We’re often asked by pharma customers to explore how we could accelerate diagnosis and guide patients to the right treatment faster, especially in therapeutic domains where diagnosis is frequently delayed with associated patient burden. It also makes a lot of sense in domains where early diagnosis can lead to better outcomes (think oncology, but also chronic kidney disease and axial spondyloarthritis where we have some experience).
It is striking, however, how most existing initiatives by pharma are really quite weak, especially if seen from a design- or Delight-Thinking perspective. Most often we see one-off communication campaigns targeting patients or HCPs, trying to increase awareness or change behaviour in some way. All very much ‘push’ approaches. Few such initiatives start with the patient’s or HCP’s need or pain, in their real world context.
That’s why we’re creating a new keynote presentation and creative workshop to tackle exactly this issue. How can we really help patients take effective shortcuts to the right diagnosis and treatment and make the entire experience delightful, almost magical? Not unlike finding those oh-so useful shortcuts in Ikea.
Taking the Ikea analogy further, we imagine a way that Ikea could help us get to the right diagnosis and treatment faster, for example, by providing free screening of conditions that Ikea might play a role in helping me manage or even treat, through specialised furniture.
How might the Hilton provide subtle white glove screening services, or how might your car become a health screening device?
How might smart symptom checking be built in my doctor’s appointment booking application?
How might pharmacists become screening centres?
How could citizen-centric data initiatives, built on Tim Berners-Lee’s SOLID protocol, like VITO’s we-are platform, be leveraged so that screening happens continuously, by default, with full citizen control? We can dream up a hundred use cases!
And looking at awareness creation, what might we learn from ‘embedded’ education (or product placement) so that when I next go to the cinema, 007 so very subtly teaches me something about my kidneys?
“How’s your eGFR looking?”
So what do you think? Let me know if you have ideas or comments on this topic. I would love to hear from you. Also if you have suggestions of people and companies doing interesting things in this domain that we should talk to/know about, please shoot or link below!
