Pharma’s Role in Ensuring Patient Access to Trustworthy Health Insights

In this Pharmaceutical Executive video interview, Jen Butler, Chief Commercial Officer for Pleio, discussed the significant threat of misinformation to public health, citing a 2021 report by former Surgeon General Murthy. She highlighted that 70% of false news is shared more often than true news due to its emotional appeal. Butler emphasized the importance of verifying health information by directly contacting trusted sources like Cleveland Clinic, Mayo Clinic, and Kaiser Permanente. She also noted the role of pharma in supporting patient communities and the need for media and health literacy. Butler also suggested that peer-to-patient platforms can enhance patient engagement and adherence, particularly for chronic conditions.

What role can/should Pharma play in helping to ensure patients have access to health insights they can trust?

There's such a fine line that pharma is figuring out when you're referring to online patient communities. I've spoken to a couple online patient communities, and because when we're looking at kind of peer to patient and peer-to-peer platforms. Pharma has to make sure that they're supporting patients with education and content that's been MLR approved, and that they're supporting patients — that's not necessarily attracting and encouraging adverse event reporting. I think it's a very tricky line, and I agree with you, go to where the patients are talking, support them with the facts.

You just have to be careful with the way that we've set up our requirements as well. Because if what we hear and the whole power is listening to patients, but what we hear also then will require another set of actions. It's a fine line that we play is with pharma coming into patient conversations, but there has to be some sort of middle ground where pharma can start to support patient communities in a way that provides the facts and dispels the opinions and myths that are going on.

I think that pharma has invested so much and so much behind information and resources to patients, and patients are really unaware of a lot of the resources that are available to them. A couple years ago, Freja did a report that said, I think only 23% of patients are aware of the information available to them and the resources. So, to your point, if pharma could somehow involve themselves in patient conversations and communities and let them know about resources that are available, I think it's been a tricky way of building in a traditional way of building the resources for patients to come, but patients are seeking out other patients for support and advice also. So how do we start to change that direction and support with parameters and requirements that are in place with pharma and healthcare organizations overall.