Patient-focused drug development: is behavioural science the answer to fully understanding patient priorities?

An Expert View from William Hind of Alpharmaxim and Lisa Campbell of SSI Strategy.

When the focus on ‘patient centricity’ is applied after a product comes to market, less obvious drivers of uptake and adherence may have already been missed, impeding the potential impact of a promising new treatment.

For drug development to be truly patient focused, it follows that patient considerations ought to be incorporated right from the earliest stages of drug discovery and development. This is a topic that may well have been on the minds of attendees at the recent European Congress on Obesity in Venice, particularly in the context of new weight loss-linked indications for established drugs.