5 insights from the largest-ever patient centricity survey in industry

Time for some updates on our working group, ‘The Aurora Project’, In March 2016, our global patient-centricity survey was completed with an extraordinary 2346 responses, chiefly from pharma company leaders working in 84 countries. The data provide unique views on beliefs and actions to make patient centricity work in our industry. Here is a glimpse to the origin (with thanks to the people involved) and future of The Aurora Project, and how it can help us meet our missions to grow in patient-focused ways. A more comprehensive discussion around the survey results has also been published and can be downloaded here: http://goo.gl/YEX1ib

It has been several years since ‘patient centricity’ became an articulated objective for most in our industry. It is now understood that a major organizational and attitudinal shift, possibly even a new business model, is required, to make progress.

Some are convinced of this, and some are not. But, a world of ‘believers’ and ‘non-believers’ leads only to confused business planning – often within the same department. From discussions in late 2015, it became clear that if we were to go anywhere, we required two things:

1. A ‘wisdom of crowds’ approach to the definition of patient centricity in order to gain clarity of our objectives.

2. A global benchmark, to determine where we are now – so we can visualize progress on our upcoming journey. Ultimately, our aim was to help move patient centricity from intentions to actions and outcomes.

Thus a first draft of a survey was created by Jill Donahue of EngageRx and Paul Simms of eyeforpharma, with the help of an advisory panel of 23 who provided input via phone, email and group meetings. Later, the survey was refined with a group of 47 additional advisors. Both groups were comprised of patients and leaders from across the industry (mainly life science companies but also consultants) – participants are listed below. It was decided that the invited survey participants would be, as far as possible, a balanced cross-section of our industry from across the globe – reflecting an even spread of seniority, geography, role and company size. In March 2016, we were able to gather 2346 full responses from over 80,000 invitees.

We’ve dubbed it “The Aurora Project” because, just like an aurora or polar light, this survey will be a natural light that is trying to sufficiently disturb and excite the industry to produce beautiful outcomes of varying colors and complexity. What will be the impact of this illumination? Well that’s up to you.