Everything we do is for our patients” and “It’s all about the patient.” These are platitudes, but when we look at our actions, it’s never that clear cut. That’s because so much gets between us and the patient—doctors and decades of clinical practice, administrators and their competing goals, R&D and their complex language. Forgetting to prioritize the patient becomes all too easy.

With these barriers, why do I say now is the time for patient centricity? To me, it’s the confluence of technology, education, culture and, yes, good old-fashioned business imperative. Allow me to explain.

Direct to consumer has always been an option to us. In fact, we are less regulated than pharma in how we communicate or what we must include by law. But the value proposition of mass communication has seldom made sense. Yes, there are a few categories that might be mass market enough to have some appeal, but they are few and far between. So what has changed? Technology for one. We’re now able to be more specific in how we target, message and spend. Perhaps even more importantly, we can tailor our calls to action. For example Medtronic recruited for a major trial using a combination of social and digital.

Shared decision-making is not new, but now we can engage the patient and their caregivers and loved ones with many new means. Many medtech solutions are tactile, with buttons and screens. More therapeutic alternatives are entering the realm of patient preference. The choice to have a cardiac ablation instead of medical management, a renal procedure to reduce blood pressure instead of drugs or finally commit to that joint replacement to return mobility to your life—these are all choices that patients are more empowered to make. We in medtech can help inform patients, through our clinician customers and through direct communications.

But it isn’t more of the same here. The language we use has to change. No longer can we use scary clinical words or literal descriptions of our interventions without thought to the emotional resonance they might have with patients. Patient reported outcomes become ever more important to drive adoption and are often worthwhile endpoints in the world of shared decision-making. We also need to think about who is communicating. The traditional medtech marketer skilled at communicating with clinicians is exactly the wrong person to engage patients. We need to import these new skills to really be successful.

So new language, new people, new metrics and new devices aimed at truly engaging the patient to take control of their own care. What else? We also need to build patient empathy inside our organizations by inviting patients into our four walls. Celebrate a holiday party with them, bring them to the cafeteria and introduce them to town halls. Our organizations will respond when we bring authenticity and impact stories to remind us why we do everything we do.

It sounds like a long and daunting list of things to do. But I was inspired by the discussion at AdvaMed’s medtech conference in San Diego. Lisa Earnhardt, of Abbott, Geoff Martha, of Medtronic, and Ivan Tornos, of Zimmer Biomet, joined me on the CEOs Unplugged stage to inspire the audience about the important role patient centricity can, and must, play in future medtech strategies.

Brian Chapman,

Principal,

ZS Associates

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