
In my first blog post in this series ‘Step one: Define your objectives and be able to measure and report on them’, we considered how to get clarity on the reasons why the organisation is investing in a PSP and on how you will measure success. Today we consider Step two.
Step two: Engage with stakeholders inside and outside of your organisation
Diseases don’t occur in a vacuum for those experiencing them, for those caring for patients, or for those trying to cure them. For any patient support programme to be successful, it needs to transcend the operational silos so prominent within the pharmaceutical industry – starting with internal stakeholders.
Internal stakeholders
Departments must work together, not just in sharing data, but in coordinating goals and objectives from the start. Begin by mapping out all the internal stakeholders who will have a role in designing, delivering and using the outputs of the patient support programme.A multi-disciplinary workshop will allow you to understand what success looks like to each stakeholder. Certainly each department will expect different outcomes from the programme and will be able to use the data in different ways:
- Market Access and HEOR teams will value real world data (e.g. disease outcomes, burden of disease and QoL) that can be used in peer-reviewed journals to support the value proposition and in negotiations with reimbursement authorities/formulary committees
- Brand teams want successful launches, penetration and increased market share
- Medical teams would like to see adherence and persistence data showing patients are staying on their medications as prescribed and clinical data showing the desired outcomes
- Pharmacovigilance needs to monitor the performance of products in a wider population and look for uncommon side effects
Internal teams will be bought into the programme when they can see the benefits for patients and “what’s in it for them”. You will then need to work with these different departments as you design the programme, building in the steps to reach the desired outcomes.
Click
here to read the full article, which goes on to consider how to engage with
external stakeholders and understand their needs.
Alternatively, contact Nagore.Fernandez@ashfieldhealthcare.com to find out how we can help you.