Improving the patient experience (and boosting revenues)
I read with great interest a recent article from Forbes ( The Profit Pill ) on Gilead Sciences AIDS drug Viread.
Its a story that many of you probably already know about how Gilead married Viread with Triangle Pharmaceuticals Emtriva to create Truvada, a once-a-day combination drug, and then entered a licensing deal for Sustiva with Bristol-Myers and Merck to create the three-drug AIDS cocktail, Atripla.
The part of the story thats incredibly interesting to me is how Gilead has created such impressive revenues ($2.1 billion annually for Truvada and $1.5 billion of which Gilead keeps more than 60% for Atripla) by focusing on the patient experience. The driving force behind Truvada and Atripla was to make HIV drugs more convenient for patients to take and to eliminate some of the side effects associated with older treatments like AZT and D4T.
It took real vision. In the Forbes article, Matthew Herper writes: When Gilead Sciences started testing the AIDS drug Viread 12 years ago, it didnt look like a potential blockbuster. The drug wasnt a medical breakthrough, and Gilead would be taking on the worlds most powerful drug companies in a crowded market.
Sounds like another expensive, me too bad judgment call, doesnt it? But Gilead recognized what many have still yet to come to grips with: succeeding in todays challenging pharma marketplace relies heavily on healthcare outcomes and improving the patient experience (see Boosting adherence, patient outcomes and market access ). What Gilead did was to reduce a complicated regimen of a dozen or more pills each day to just one. As the companys chief executive, John Martin, told Forbes: Whats still unappreciated is that you want to simplify therapy so people take all the pills.
Just think for a second about the impact Gileads combo medications have to have on patient adherence and, subsequently, healthcare outcomes. We preach it but do we really live it yet?
Robert Van der Zwart, a visiting assistant professor at Utrecht University, the director of business development at Quadia and a participant in eyeforpharmas recent Patient-centric Strategies for European Pharma webinar (produced in conjunction with Innovex), calls it gaining share of heart a term Im enthralled with. Finding ways of putting the patient first making their experience a positive, pleasant and successful one not only fulfills pharmas mission of improving health and relieving suffering, but as Gilead is proving, it builds loyalty (to individual companies who deliver on the patient promise and to the industry as a whole) and the bottom line, too.
As Herper so aptly points out in his article for Forbes, however, now the challenge is to build on that success in an industry where few companies manage second acts.
It is a challenge for all of pharma not just Gilead. We must commit ourselves to living the mission of constantly improving the patient experience. We must make it the sum and substance of our business. We must earn share of heart with our patients. It is the only sure way to ensure sustainable success.
Lisa Roner, editor, eyeforpharma