Managing Director & Partner, BCG X
BCG X – Manhattan Beach
By Raakhi Agrawal, Satty Chandrashekhar, Leila Hamidou, Ethan Dabbs, and Ken Keen
The end-to-end journey for a patient starting treatment on branded pharmaceutical products is often complex, time consuming, and unpredictable, leading to high levels of dissatisfaction among health care providers (HCPs), patients, and caregivers alike. Biopharma companies have a unique opportunity to leverage new sources of patient data and technology to create more personalized and seamless patient experiences that have the potential to deliver better health outcomes.
The Push Factors
A number of forces are converging that make now the right time for biopharma companies to take a fresh look at where and how they invest in processes, systems, and people.
The Opportunity Space
Biopharma companies now have the opportunity to create end-to-end patient experiences that are more seamless, predictable, and positive. There are three key enablers:
Collectively, these three capabilities can transform how patient journeys are activated, providing much more tailored, data-driven interventions in a cost-effective manner.
How Companies Are Acting on the Opportunity
For the most forward-thinking biopharma companies, this evolution of patient services has become reality.
Consider one pharmaceutical company that recently worked with BCG to transform its personalization process for engaging with patients using AI. The company was able to reduce content creation time by 98% and associated process steps by 50%, and achieve its vision for “segment of one” level targeting. The client recognized that a barrier to unique content was a burdensome creation process. BCG helped the company identify 20 priority use cases for personalization and embed GenAI into workflows to enable much faster content creation timelines. Armed with next-generation tools, the company was able to rapidly reshape processes to deliver a more targeted patient experience, helping patients feel more supported in their treatment journey, increasing medication adherence, and driving improved outcomes.
At another biopharma organization, BCG helped to design an innovative patient engagement model through enhanced journey navigation, improving the care pathway for patients and strengthening the company’s differentiation from competitors. The company wanted to transform its patient experience and integrate cooperation with other stakeholders, including HCPs and payers. BCG worked to analyze and cocreate future patient journeys with those external stakeholders, delivering an end-to-end activation of the ecosystem in service of the patient and bringing the ecosystem closer to a digitally driven future.
Three Immediate Actions
Biopharma companies can take some actions now to improve the patient experience and streamline the patient journey:
Longer-Term Investments: Three Big Bets
To capture the full potential of delivering better patient experiences, biopharma companies should make three programmatic investments:
Biopharma companies must act now to enhance patient services, not only improving outcomes but also building stronger relationships with health care providers and payers.
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