Discovery to design to delivery: how patients are helping us innovate

Vanco Vlastimil (��ֳ� S.A.) — Wed, 05 Apr 2023 09:44:16 +0000

Kate Trenam, Early Patient Engagement

Vanco Vlastimi… Wed 05/04/2023 - 11:44

Discovering and developing new medicines is a key part of what we do here at ��ֳ�. But we believe that a new medicine is only truly valuable and innovative if it’s meaningful to patients. It has to be a solution that patients really want, and which makes a genuine difference to their lives.

The creation of meaningful medicines at ��ֳ� doesn’t happen by luck or by chance, it happens because we work hard to implement partnerships with patients at all stages of the drug development process.

There is growing evidence that patients’ contributions during the very early stages of drug development can have a positive impact on research into new drugs. Because at this stage researchers are gaining an understanding of patient communities and their unmet needs, patient-friendly research approaches and identifying meaningful outcome measures for patients. Who better to inform these processes than the patients themselves?

At ��ֳ� we have developed a new end-to-end framework designed to ensure that patients and key stakeholders can provide input as early as possible into our research and development programs, as well as the entire drug lifecycle. At the clinical trial stage, we co-create protocols with patients / patient advocacy groups to help us assess protocol complexity and minimize the burden on patients.

Today, approximately 46% of our trials also have a Decentralized Clinical Trials (DCT) patient-centric component. DCTs help to make our clinical trials more accessible and easier to participate in for patients who may not be able to easily access a clinical trial in person, and they can help us to reach patients living in under-represented geographies.

In the area of Parkinson’s, we have joined forces with Parkinson’s UK, and the Parkinson's Foundation in the U.S., to establish a Patient Engagement Council for Parkinson’s Research (PECPR). The aim of the council is to ensure that patient insights are central to the overall strategy and activities across ��ֳ�’s Parkinson’s Disease research and early clinical development program. Through this collaborative partnership, the council aims to embed patient involvement in the earliest stages and throughout each step of ��ֳ�’s Parkinson’s drug development program.

At ��ֳ� we celebrate the fact that patients are increasingly active and empowered when it comes to decisions about their healthcare – they are no longer ‘customers’, but more ‘co-creators’ in the R&D process. We celebrate it because we hope that by closing the gap between scientists and patients, we can discover new ways to target the drivers of disease.

To learn more about how innovation drives everything we do visit Innovation is | ��ֳ�

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“Hacking” Agile Project Management to Unlock Greater Patient Value

Vanco Vlastimil (��ֳ� S.A.) — Fri, 03 Jun 2022 10:08:00 +0000

“Hacking” Agile Project Management to Unlock Greater Patient Value

Kamil Mroz, Patient Value Early Solutions

Vanco Vlastimi… Fri 03/06/2022 - 12:08

Sprints, Scrums, User stories, Kanbans, product backlogs… what’s all the hype about? Agile has recently stolen the spotlight and is the “talk of the town” in professional project management associations. However, it can sometimes be hard to pin-down in its practical application to the pharmaceutical sector and is often reduced to a buzzword implying the need to stay nimble in the face of uncertain conditions.

As such, we recently partnered with the Project Management Institute and several other pharmaceutical companies to try to “hack” Agile – and therefore better understand where and how to concretely apply Agile practices in drug development. The questions that were proposed to “hack” were:

How could Agile improve the day-to-day working within an interdisciplinary Medicines Development Team?
How could Agile be used for planning of Medicines Development from research to launch?
How can Agile optimize delivery in a highly regulated environment?
How can Agile help Medicines Development teams rapidly respond to changing business requirements?
How could Agile be gradually introduced in an established organization without impacting business continuity?

This virtual hackathon drew 52 participants from all around the world. Teams broke-out into working sessions where they brainstormed ideas, refined them into key practices – and later presented them to the broader audience where participants voted on the best practices. The top three best practices selected with the most potential impact were:

Experimenting with minimal viable products to enable life-cycle management (including crude formulation)
Focus on the Agile principle of “Simplicity: Maximizing the work not done”
Collaborating in smaller teams with better defined interactions between these teams to increase focus and accountability

Not only did the hackathon foster a cross-departmental collaboration between ��ֳ� employees from Development, Research, Rare Diseases Organization and Supply & Technical Solutions, it also brought together some major pharmaceutical companies such as BMS, GSK and Mirati Therapeutics.

Our industry is known for its weighty regulation, long development timelines, strict process and quality requirements – things that may appear at odds with Agile principles. However, our cross-company and cross-functional “hack” event showed that agile ways of working could help our industry push through any perceived barriers and help enhance innovation competitive advantage.

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Discovery to design to delivery: how patients are helping us innovate

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“Hacking” Agile Project Management to Unlock Greater Patient Value

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