In 2021, members of my team of the Roche Pharma Medical CX department together with the Roche Pharma Global Medical Information team were driving an truly exciting initiative on innovating how Roche answers to medical information inquiries. The initiative called ‘Customer Driven Content Authoring’ (CDCA) was based on a systematic co-design approach with Roche customers, physicians, pharmacists and patients. Medical information requests (MIRs) or medical inquiries are an obligatory and vital service provided by pharma companies. It is a bit similar to service call centers in other industries, but much more sensitive and regulated. Every answer provided could have an impact to an individual patient’s life. A big pharma company like Roche, serving millions of patients around the globe, receives ~100k medical inquiries each year. Mostly questions by health care providers (~75%) and patients (~25%), e.g. on treatment safety and treatment efficacy under specific circumstances. Now, what people typically experienced as an answer to a medical inquiry were long, text-heavy, scientific language based documents. Those were not easy to read and ‘digest’ for medical and pharmaceutical professionals (HCPs). And they were – in my opinion – nearly impossible to understand for lay people like patients and their families. As a result, HCPs and patients told us that the find it hard to access the information they need at the point of need. They clearly asked that answers provided by us need to be easier to use & understand. Within less than 3 months, the team provided a new set-up and design for global medical information responses. They used agile methodology, customer-centric needs research, personas, journeys, sentiment analysis, A/B testing and actively co-designed with physician, pharmacist and patient representatives. Now you will be curious about the outcomes … Amazing, right?! Remember, this was achieved in less than 3 months, simply by collaborating cross-functionally plus actively involving customers. Obviously, the biggest improvement was with patients, not really surprisingly. But even with physicians (MD) and pharmacists an increase of ease-of-use of 20-30% had been achieved associated with an increase of confidence in answers provided by the company. I had the pleasure presenting the approach and top level outcomes at a session of the cross-industries’ CX Council (I am a member of) and at the 2021 CX Management for Life Sciences conference, where it received a remarkable amount of acknowledgement by colleagues and…

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…

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 with partners across the organization. They also invested in the smart approach to co-design strategy & framework together with representatives of affiliates and of global business…

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. CLIENT:Roche Pharma(as a Roche employee)PROJECT TIME FRAME: Jan 2020< READ MORE…

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 medical insights access point, and our publication management platform. We finally achieved to make the overall portfolio more lean by reducing from 26 to 19 assets and trimming down (reducing maintenance efforts) further 5. As a result, the portfolio is not only easier to manage and saving expenses. This “straightening up” also allows the team to invest resources more efficiently and and more focused on future innovation. CLIENT:Roche Pharma PDMA (Global Medical Affairs)(as a Roche employee)PROJECT TIME FRAME: November 2019 – December…

“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 public-private-partnership with 45 members from Europe and the US, co-led by University of Oslo (coordinator) and Pfizer (industry lead), funded by the Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI). It is a joint undertaking of the European Commission, the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations (EFPIA). Roche’s involvement in this EU cross-industry initiative was served by a member of the Medical CX department. More on Gravitate Health on the European Patients Forum website…