POV: patient centricity in pharma
By: Rinol Alaj
Tags: Resources

Patient centricity is the latest buzzword in the pharma industry, but it is not a new concept per se. Patient centricity, along with the tech and retail industries’ sister lexicons i.e. user-centricity and customer centricity, stem from the ideas introduced in the 1960’s in Scandinavia under the umbrella of cooperative design, today better known as participatory design or co-design. The co-design practice was born out of a movement among workers who advocated to influence the use of computer applications in their workspace. Later, these ideas inspired American scholars, among them Donald Norman of the research laboratory at the University of California, David Kelly and Tim Brown of IDEO, who pioneered design thinking, a human-centered approach to innovation, which led to some of the most pronounced inventions of our time, such as the Apple computer mouse, Palm V, PillPack and many more.

There are many variations of design thinking models used today, the original model is based on Hasso-Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford and consists of five phases:

Reaching out to the community instead of making decisions on their behalf is the central idea of design thinking. It leads to empathic design grounded in understanding the psychological and emotional needs of people — the way they do things, why they do things and how they think and feel about their world. It involves people in solution building to ensure that the outcomes meet users where they are.

Patient Centricity

To illustrate how co-design can be applied to promote patient centricity, I will reference the Nemours Hospital case study where IDEO worked on re-thinking a children’s hospital experience. Through the practice of design thinking, IDEO was able to identify critical pain points by observing and discussing the experiences of patients, their families, as well as the hospital staff. Additionally, designers at IDEO looked for inspiration in kid-friendly analogous like toy stores, museums, zoos, etc.. The new design was a state of the art children’s hospital. The hospital was more welcoming, guiding, and supportive for all varied levels of patients and families. The patient zone featured a state of the art bed design, fun distractions such as an interactive floor and ceiling enabling patients to change the color of the room, as well as a personalized GetWell Network TV for children to play games and get educational content from their doctors. For the caretakers, designers introduced patient information screens installed on the front door of each room so that doctors and nurses could access patient information prior to entering the room to facilitate informed conversations and build trust. The range of improvements made the patient experience into adventure rather than an obligatory visit.

Trial Design

In the pharma industry patient centricity is particularly critical in trial design. Since safety and effectiveness of the treatment is typically the primary focus, often trials are designed from the perspective of feasibility and execution and without considering patients’ abilities, lifestyle or emotions. Some common examples of patient neglect in trial design include frequency and/or length of trial visits, unnecessary tests, long travel distances to the site and complex technologies that are difficult to use. If our goal is patient centricity, we have to reach out to patients, caregivers, and the healthcare community to understand and empathize with their trial-related experience, then integrate solutions to better support them throughout the trial period.

UX Design

The newest (and least explored) area of patient centricity is UX Design, which zeros in on patients’ interactions with trial-based technology. There is an opportunity to promote a more patient-centric trial experience by identifying patients’ pain points with using trial apps and optimizing these apps to fit the lifestyles and mental models of specific patient groups. Such optimization can be done by conducting one-one interviews, cognitive walkthroughs and task success studies directly with trial participants to understand their experiences in the context of clinical trials.

Conclusion

In conclusion, patient centricity is not a new concept, it has been explored for years in other industries. If we are committing to patient centricity, we can look to the design industry and adopt their tried-and-tested approaches for building with a human-centered lens. Focusing on our patients will enable us to think holistically and to avoid fragmentation of the trial ecosystem. This means investing in relationships with our patients and their extended networks, as well as addressing long-standing challenges with trial awareness, recruitment components, sign up process, in-trial experience and so on. Until then, we cannot claim that we are patient centric. For now, as an industry, we are sponsor-centric!

References:

Tim Brown, Change by Design: How Design Thinking Transforms Organizations and Inspires Innovation Introduction, 2009