Excellence in Rare Diseases or Orphan Drugs

Summary of work

Ultra-rare diseases have a debilitating impact on patients' lives, from the time to diagnosis, to the battle they face in accessing treatment. Sanofi Genzyme wanted a new communications approach that was more suited to the challenges of rare disease, including: (1) low awareness among healthcare professionals (HCPs) and low recognition of its impact, (2) difficulty accessing treatment and (3) difficulty in differentiating between treatments and proving clinical benefit.
With the sales call being at the front of the communications approach, we set out to transform how sales reps communicate with HCPs and create an approach that is tailored to the unique requirements of rare disease.
Working with patient groups, we captured the patient experience using SWARM, our mobile app that allows patients to record video answers from the comfort of their own home. Patient stories were sympathetically re-enacted to create immersive video chapters across the areas of interest (diagnosis and treatment) that can be used in sales calls and beyond.
Since launch, the overwhelming majority of sales reps has found the videos helpful in understanding and communicating the unmet need around diagnosis and treatment, and their conversations have led to changes in HCP practices, including testing.

Judges' comments

Transforming the Rare Disease Sales Call set up clear measurable objectives, and the initiative did a good job at collecting information and insights. They achieved better conversations which in turn lead to better treatment for patients.