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In 20+ years of helping pharma teams implement meaningful patient centricity, we've learned that it requires a systematic approach built on seven core strategies. Here they are—at a glance:
1. Create dedicated engagement channels. First, establish a centralized platform that supports both real-time discussions and asynchronous communication, making it easy for patients to participate in ways that work best for them.
2. Build diverse patient communities. With an engagement platform in place, most teams should carefully construct patient groups of 10-25 individuals representing various backgrounds, disease stages and experiences. Draw from multiple referral sources to ensure true diversity of perspective.
3. Establish trust through transparency. Clearly communicate how patient input will influence specific decisions and products, from device design to educational materials. Be explicit about data privacy and usage policies.
4. Remove the practical barriers for patients to participate. Address technical, logistical and interpersonal challenges proactively through dedicated support, skilled moderation and flexible participation options that accommodate different communication styles.
5. Make patient engagement routine. Create structured programs combining regular advisory boards, ongoing discussion forums and periodic surveys while maintaining consistent experience across all touchpoints.
6. Segment patients for deeper insights. Identify natural patient groupings based on treatment experience, compliance patterns and disease states to enable more targeted and meaningful engagement opportunities.
7. Close the loop thoughtfully. Demonstrate impact by sharing how patient input shapes decisions and materials, maintaining both internal and external communication channels.
Teams are using ExtendMed's Health Expert Connect™ platform to implement these strategies efficiently through a single, integrated system that streamlines planning, automates communication and ensures meaningful engagement. Contact us to see how we can help you build a more patient-centric organization in 2025 and beyond.
"Patient centricity" has become the buzzword of the decade in pharmaceuticals—plastered across mission statements, championed in boardrooms, and woven into countless strategic plans. Recently, we’ve seen more teams moving to turn the rhetoric of patient centricity into reality.
We've spent the last 20 years helping pharmaceutical teams bridge this gap, and we've discovered something surprising: the barrier isn't a lack of desire to engage patients—it's the absence of a systematic approach to make it happen. The companies successfully moving beyond the buzzword tend to follow a few specific strategies that transform abstract promises into concrete patient engagement.
In this guide, we'll share these battle-tested strategies that have helped our pharmaceutical partners build meaningful patient relationships, improve treatment adherence, and develop more effective solutions. These approaches have been refined through real-world implementation across many organizations.
Whether you're just starting your patient engagement journey or looking to enhance your existing programs, these strategies will help you build a truly patient-centric organization—one that doesn't just talk about putting patients first but actually does it.
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We’re sharing these key insights from our comprehensive Patient Centricity Playbook to help teams take concrete steps toward more patient-centric operations. Download the full guide for more details on all of these strategies.
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Seven strategies pharmaceutical commercial teams are using to better engage patients—and how to deploy them yourself
Before diving into specific strategies, it's important to understand what we mean by patient centricity.
At its core, patient centricity means putting the patient first through sustained two-way engagement that respectfully and compassionately works toward the best possible outcomes for that person and their family.
It's about giving patients a voice in decisions about their care and holding organizations accountable for acting on patient feedback in meaningful ways.
“There’s a feeling that for too long, our industry has talked about patient centricity while keeping patient input siloed within individual departments or treating it as just another box to check. True patient centricity means fundamentally changing how we operate—establishing sustained, two-way engagement with patients that shapes decisions throughout the entire product lifecycle. It requires giving patients a real voice in their care journey and holding ourselves accountable for acting on their input in meaningful, demonstrable ways.
The technology and frameworks exist to make this happen. What's needed now is the will to implement systematic, organization-wide approaches that make patient engagement a fundamental part of how we do business, not just an aspirational goal. The companies that thrive in the coming years will be those that stop talking about patient centricity and start embedding it into every aspect of their operations. The companies we’re working with are seeing this now.”
— Amy Ravi, CEO, ExtendMed
Here are our seven strategies to consider putting into action. Talk to us if you’re looking for a patient engagement platform and service partner who can help you plan and execute them.
A successful patient engagement channel needs to be more than just a communication tool—it should be a comprehensive platform that connects patients with your team in ways that feel natural and productive for everyone involved.
When establishing your channel, consider implementing both synchronous and asynchronous communication methods, as each serves a distinct purpose:
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For synchronous engagement, video conferences create opportunities for real-time discussion where participants can see and hear each other, fostering empathy and allowing conversations to evolve naturally. These live interactions help humanize the experience for both patients and company representatives. Asynchronous engagement, through message boards or surveys, gives patients time to reflect and respond when it's convenient for them. For example, you might create a forum where patients can respond to posted videos or discussion topics over several weeks, encouraging deeper thought and more considered responses. This approach is particularly valuable for patients who may need time to process their thoughts or who have scheduling constraints. |
The key is choosing technology that can support both types of engagement while gathering and analyzing the resulting insights. Your platform should serve as a centralized venue that motivates participation without imposing unfamiliar or burdensome technical requirements on patients.
ExtendMed's Health Expert Connect™ platform provides precisely this kind of centralized engagement hub, offering both synchronous and asynchronous communication tools in one seamless interface. Our platform was specifically designed to lower technical barriers while providing the robust backend analytics pharmaceutical teams need to gather actionable insights from every interaction.
The composition of your patient community can significantly impact the quality of insights you receive.
When building your group, consider creating a balanced mix of:
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To identify these diverse participants, expand beyond traditional referral sources.
We suggest considering reaching out to:
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When extending invitations, be explicit about compensation for participation. This transparency helps establish professional expectations from the start.
Through Health Expert Connect™, teams can easily manage diverse patient communities and track engagement across multiple sources. Our platform's segmentation tools help you build appropriately diverse patient groups while maintaining detailed records of participation patterns and preferences.
Building trust requires more than just stating your objectives—it requires demonstrating how patient input will directly influence decisions that affect their care.
Begin by clearly articulating the specific ways patient feedback will be used in decision-making processes. Also, explain how their experiences will help shape future treatments or programs and the potential impact their input could have on other patients with similar conditions.
When introducing a patient engagement initiative, you might share specific examples like these:
"Your experiences with our current injection device will directly influence the design of our next-generation autoinjector. For example, if multiple participants highlight difficulties with grip strength, we'll prioritize modifications to make the device easier to handle. These insights could lead to features like larger grip surfaces or different activation mechanisms."
"We're developing educational materials about managing treatment side effects. Your firsthand experiences will help us identify which side effects are most challenging in daily life, allowing us to create more relevant and practical management strategies. For instance, if fatigue emerges as a major concern, we'll develop specific sections about energy conservation techniques and planning daily activities."
Here's how to connect their input to tangible outcomes:
"When you describe your experience with insurance coverage and prior authorization processes, we'll use that information to improve our patient support programs. If we learn that specific documentation is consistently challenging to obtain, we can develop better resources to help future patients navigate these requirements."
"Your feedback about treatment scheduling challenges will help us design more flexible dosing regimens in future clinical trials. For instance, if we learn that monthly infusions create significant work conflicts, we might explore alternative dosing schedules or at-home administration options."
We’ve also found it increasingly important to address data privacy concerns proactively, as many people are hesitant to share even their blinded data with healthcare researchers.
Create clear, accessible policies that explain:
Successful patient engagement requires careful attention to the practical aspects of participation.
The success of patient engagement initiatives often hinges on seemingly small practical details that can become significant barriers if not properly addressed. Technical challenges, meeting dynamics and interpersonal factors all play crucial roles in determining whether patients feel comfortable enough to share their experiences openly and meaningfully.
On the technical front, many organizations make the mistake of assuming patients will naturally adapt to their chosen platform. Instead, we urge teams to consider taking a more proactive approach by scheduling brief one-on-one technical orientation sessions.
The role of skilled moderation cannot be overstated. Moderators need to do more than simply guide discussion—they must develop genuine rapport with participants while tactfully redirecting conversations to serve your objectives. The best moderators understand both the technical aspects of your platform and the delicate balance of encouraging participation while maintaining focus.
Group dynamics present another crucial consideration. Some patients naturally tend to be more vocal, while others might have valuable insights but feel hesitant to speak up in larger groups. Rather than allowing this dynamic to limit participation, consider creating smaller breakout rooms of participants.
Here's how we help teams address common barriers:
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Technical Support:
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Meeting Management:
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Group Dynamics:
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We designed Health Expert Connect™ with these practical challenges in mind. Our platform includes integrated technical support, flexible communication channels, and tools for creating breakout sessions and managing group dynamics. Built-in moderation tools help facilitators guide productive discussions while ensuring every voice is heard.
Successful patient engagement isn't about isolated interactions—it requires building a sustained dialogue through regular, predictable touchpoints that fit naturally into patients' lives. The key is creating a structured program that maintains momentum without becoming burdensome for participants.
Virtual advisory boards serve as great quarterly anchors for your engagement strategy, providing opportunities for in-depth discussion of specific topics or challenges. Between these larger gatherings, maintaining ongoing asynchronous discussion forums allows participants to share insights and experiences as they occur naturally. Strategic use of periodic surveys, particularly around key milestones or decisions, provides another valuable layer of feedback while respecting participants' time.
However, managing these multiple engagement channels can quickly become overwhelming without the right infrastructure. A centralized platform becomes essential for tracking participation patterns, analyzing feedback across different formats and maintaining a consistent experience for participants.
Create a structured program that includes:
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Pharma teams are using centralized platforms like Health Expert Connect™ to:
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Health Expert Connect™ serves as a sort of central nervous system for ongoing patient engagement programs. Our platform's comprehensive scheduling, tracking, and analytics capabilities make it easy to maintain consistent engagement while measuring participation and impact across all channels and activities.
As your engagement program matures, distinct patterns typically emerge among your patient community. Some participants might demonstrate deep knowledge of various treatments, while others struggle with medication adherence. Some might be managing complex combinations of conditions, while others are just beginning their treatment journey. Rather than viewing these differences as complications, successful programs use them as opportunities for more targeted and meaningful engagement.
Treatment experience levels often provide a natural starting point for segmentation, but compliance patterns, disease comorbidities and information-seeking behaviors can offer equally valuable ways to group participants. The key is recognizing that different segments often have distinct needs and can contribute in different ways to your overall objectives.
For instance, patients who actively seek innovative treatments might become valuable participants in registry programs, offering insights into treatment effectiveness and real-world outcomes. Those who face compliance challenges might be ideally positioned to review and improve educational materials, helping make sure these resources actually address the practical barriers patients encounter.
💡 A pro-tip here: We find that patients managing complex disease states often provide crucial insights for treatment protocol discussions, while those early in their journey can help optimize the diagnostic process for future patients.
As you gather data from initial engagements, look for natural segments based on:
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Then, tailor your engagement approach for each segment:
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Finally, use these segments to:
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The sophisticated analytics capabilities we’ve built into Health Expert Connect™ help teams identify and act on emerging patterns in patient engagement. Our platform makes it easy to segment participants, customize approaches for different groups, and track the effectiveness of targeted strategies over time.
Perhaps the most crucial element of patient engagement is demonstrating that participant input genuinely influences decisions and outcomes. This requires thoughtful communication both internally and externally to ensure insights don't simply disappear into a black hole.
For example, if patient insights inform an educational booklet about managing treatment side effects, sharing the draft with participants offers an opportunity to ensure you've captured their experiences accurately while also demonstrating how their input shapes real resources. This validation step helps build trust through transparency while ensuring materials truly reflect patient needs and experiences.
Below are those points pulled out into specific action items.
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Internal Communication:
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External Communication:
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Health Expert Connect™ includes robust reporting tools that make it easy to share insights both internally and externally. Our platform helps teams create compelling summaries of patient input and track how that feedback influences decisions, closing the loop with both stakeholders and participants.
The path to genuine patient centricity requires more than just good intentions—it demands systematic implementation of these strategies through dedicated platforms and processes. For a deeper dive into these approaches, including detailed implementation guides and real-world case studies, download our complete Patient Centricity Playbook below.
📄 Free White Paper
Seven strategies pharmaceutical commercial teams are using to better engage patients—and how to deploy them yourself
Opening a direct channel to patients is one thing. Having the technological capabilities to provide a convenient and workable platform for gathering, analyzing and communicating those insights is another.
Teams that take a truly patient-centered approach while still maintaining efficiency across their busy workflow aren’t stringing together disparate tools to make it work. They arm themselves with a dedicated platform and support partner that enables them to work smart—appreciating the immense value of having tools designed specifically to make patient engagement successful without being burdensome to themselves or the patients they engage.
ExtendMed is committed to helping teams open a channel to patients to better understand their healthcare experiences, drive patient-centric strategies and ultimately achieve the progress that speaks to the core missions of those working to advance health.
For over 20 years, we’ve worked with organizations across healthcare and the life sciences to develop better strategies for engaging patients and other stakeholders and implement them on a simple, powerful technology platform. The ExtendMed platform is currently hard at work connecting, educating, and training global healthcare thought leaders, facilitating rich discussions and saving teams hours of administrative and logistical work in organizations across the globe.
Years of experience working with industry partners enables us to provide expert recommendations informed by those who’ve found success—ultimately helping teams lower costs and improve efficiencies across their workflows.
Healthcare and life science teams, including pharmaceuticals, medical device companies, agencies, CROs and medical associations typically partner with us when they’re ready to take their engagement strategies and execution to the next level.
Our goal is to help you have richer and more frequent engagements with each of your stakeholders, at a lower cost. How long are you going to wait to solicit better insights across your programs?
Visit extendmed.com/solutions for a quick look at our solutions and how we empower teams to have richer engagements with each of their stakeholders. Want to get in touch with questions or schedule a free platform demo? Contact us.
📄 Want more food for thought? Check out our free white paper below and get seven strategies pharmaceutical commercial teams are using to better engage patients—and tips on how to deploy them yourself.
📄 Free White Paper
Seven strategies pharmaceutical commercial teams are using to better engage patients—and how to deploy them yourself