Caregivers - The Missing Link to Patient Centricity
Their numbers are staggering. Their situations diverse. And their influence surprising. They are caregivers, the estimated 43.5 million people who provide unpaid care to adults who are infirm, disabled or unwell. And this number may very well be higher.
On average, caregivers devote 41 hours each week to providing care—a commitment that’s equivalent to a full-time job. They’re rarely paid for their labors, but the value of what they do is enormous both in human and financial terms.
The financial value of their work, if they were paid as professionals, is prodigious. In 2013, it was valued at $470 billion annually which is nearly as much as the yearly sales from the world’s largest company, Wal-Mart. These caregiver statistics date from five years ago, and, of course, are bound to be significantly higher today.
Caregivers are an integral part of the care team and are involved in everything from medication choice to adherence strategy. Yet, they’ve often been an afterthought for life sciences companies, even as the industry focuses on patient centricity.
As an industry, we’ve been making our approach to research and development—and to marketing—all about patient centricity, which is another way of saying “inclusion.” But, here’s where we’ve been mistaken.
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