What Life Sciences Companies Can Learn From BMW and Volkswagen

By Noël Theodosiou and Patrick O. Gee

In industries from tech to retail to automotive, customers often play a significant role in the design of products they end up buying. The logic is pretty straightforward: the more useful the products, the more successful they will be in the marketplace, and no one knows better than current and future customers what they themselves need and want.

So why don’t more life sciences companies take this approach?

In pharma and medtech, there is sometimes a gap between the goals that companies pursue with their products and what matters most to patients. While the maker of a tech gadget is focused almost exclusively on utility, pharma and medtech companies tend to be guided more by what’s known as the “mechanism,” or how the product works from a biological perspective, rather than the experience it creates for patients.

A Disconnect With Patients

This disconnect can fuel the underperformance of new therapies once they hit the market. Sometimes even when a drug shows notable efficacy, companies are surprised that patients are turned off by how the drug is administered or by the dosing frequency — feedback that is fairly easy to gather pre-launch.

One study found that almost 40 percent of drug launches failed to meet forecasts. Could these mishits have been avoided if patients had been more involved in the creation of the products?

In our work, we find that the industry’s pre-launch assumptions about patients are sometimes off the mark. In a recent patient-centered project with a global medical devices company to inform clinical trial design, researchers hypothesized that retention would be a challenge because the study protocol required patients to return for multiple follow-up visits.

But conversations with patients revealed a different concern — trial enrollment. Participants actually looked forward to return visits because they wanted more care, including psycho-social support. They said they would be willing to participate in a trial only if the administrators clearly explained the difference between the trial interventions and the standard of care and they had the opportunity to consult with loved ones before enrolling.

Partnership, Not Tokenism

For many healthcare companies, patient engagement has become synonymous with soliciting patient feedback about decisions that have already been made. But when leveraged correctly and fully, it can be a powerful vehicle to spur meaningful innovation and better health outcomes.

The industry has to rethink how it develops products, shifting from transactional feedback to embracing co-creation, whether companies are making a new drug, building a device, or launching a clinical trial. This means leveraging human-centered design principles and investing in longer-term relationships with patient communities.

Instead of interacting with patients to learn about their expertise and lived experience, many drug and device manufacturers solicit input in a tokenized manner — checking demographic boxes on race, ethnicity, age, gender, and geography. This approach prioritizes data collection through one-off surveys and focus groups, and fails to build the sustained, meaningful relationships needed for true innovation.

We acknowledge — and have witnessed — the challenges the industry faces when it comes to investing in patient relationships. They include timeline delays, increased costs, and liabilities.

Important Crossroads

Healthcare is at an important crossroads when it comes to relationships with patients, and it could use some out-of-the-box thinking. Healthcare costs in the U.S. have reached record highs and continue to rise sharply. But despite this unprecedented spending, only half of Americans believe the quality of care they receive is equal to or greater than what it costs.

At the same time, skepticism toward the healthcare system overall has been increasing, as evidenced by the MAHA movement and the rapid increase in anti-vaxxers.

Consider this: fewer than half of adults in the U.S. report having a long-standing relationship (five years or more) with a primary care provider. If people are not engaged in the healthcare system via a trusted provider, they are even less likely to participate in a clinical trial.

Despite a proven correlation between patient input and shorter clinical trial timelines, only 23% of trials use a Patient Advisory Board, according to the Center for the Study of Drug Development at Tufts University School of Medicine.

The life sciences industry has an opportunity to address this gap, in part by building relationships that enable it to address real-world needs. For example, the University of Maryland Baltimore School of Pharmacy, through its PATIENTS Program, works with clinical trial administrators and sponsors to engage with community members. In one instance, organizers saw a need early on in the process and were able to provide some practical support to the community, paving the way for a trusting and engaged partnership throughout the six-year project.

Learning From Other Industries

We also can take lessons from beyond healthcare. Like life sciences, the automotive industry faces long research and development timelines and strict regulatory requirements. Yet, companies such as BMW and Volkswagen have tapped into customer co-creation to reduce costs, access diverse insights, and develop user-centric products. Partly on the strength of this approach, Volkswagen’s People’s Car Project became a top car brand on social media in China in just 10 weeks. Instead of relying solely on traditional, engineering-driven approaches, they engaged consumers throughout the innovation process to future-proof evolving demands, including the potential for cars to be viewed as a service, fulfilling needs beyond driving and transportation.

The life sciences industry, too, must evolve to incorporate real-world human factors in their product design, combining environmental, sociological, cultural and psychological dimensions with scientific feasibility and business viability.

It’s time for life sciences companies to recognize that embracing co-creation has the potential to positively impact the speed, cost and efficacy of new treatments, and in turn drive better outcomes for patients, business and society.

About The Authors:

Noël Theodosiou is Principal and CEO of Luminous, a small, woman-owned-and-operated strategy consulting firm specialized in the life sciences.

Patrick O. Gee is a Lived Experience Expert, Patient Advisor with Luminous and Professional Patient Advocate living with chronic kidney disease.