Pharmaceutical companies are increasingly recognizing the importance of empowering patients to take charge of their health. However, there is still room for improvement in supporting patients. This underscores the need for greater efforts to meet patient needs and enhance engagement, says GlobalData, a leading data and analytics company.

GlobalData’s latest survey-based* Thematic Intelligence report, “Patient Empowerment,” reveals that most patients were unsure if pharma companies were doing enough to empower patients. However, patients with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), diabetes and cancer seemed to feel the most support from pharma companies. On the other hand, patients with heart disease the least.

Jilakara Shiva Narayana, Associate Project Manager, Pharma at GlobalData, comments: “As technology evolves, pharmaceutical companies have more ways to connect with customers. Patients are now more involved in their treatment decisions, so the companies need to focus more on what patients need. This means figuring out what clinical needs are not being met, changing how they do research, making information easier to find, and creating treatments tailored to each patient.”

GlobalData Patient empowerment survey 2023* data showed that only a small proportion of surveyed patients were engaging with pharmaceutical companies via activities such as patient support programs for a specific drug, clinical trial enrollment, early-stage drug development, disease education, adherence, or tracking programs.

Narayana concludes: “Regardless of low engagement, surveyed patients with IBD and cancer were engaged with pharma companies more via enrolment in clinical trials and disease tracking or adherence programs and tools as compared to patients with other chronic conditions. On the other hand, patients with heart diseases were the least engaged. This may be linked to a finding that IBD and cancer patients felt better supported by pharma industry.

“While diabetes patients showed lower levels of engagement with pharma, the industry developed a lot of treatment options and has a strong pipeline for diabetes treatment. Compared to the other conditions, surveyed patients with diabetes and cancer were the most confident in managing their condition and were aware about available treatment options.”Top of Form

*GlobalData’s Patient empowerment survey 2023, sample size of 574 respondents.