrollment.

Potential solutions to the enrollment challenge are influenced by many factors, including therapeutic area, lifecycle stage, competitive outlook, country-specific market constraints, and corporate culture. Whilst no silver bullet exists, our experience has inspired us to define 7 critical success factors for driving enrollment in next generation PSPs.

 

The 7 Critical Success Factors for Driving Enrollment in Next Generation PSPs

1. PSPs must deliver compelling value and address a real unmet need

HCPs only recommend PSPs if they see clear potential for it to make positive, tangible differences to the way they care for patients, and the way patients care for themselves. The same goes for patients. Unless PSPs help them improve the way they live with their condition, they are unlikely to enroll or stay engaged.  Too often, assumptions are made about unmet need and little regard is given to options currently available to address the issue.

PSP teams should consider two questions: ‘Is this a burning need that, without addressing, the patient will have limited success with therapy?’, and ‘Is there any existing support that our PSP would be competing against?’ Recognize that your competition includes drug companies as well as other content and service providers.

In-depth research will help you to understand the scope and shape of the problem faced by individuals, be they the patient, carer, nurse provider or consulting physician. It makes no sense to create a PSP for a problem or inconvenience that does not exist, or one for which a solution is readily available.

Action: Run co-planning sessions with patients and providers and perform competitive analysis.

2. Integrate PSP messaging into brand strategy, value messaging and communications

Pharma teams put significant effort and spend into brand strategy, value message development, marketing, and communications focused on the product launch, but similar attention is not paid to PSP messaging. If PSPs aren’t prominently factored in as part of strategic launch planning, companies are missing a golden opportunity. PSPs should be an integral part of the messaging architecture and align with value messages.

PSPs should be prominent in the creative assets and communications materials at launch or shortly thereafter to help HCPs and patients appreciate the benefits of a new therapy and the accompanying support being offered.

Action: Create a comprehensive enrollment strategy prior to launch

3. Target the right audiences with a combination of face-to-face and non-personal

Understand who, besides the physician, has responsibility for supporting patients. Promotion of any PSP should factor in communication with the wider clinical team, including nurses, nurse educators and pharmacists. 

Sales reps often don’t have the time to integrate PSP messaging into a sales call. So,  consider having small teams of virtual reps whose sole focus is reaching out to the wider clinic to talk about patient support. Focusing on the staff that directly engage with patients is important and can be done affordably. Depending on the number of clinics and the therapy area, one person per market can be sufficient, and will make a big difference to patient enrollment. 

While face-to-face engagement is the anchor of successful enrollment, don’t assume conversations alone will draw in and maintain patients on your PSP. Ensure influential members of care teams have the right materials and opportunities to actively engage the patient with your PSP. To raise and maintain awareness of PSPs, consider a mix of peer-to-peer educational events, KOL speakers, testimonials, webinars, and rep-generated emails. Finally, don’t assume a digital-only approach will work, as digital channels struggle to drive enrollment unless they form a part of a more integrated channel mix.

Action: Create a targeting and omni-channel enrollment plan for each PSP.

4. Simple enrollment at the point of care (PoC) creates sticky engagement

Enrolling patients at the PoC makes practical sense. This is a time when clinical teams can give influential endorsement and spend time answering any questions. Make sure all areas of the PSP are well covered, but not too onerously described, since patients forget much of what is discussed in a clinic. Providing scripted guidance, information leaflets, brochures and support materials that allow care teams to readily share the benefits of the PSPs helps secure initial patient enrollment and longer-term engagement. Reinforcing the ‘what’s in it for me?’ in follow-up materials and ongoing care team discussions keeps patients engaged.

To make the process of onboarding seamless and effective, consider innovative approaches to transactional confirmation with sign-up at clinics. Alternatively, QR codes on support materials or sample products allow people to connect directly to information on their phone and quickly fill in any required forms.  Having patients complete tasks at home, supported by reminders from the clinic and online guidance reassures the patient and extends the engagement beyond the clinic. Making the process as simple as booking a table at a restaurant or buying goods online can be the difference between patients signing up or not.

Action: Map the enrollment flows and patient experience.

5. Co-create and partner with patient influencers and advocacy groups

Many patients look to national and international patient advocacy groups for information and guidance on managing their disease/condition. These groups have access to very specific, and sometimes niche populations. They understand the lived experiences of these populations.  Genuine and compelling value can be revealed through direct engagement with patient organizations, either as part of the development of a PSP or through the co-creation of one. Shared ownership of PSPs can solve enrollment issues, as the endorsements of patient advocacy groups creates awareness and credibility with patient groups. If you are looking to run a PSP in a particularly rare or difficult-to-reach population, consider running webinars and/or providing simple brochures or tools to the relevant patient organizations. Similarly, patient online influencers can play an important role in creating patient awareness of PSPs.

Action: Research patient advocacy and influencer partnerships.

6. Monitoring helps drive the evolution of PSPs

To demonstrate that your PSP is delivering value, whether to support resource investment or to showcase your PSP to external customers, you will need to build in processes that allow you to assess and measure the success of the program rigorously and continuously. Such monitoring helps to support decisions concerning the PSP by providing insight into how many people were made aware of the program, how many were trained on it, how many received materials, what proportion of patients were offered the program and consequently signed-up. It also lets you see the percentage of patients that may have fallen out and then explore ways to recapture the attention of these audiences.

In some instances, especially if you have little experience of running PSPs, it might help to run a pilot program to identify unforeseen blockers, determine enrollment drivers, understand how scaling works, and clarify operational efficiencies.

Action: Develop a measurement plan for each PSP.

7. Curiosity, innovation and cross-functional collaboration in the internal culture creates favorable conditions for successful PSPs

Next-generation PSPs can be unfamiliar territory for many organizations, which may result in watered down programs. Innovative PSPs are best realized when teams are aligned with cross-functionally, and with a genuine curiosity to analyze the data and solve problems together. Cross-collaboration takes many forms, depending on the company, but there are a few areas we believe help deliver impactful PSPs, and these revolve around having clear research/customer engagement guidelines that generate favorable co-creation of PSPs with customers. First, ensure that there is a global infrastructure that promotes transparency and efficient knowledge-sharing between PSP teams and affiliates. Second, modernize guidelines and policies for risk assessment that acknowledge the vital role of PSPs. And lastly, explore building a natural ecosystem where PSPs are embedded into a platform-based approach. An initial unbranded offering allows outreach to the public followed by in-platform deployment of content that leads to patient conversations with doctors.

Action: Define internal barriers and plans to mitigate.

 

Frequently, PSPs are seen as a marketing tactic rather than as “products” requiring careful planning, promotion, and maintenance. When brand teams and commercial organizations have a limited view of PSPs, it often shows up in the limited enrollment and usage the program generates. The seven critical success factors articulated in this article can help you avoid this fate and deliver a program that brings real, differentiated value to patients and providers, which can be seen in enrollment.

It can be difficult to skillfully incorporate these critical success factors as they frequently require significant change in mindset and business practices.  Seeking the help of those with extensive experience with PSPs can help you along your journey.

 

Author

Gregg Fisher, Managing Partner, The Stem – gfisher@thestem.com, The Stem

Gregg Fisher is Managing Partner of The Stem, a global management consulting firm specializing in customer engagement and digital transformation in Life Sciences. The Stem’s unique networked consulting model draws on the industry’s most seasoned independent talent offering clients a nimble, cost-effective, and refreshing alternative to traditional consultancies. The Stem provides specialized expertise in customer engagement insight, strategy and analytics, digital transformation and excellence, program management, and impact measurement.

 

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