
Patients Want A New Relationship
The fact that we use the word ‘consumerization’ is interesting as arguably it’s what we might expect already. After all, patients in most countries are used to paying, one way or the other, to try to maintain their health. We can think for example of private-sector insurance models, as in America, or indirectly funded state systems like those in Europe. In both cases the recipient is ultimately funding treatment. But, despite this, the life science & healthcare industry has seemed to take the view that healthcare patients are not really ‘consumers’ in the classic sense.
One patient interviewed by DHL’s Senior Sector Expert, Dr Nana Bit-Avragim called this “assumption health” – a status quo in which the industry provides medicine and care, as it thinks best, and patients are assumed to be grateful and complicit. “Within this picture”, Nana explains, “issues of health and medicine will always be mysterious to the lay person, who must instead rely upon experts’ guidance. That’s been the unspoken attitude.”
SIX WAYS CLINICAL TRIALS WILL BETTER EVOLVE
As this article title suggests, successfully abandoning ‘assumption health’ for the partnership model means welcoming, not saying goodbye to, a ‘golden age’ of trials. Instead of seeing consumerization as a response to competitive threats from Silicon Valley, or to legislation; sponsors should be eagerly pursuing change. Here are six big reasons why. Click the pictures below to read more.
A New Opportunity To Excel!
Lastly, perhaps controversially, those sponsors and CROs that make their clinical trials more consumerized will outperform less able competitors. Matthias Roos makes this point:

In Conclusion
There is always a lot of detail in clinical trials but there is a simple ‘elevator pitch’ we should feel good about.
The pandemic has focused attention on long-term concerns about the composition of clinical trials, so, at the very least we have new regulatory standards to achieve; this can’t be done easily with traditional methodologies, yet can be if we adopt a more consumerized model; doing that might seem like a lot of new behaviors, but consumerization is not only unavoidable, it will demonstrate a long list of benefits, not least cost savings and a better rate of trial success; and, the logistics learning curve is already being overcome.
As is so often the case, the future turns out to be better than the PAST.