What Pharma Is Learning From Retail: Is Omni-Channel Key To Patient Centricity?

By Anna Rose Welch, Editorial & Community Director, Advancing RNA

I recently interviewed Susan Romberg of Chiltern on the ways pharma can use the Internet of Things to its advantage in the quest for patient centricity. She identified social media and wearable devices as innovations that will shake up project planning and drug development in the future.

But her response that had nothing to do with technology, but rather location, took me back to my days of writing for retail. She identified clinics, urgent care facilities, and pharmacy chains as being integral to the future of patient centric clinical trials. She told me, “Soon, a snowbird from New England participating in a trial will be able visit one of these mini clinics for their trial visit while spending the winter in a warm southern state – it’s coming!”

Romberg’s insights got me thinking about how the retail industry branded itself as customer-centric by focusing on a little (or really, enormous) concept known as omni-channel — a term that is just as hot for retail execs as “patient-centric” is for pharma execs. To be omni-channel means to be available for a customer in whatever channel (online, mobile, store, catalog, etc.), and to make sure they have a “seamless” experience researching, purchasing, and receiving their goods.

You no longer have to get in a car and go to the mall to shop; you can simply use your phone, computer, or tablet to buy what you need, when, and wherever you need it. Some retail players have even made the necessary improvements to the supply chain to enable same-day delivery and to fill online orders with merchandise from a local store, rather than a national distribution center, meaning you can get your goods even more easily.

Overall, these investments serve to bolster the connection between the industry and consumers. Shoppers have certainly taken advantage: a CFI Group study shows 95 percent of consumers are omni-channel shoppers.

It’s no secret there are issues with enrollment in the clinical space. Increasing competition for patients in the industry and a lack of education/knowledge about the importance or presence of clinical trials certainly both play large roles in this. But a study in The American Journal of Occupational Therapy also identifies unfriendly study designs and suboptimal testing locations as key factors that can isolate patients from trial. What I found Romberg hitting on in our interview was that patient centricity will rely upon the industry providing patients with multiple channels to make sure they get the treatment they need, and in a way that is the most convenient to them.

I’ve interviewed several key opinion leaders in the clinical space who have touched on the potential Bluetooth technology and activity trackers hold for making gathering patient data a remote and simpler process. In fact, Sanofi was just in the news a few weeks ago for backing a fully remote diabetes trial in Europe. The technology being examined in the trial is designed to coach users to check their glucose levels, and it uploads users’ data directly to the cloud for investigators to access without the patients being on-site.

Time will tell if omni-channel becomes a universal, working initiative in the pharma industry. It’s not going to be easy, but implementing omni-channel initiatives in the pharma space could open up a whole new realm of branding possibilities for pharma.

Tune into the other pieces included in this series:

What Pharma Is Learning From Retail: Data, Engagement Go Hand-In-Hand

What Pharma Is Learning From Retail: It's All About The App

What Pharma Is Learning From The Retail Industry: Gamification