Pharma brands don’t matter
nearly as much to consumers as results when it comes to new drugs, according to
a new report. Accenture Life Sciences found that 69% of patients said
product benefits were more important than brand. Only 25% ranked brand loyalty
or popularity as a top factor in their healthcare and product and treatment
decisions.
So instead of spending
millions on brand advertising—or maybe along with it—pharma companies should be
thinking about promoting evidence-based solutions that will appeal to these
patients, Jim Cleffi, managing director at Accenture Life Sciences, said.
The recent inaugural survey of
8,000 patients in the U.S., U.K., France and Germany, which focused on product
launches in the pharma industry, also found that only 38% of patients felt they
had a lot of knowledge about products coming to market to treat their
condition, while 25% had limited or no knowledge.
“I think we’re underserving
the notion that the patient’s role in the treatment decision is starting to
become much more prevalent, especially as the cost burden becomes more and
more,” Cleffi said. “Saying you’re patient centric is fine, but you’re still
doing it in the context of the value that a pharma company gets
predominantly through the provider and payer. The voice of the patient hasn’t
been as dominant as it is and will be becoming.”
Treating patients as a
population works for general treatments today with diseases like diabetes.
However, as new personalized medicines to treat diseases such as cancer come to
market and take into account individual genetics and biomarkers, that will
force a change in what it means to be patient centric. Pharma will be required
to go from a “population view of patient centricity to almost a population of
one patient-centric view,” Cleffi said.
The opportunity for pharma is
in informing patients better and earlier in the process with new product
launches—starting before they are diagnosed, when they may be symptomatic or
have lifestyle or genetic risks—according to the paper.
