Healthy Skepticism Library item: 11782

Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.

Publication type: news

Moran N.
Look At Health Care Through Different Lens, P&G Advises
BioWorld Today 2007 Oct 17
http://it.tmcnet.com/news/2007/10/16/3020106.htm

Full text:

LONDON – Proctor and Gamble (P&G) is applying its expertise as a consumer products giant to get a patient’s eye view of disease and use the insights to inform development programs with biotech partners.

“Don’t be confused by the Pringles part of the company,” Kevin Driscoll, director of global new business and technology development, told delegates at BioPartnering Europe, held in London. “This is an interesting story of what biotech can learn from a large consumer products company.”

Today, patients are well-informed and engaged in managing their health, which has broad implications for development and commercialization not only of over-the-counter products, but also of prescription drugs. Biotech companies need to take a more patient-oriented – read consumer-oriented – approach to drug development.

Although P&G has developed prescription drugs since the 1980s, it is not known for health care, but for its brands. Ninety-nine percent of U.S. households have a P&G product in their cupboards. “We understand consumers, and in a methodological way,” said Andreas Grauer, global medical director of new technology development.

“We carry out 10,000 market research studies per year, not only to help marketing, but also to help us develop products.” In this approach, innovation follows consumer need, rather than vice versa.

The phenomenon of the informed patient has swept away the old paradigm that the doctor knows best, and consumers now compare health care choices like any other product, Grauer said. Patients often self-diagnose and evaluate different treatment options before consulting their physicians. In the U.S., doctors prescribe what patients ask for in 30 percent of cases and 80 percent of the time are highly likely, or might comply, with a request for a particular drug.

“Think how the landscape has changed,” Grauer said. In the old model, patients went straight to the doctor. Now they self-diagnose and often self-treat with OTC products and see the doctor if that does not work. They then evaluate subsequent treatment recommendations, and in the U.S., will compare prices of comparator treatments.

Patients will monitor and track the course of the disease, self-test and may change treatments.

“So there are multiple levels at which you can get into the chain,” Grauer noted.

At the same time, government or insurers’ cost-containment measures are shifting costs to consumers, or curtailing what treatments are available. “In other words you need to look at health care through a different lens,” he said.

One example of how P&G applied its consumer expertise was in a project to improve compliance in Asacol (mesalamine), its prescription treatment for ulcerative colitis. Patients need to take four tablets per day, correctly spaced out, to get the full benefits. “We saw it as our challenge to help with compliance,” Grauer explained.

The P&G team spent time with patients and did a patient immersion exercise in which P&G staff took placebo tablets. That experience was used to design a better compliance program, and so provide better health care and build brand loyalty.

In the case of Intrinsa, a hormone replacement treatment for female sexual dysfunction, classic consumer interviews were used to uncover feelings and attitudes in a poorly defined disorder. That helped structure the design of clinical trials and was used to develop a questionnaire for women to self-diagnose in advance of consulting a physician.

Grauer suggested a consumer-led approach could be applied to other hard-to-assess diseases such as irritable bowel syndrome, overactive bladder or fibromyalgia. P&G is focussing on gastrointestinal and musculoskeletal disorders and women’s health. “These are diseases around which we can add value because there are consumer-related end points.”

He said P&G has decided not to do its own discovery work. “There are lots of biotechs out there that do this in a leaner, meaner way. We want to concentrate on licensing and acquiring products,” Grauer added. P&G offers its partners development and sales and marketing capabilities, and its consumer insights.