The 3 reasons why the pharma conducts patient studies - #BHHMembersInitiatives

BHH member Wefight has built communities of thousands of patients in more than 18 pathologies thanks to digital patient monitoring tools implemented in more than 15 countries.

These Engaged Patient Networks (EPN) give them a competitive advantage when it comes to conducting patient studies for their partners, the pharmaceutical companies. But what are the reasons why their partners want to conduct patient studies? What value and use do their partners give to these studies?

They summarised them here: First, to understand the patient decision drivers: why is the treatment not reaching the patient? or why does the patient drop out ?, what are the most difficult adverse effects to manage? They will be able to answer these questions through these studies. An example of this is their study amongst asthma patients, where they found that 40% of patients with severe asthma were not being treated by a pulmonologist, which is key to initiating biologic therapies. In 2023 Wefight will start the year conducting ADmire study, which they are launching in France amongst atopic dermatitis patients to understand the patient pathway, symptom management and their treatment preferences.

In the second place, to value the patient experience with our treatment: in these studies, they will ask patients about the differentiating or innovative attributes of my therapy.

With these insights, the pharma company will communicate the impact of these benefits on the patient to the medical community. Their Psoriasis & Wellbeing study with Almirall is an example of this. In this study they wanted to understand the impact of psoriasis severity on the patient's quality of life and what attributes they valued most when choosing a treatment. This allowed them to identify the most important criteria of choice for patients with severe psoriasis, being firstly efficacy (64%), and secondly safety and tolerability (24%). They published the Poster of this study at this year's EADV 2022 international dermatology congress in Milan.

And third and finally, to identify patient’s unmet needs: From the information gathered in these studies, the pharmaceutical company is going to re-define its Patient Support Program (PSP) and make better decisions when choosing a "beyondthe-pill" project for these patients. At Wefight they have a dedicated Studies team, leaded by Anthony Barea (ex-Ipsos).

They offer quantitative and qualitative methodologies and an expert team to advise you on the best one for your study aim.They can also propose you plenty of ideas to leverage your study insights: they can write the abstract of the study, produce a poster and any other communication element to generate the maximum impact of your study. Read more about this company HERE.