Author: Christian Velten

Dr. Christian Velten presenting how Roche uses Voice-of-the-customer (VoC) to learn from HCPs’ & patients’ opinions.

In my role as Global Head of the Medical Customer Experience department at Roche Pharma (global) I have been co-initiating and co-sponsoring an initiative which aimed to make a Roche therapeutic area (“product line”) more patient-centric. Together with the TA’s medical director, the Global Head of Patient Partnership and smart colleagues across all functions involved we focused on identifying barriers (to be removed), providing enabling resources enabling (facilitating patient-centricity in day-to-day business), and ‘building on successes’ (sharing best practice examples).

Panel on Modernizing Medical Affairs at the virtual Reuters Pharma 2021 conference

Between 2019 and 2022, members of the Medical CX department (which I had the honor to lead) drove the evolution of (medical) customer services provided by Roche Pharma. We were supporting Digital Health, Personalized Healthcare and FMI divisions of the company with expertise about and implementation of customer services around their products, Typically being program-embedded contributors, working hand in hand with colleagues designing the products. Examples had been in-app customer services (Digital Health) or aligning medical services around the FMI portfolio to the enterprise approach.

The Medical Customer Experience department I had the pleasure to head at Roche Pharma (global), embraced the full value chain of digital customer touchpoints, medical content processes, internal customer engagement supporting platforms/tools, CX insights, and CX execution. As part of the overall ambition to provide customers and patients with better experiences with Roche, the Digital Customer Engagement sub-team took the effort to design a lean but advanced Digital Content Strategy which developed into a Digital Content Best Practices Framework. The team used the opportunity that most assets and aspects of end-to-end content processes were either homed in the department or…

I am proudly sharing that “CareRing“, the Roche internal community for employees who are patients or caregivers, has won the 2020 Reuters Pharma Awards Europe in the category ‘Most promising MVP/pilot’. The CareRing platform is homed in the Medical Customer Experience department I am heading. But I cannot claim too much contribution myself. I just gave CareRing a home at times of uncertainties, and acted as an internal sponsor. My sincere congratulations are going to a truly cross-enterprise team of enthusiasts and passionate individuals who are jointly leading and driving and who were doing a lot of things very right.…

Together with my team, we effectively consolidated the Roche medical portfolio of platforms & tools supporting customer and patient engagement. The Digital Engagement team in the Medical Customer Experience department – which I have the honor to lead – is managing all digital platforms, touchpoints and tools which are directly or indirectly serving Roche customers and patients. Examples are the Roche medical information portal, the ForPatients platform on clinical trials participation, and Medically, a non-promotional resource for healthcare professionals to exchange scientific information & developments. But also Roche-internal tools like an internal one-stop-shop for all information on Roche products, a…

“Empowering and equipping Europeans with health informationfor active personal health management and adherence to treatment” Gravitate Health (“A digital health information journey”) is an EU initiative aiming to equip and empower EU citizens with digital information tools that make them confident, active, and responsive in their patient journey and encourage safe use of medicines for better health and quality of life. To achieve this, the Gravitate Lens (G-lens®), which focuses on approved electronic product information (ePI) content, and offers a direction for patients to access trustworthy, up-to-date information that better meets their individual needs. Gravitate Health is set-up as a…

During the boring COVID-19 lock-downs I rediscovered one of my childhoods hobbies, fishkeeping. I wanted to fight a bit the personal lows with my department, all being stuck at home alone for a few months already and likely a few more. So, I gave ourselves a summer-at-home challenge to do something creative. Something fun also bringing back positive energy. Something where we could remotely but jointly enjoy well invested quality time. I myself had the urgent need to do something with my hands, something creative and something real. Not just colorful slides on the screen but being perceptible by all…

One of the first things which happened after I had started heading the Medical Customer Experience department at Roche Pharma (global) … was COVID-19. Almost overnight, we all had been pushed into the world of virtual teamwork and collaboration. And all our sales reps and medical liaison in the field had been pushed from visiting customers at their places to … well, yes, actually being mostly disconnected. Vice versa, customers and patients were also substantially disconnected from us. As a reaction to this situation, my team and I went into the lead with ad-hoc initiating and setting-up a corporate ‘COVID-19…