Consumer perceptions of pharma: Behind the numbers

 

Innoplexus CEO Gunjan Bhardwaj responded to questions from Med Ad News about his company’s study of consumer perceptions of the pharma industry.

Med Ad News: Why do you believe there’s such a significant difference in negative views of pharma based on age? Why would older people have a more negative view of the industry than younger?

Gunjan Bhardwaj: Prescription drug use increases with age, and it appears that those who use pharmaceutical products the most have the most negative opinion of the companies that produce them. Older people have had more time to develop their opinion of pharma companies, and they’ve developed this opinion over years of unexpected price increases, corruption scandals, and other negative experiences.

It would be easy to be discouraged by this trend, but we actually think that this should be viewed optimistically by pharma companies. It means that they have the opportunity to prove themselves to the rising generation, to get off on the right foot with their future biggest customers. It’s never been a better time for pharma companies to reinvent their reputation, with technologies like AI, big data, and blockchain offering new ways to reduce costs, increase transparency, and drive innovation. These are all things that consumers want to see and smart companies will seize the opportunity.

Med Ad News: In what ways can technologies like AI, big data, and blockchain decrease the prices of drugs for consumers?

Gunjan Bhardwaj: The high consumer price of drugs is largely the result of the many inefficiencies in drug discovery and clinical trials. AI, big data, and blockchain all have significant roles to play in resolving these inefficiencies. For example, researchers can leverage AI and big data to generate a higher volume of more accurate hypotheses, which leads to more innovation. Blockchain provides a way for researchers to transparently share even unpublished data on both successful and unsuccessful experiments without worrying about compromising the security of their IP. All three technologies can be useful for recruiting higher-quality clinical trial participants, decreasing the odds of expensive late-stage failures.

At the end of the day, if companies can increase the speed and success rate of drug discovery and trials, they can dramatically reduce their costs and can pass these savings onto consumers.

Med Ad News: What are some “creative” ways in which pharma companies might educate consumers about upcoming price increases? Or about the costs that go into developing drugs?

Gunjan Bhardwaj: A lot of it comes down to companies making transparency a top priority. Transparency is not a core value for most pharmaceutical companies today. They hold their data close, they eschew collaboration, and public distrust often puts them in a defensive posture. Fortunately, the advent of blockchain is making transparency more attractive and more attainable than it has been in the past.

In terms of consumer education, pharma industry associations such as VFA in Germany are already doing a fantastic job of increasing awareness even from the school level about what all goes into the research. I think such initiatives need to be broadened.

Pharmas contribute a lot to society by fighting deadly diseases. Generally speaking, a drug does not add any utility directly but only protects the consumer with respect to utility reduction, so it’s difficult to comprehend the prices with respect to value in rational terms. Consumers and society at large need to be made aware of all that goes into the complex, tedious, and lengthy drug development process. Companies should look at gamification aspects for younger populations, and at increasing patient awareness regarding various diseases. They should take care to translate ‘medical language’ into something that patients can understand easily, and should open up to patients in terms of real world trials.

Med Ad News: Tell us more about what you mean by “transparency.” What sort of information should pharma companies be releasing that they aren’t releasing now, and how should they go about doing so?

Gunjan Bhardwaj: There are two frontiers for transparency: transparency within the industry and transparency with the public. Within the industry, companies need to implement open data policies that allow different researchers and departments to collaborate and share information, particularly when it comes to lessons learned from unsuccessful experiments. A lot of duplicative work currently results from lack of transparency, which slows down innovation and adds to costs. As previously noted, blockchain can give researchers a secure means of sharing data more openly, which is why we’re in the process of integrating blockchain into our iPlexus platform.

On the public front, pharma companies need to get better at disclosing payments to physicians who lead or consult on clinical trials. Our study found this to be a priority for 65 percent of consumers. Whether or not anything unethical is happening, lack of disclosure here creates suspicion of conflict of interest. Pharma companies also need to overcome their fear of releasing negative results from clinical trials – a sentiment that more than half of our respondents shared. Failure is a part of innovation, and hiding negative results prevents progress that could potentially save lives.

Med Ad News: A cynic might say pharma leaders do not need to worry too much about the industry’s reputation with consumers, since it’s basically a captive audience situation – patients do not really have anywhere else to go for life-saving medicines. How would you make the case to a bottom-line oriented pharma executive to expend significant resources on reputational improvement?

Gunjan Bhardwaj: I think the case is already made. Pricing headrooms in many developed markets are getting narrower. There is increased competition by generics and biosimilars, which are striking earlier and diluting market shares. Regulations are also becoming stricter. Most of the R&D focuses on specific therapeutic areas, such as oncology, and the increasing specificity of disease means that trial participants must be recruited from smaller patient populations, so competition is increasing in an already tough market. Patient advocacy groups are getting more active in many disease areas, and real world evidence is becoming increasingly important. With all of these factors, strong reputational capital with patients can give companies a competitive edge.

A strong reputation lowers transaction costs not just with patients but also with regulators. We have seen that even post patent expiry and launch of generics in a market, certain segments of patients show higher stickiness to branded drugs despite their higher price. Pharma executives should already understand that focusing on the bottom line and building reputational capital are not mutually exclusive.

Med Ad News: How are you at Innoplexus contributing to better healthcare outcomes for patients?

Gunjan Bhardwaj: In two ways. First, we are democratizing data. By replacing a tedious manual annotation process with AI, we provide context-aware insights to a broader set of stakeholders, be it a smaller biotech, modest hospital, or even a patient. All have the right to know what the disease landscape looks like – i.e., where the studies are taking place, who the top opinion leaders are, or what alternative therapies in a disease are available.

Second, with the release of our proprietary blockchain-enabled platform for drug discovery, which makes unpublished data searchable alongside published data, we are helping researchers collaborate like never before. Why should data from failed experiments not be searchable to prevent others from wasting private and public resources? Why should a patient wait for 18-24 months for a researcher to get their results published in a high ranked peer-reviewed publication? We have launched a solution to all these challenges. In the end, it’s not just about the what and the how of everything. It’s about the why – and we’re here to make an impact in the lives of the patients!