Darshan
Hey everyone. Welcome to another episode of DarshanTalks. I'm your host Darshan Kulkarni. It's my mission to help patients trust the products they depend on. And as part of that, that includes clinical studies, that includes participation. And that includes being one of the people who might be involved in the study that gets you there. So as you know, I'm an attorney, I'm a pharmacist, and I advise companies with FDA regulated products. So if you think about drugs, wonder about devices, consider cannabis or obsessive a pharmacy. This is the podcast for you. I do have to specialize. I do. Sorry, I do have to emphasize this is not legal advice, not clinical advice. It's for educational reasons only. So I do these video podcasts because they're a lot of fun. I get to talk to smart people like the one I'm going to talk to you today. And I find myself learning something new each time. So be great to know if you're listening. And if you like what you hear, please like leave a comment, leave a comment, please subscribe. You can find me on DarshanTalks on Twitter or just go to our website at DarshanTalks calm. today's podcast, this podcast is gonna be really exciting because we have someone who brings a wealth of information in patient centricity and patient engagement, but is now seeing it from a different viewpoint. And it's now recontextualizing that information we get to learn about that recontextualization. So if you are in clinical research and are curious about patient engagement, how is that different from patient centered centricity and, and how that all ties into clinical research. This is the podcast for you. Our guest today is the SVP of patient insights and solutions at the patient Center of Excellence in prime global. So that is a bit of a mouthful, so I'm going to ask you to explain what those words actually mean. But our guests for today, ladies and gentlemen, is Miss Emma Sutcliffe. Emma, good to have you on. How are you
Emma
lovely to be back. Thank you. And I was just commenting before we went live that the last time you had me to do a podcast, I arrived without any makeup without my hair done. I've had a very busy day, this time I'm reading. The only thing I have positioned myself in front of a bookcase. So I look erudite, you know that that, you know, if all else fails, I won't be leaving this podcast today. With my children, just saying, Mom, that was awful. Never ever, ever, ever go live without at least masskara. So we are 100% better than last time. So that's great.
Darshan
I will say this, I, I I'm very worried about myself. But I love the color of your walls. And that contrasts so beautifully with the white. I'm trying to redo my house. And I'm kind of like looking at colors. So
Emma
this is the real world, isn't it? We're all working from home. Now. We spend so much time in our homes. And it's some sort of dark blue. My husband is a is a head of art. So he would be able to tell you the exact color. Like a mess. I can't tell you what. But nevermind.
Darshan
Fair enough. Fair enough. So So Emma, talk to us about what you're doing now the How is that different from where you are? And
Emma
Oh, absolutely. So I have a really wonderful role, actually. And it's one of those situations when you know, I can't believe that they pay me to do the job I do. And that's delightful. So my job is to lead the center of excellence at prime patient, which is a center of excellence with experts in clinical trial recruitment, patient voice publications, all types of patient engagement projects, right from patient focused drug development through every part of an engagement relationship, right through to patient support programs. So we have experts that head of each of those different parts within prime patient patient. The big sale just to give you the facts and figures, it's a prime patient
Emma
works the center of excellence to assist our seven specific medical communications agencies within the prime Medical Group. And then there are for further expert consultancies, including access, oncology specialists, and consulting and our most recently won, which is omics and all the omics around around medicine. But what the role of the Center of Excellence the prime Patient Centered excellence team has to do is to support all of our colleagues and all of our clients, our pharma clients, with understanding and integrating the patient voice into all of our projects. So what we actually say is, you know, we have, we really have two objectives and the objective is to amplify the patient voice within healthcare. And the other objective is to augment and, and help provide actionable insights from patients to our former clients. So we have a dual role and we The reason we have this To roll is because our credo I suppose, is that we we actually deliver the business of patient engagement. What I mean by that is we're no longer in a place. Fortunately, we're no longer in a place where we talk about patient engagement or centricity being at the heart of what we do or nice to do, it is now a business essential, it has return on investment. And so our job is to ensure that the patient voices amplified and patient insights are activated, so that we deliver the business of patient engaging for our clients. And I actually really like that because it's very transparent, transactional, and it means we all know the rules to abide by. And it really does come from, you know, the tissue was a tech journalist said in 20 2012, in 2012, that patient engagement will be the next blockbuster drug, which is a huge, you know, ambitious, bold statement. And then fast forward, and we see Laura caveny, who exited Novartis at the end of 2020. And she was Global Head of patient insights, they're saying that we are now in a place where patient engagement has to have a transferable business value within an organization. And it's manifest in every single department, if you get the patient engagement practices, right, you will get the business of patient engagement, right, and you will get return on your investment. What that means is we all benefit. So this is where we have the concept that we are pushing very hard for, you know, all of our colleagues, and we do consider patients and pharma to be our colleagues. We're trying to push people forward and to promulgate the concept, that when patient engagement is right, there is a triple win. That means that patients benefit because they get medicines, and they get treatments and devices and support sooner, it means that farmer benefits because their products and services and devices are fit for purpose. And ultimately it means that society does benefit. Because we all know the challenges with trial recruitment, trial retention, bringing products through the pipeline. And we also know when a product is available, and the medicines available, that it's very hard to sustain and long term adherence and compliance with chronic conditions. So we need to get patient engagement, right for patients, for pharma, and for society. And I'm really delighted that we are in that place. Now. It's almost that we've gone past and I'm really delighted, actually, that we've gone past this, this need to, you know, explain to farm a why they need to have good patient engagement, because we are now there. And the reality is good patient engagement delivers that triple win. So our role really is to support clients with projects and support patients, in their projects with farmer that ensures that we ultimately get that triple win. I absolutely love it. I'm waffling on a bit now but as you can tell, it's it's getting that triple win concept front of mind, and getting everybody to the place the same place at the table, different experiences, different expertise to offer. But around that table. Now, we are all here to deliver the business of patient engagement to get that to find and deliver that triple win.
Darshan
I think I love the idea of the triple win. But I'm going to challenge you on this because you're right, I think that bringing patients in only helps you in in your long term goals for your product, especially when you're in the rare disease state world. But let me ask you this question when you have a small pharma company, yeah, not not extremely well funded, still trying to get its funding to make sure you get to a phase one or phase two or phase three. It's really hard to talk to them even today, about patient centricity. They're usually going Yes, that is for the AstraZeneca is of the world of the Novartis is of the world. We don't we need to make sure that we have the funding to get to phase one to phase two, have you had the same success with the smaller companies that you had with the larger ones?
Emma
Absolutely. In fact, most of the work we do is with those smaller companies to give them our expertise, our center of excellence expertise, so we can expedite them through those stages of of normalization. We actually call it normalizing patient engagement practices in house. So our role as expert insights and strategist and strategists is to help them decide what spend they have, how they can get the best return patient engagement because nobody has endless pocket. If cash Of course they don't. And that's a really important point because it doesn't matter. If you're a, you know, giant Big Pharma or a small biotech, the reality is there is scrutiny and increasing scrutiny over how patient pharma companies interact with patients. And we can see that that happened actually, quite a while ago now with the sunshine act and how how farm interacts with hcps. And with physicians, what we're now seeing is society saying, How are farmers spending money with patient advocacy groups with patient opinion leaders. So there is a general call for transparency in what the relationship and the partnerships are anyway. So it makes every sense to make sure that there is a business engagement of the patient of patient engagement so that all parties know what they're doing, and what's permissible. What tends to happen with the smaller companies is they become, I don't want to sound condescending. But there is a confusion, there's conflation, I think, between actually what is patient, what is promotional behavior, or projects and what's actually completely appropriate behavior and engaging with patients. So if we look at where patient engagement fits, if we just take a take, it could be a digital product, it could be, you know, chemotherapy, it could be any kind of pharma product or service. And do bear in mind that patient engagement and support programs are considered adjuvant therapies in themselves. So let's just take a product day and we're taking it through through that pipeline. So patient engagement delivers a return on investment for every single department in that pharma company, whatever the size of pharma company. So, at the clinical trial setting, it's absolutely imperative that patients are involved in setting the clinical trial protocol. Because we need to establish patient reported outcome measures, patient proposed experienced measures, premieres and proms they are now expected it's not quite mandatory, but they are expected to be part of that regulatory dossier. So our regulators and our health tech reviewers are expecting to see patient engagement at the clinical trial design level. So let's just stay in r&d. So if you get prom, a pram and outcome measure of some search, and you are designing that clinical trial protocol with the patient in mind and engaged, then you are going to get a clinical trial protocol that people will stick in and stay into the program that answers that very big problem and question around retention improvement clinical trials. So not only are you setting up the trial to have something that the regulators are expecting, you are engaging with patients and keeping them in trials. What we also know is engaged patients become activated patients and there is this measure called the patient activation measure. I'm not sure if if you're aware of it.
Emma
So what the patient activation measure does is it looks at it actually is it's 13 questions, and it's very bold statements from and it's a Likert scale, such as you know, yes, I very much disagree or Yes, I very much agree. So it has broad statements about the patient's a person's health. And you can score it out of 100, which is a bit of a bit of an odd mix. But But trust me here, you know, there are 13 questions, but you score out of 100 for every 10 points that a person goes up that patient activation measure, there is absolute correlation with their their sense of self control and their sense of self health and their participation in global health. So actually, that there's, there's uncontested proof that patient engagement from farmer to patients, pushes them up that patient activation measure. And that means for society, the outcome of that is people engage in healthy behaviors, they actually take their medicines, they're more compliant, they're more adherence programs. And the end stage of that patient activation measure is they consume or utilize fewer health resources. So given just how much the bill is, you know, globally and on a regional level for utilization of health resources, any engagement, that that increases the patient activation measure that enables the person to take a more direct role in their self care. And you know, use uses less healthcare resources is that ultimate triple win for society. So it from early trial protocol through to regulatory approval through to long term, you know, compliance adherence and less utilization of health resources. That speaks to that big global sustainability piece. And there's absolutely, I really sound very bold. Now it's quite Cavalier of me. But whenever whenever people within a pharma company say, well, actually patient engagement is with r&d, or patient engagement is with medical affairs, or patient engagement is with advocacy or with Corporate affairs, absolutely not patient engagement has to be a part of the organizational, the normal business essential for every department in pharma. If you don't need to give us that work, I'd be I'd be delighted if you would, because we can help you secure ROI for whatever stage of engagement you're doing. But you know, if you take one thing from this message is that there is no excuse for not approaching patient engagement from that ROI. It's the business of protect of patient engagement that we're now in the practice of, and what you can see from the adverse advocacy groups and for patient opinion leaders is, they are really welcoming that new attitude to, you know, they want, they also want to be part of the triple win. So, um, as far as I'm concerned, you know, we are in that wonderful, brave new world, where we can actually engage as experts in our own experience. So the job that we have really a prime at the prime patient Center of Excellence is to ensure that we are establishing those Business Essentials in those relationships, we are quite bold, in taking up this new role, which I've been in place since April, we've actually gone about, we actually have established patient contracts directly with patient experts that we want to work with. So from the outset, were saying, actually, we are going to create, you know, business contracts, so that each part of the party knows what, what, what is expected of them. And I can absolutely tell you, we haven't had one issue with those patient experts. In fact, they've, they've welcomed them. And then what we can do then is demonstrate to our farmer clients who are a little bit afraid of creating those business engagement contracts, that it's completely feasible, and that transparent practice benefits as all. So I am now proselytizing, lecturing. But because I feel very, I feel very impassioned, that we can actually have new business relationships with the advocacy groups with the experts. And that patient engagement should absolutely you know, permeate through all aspects of pharma business, whatever the size of pharma company you are.
Darshan
So which raises a really interesting question to me, because you, you talk about these contracts, which, let's create this discrete list of expectations, which, as a lawyer, I love because I have to go, this is what I'm holding you to. However, the key portions of this, as you put it were transparency and transactional ness. Now the question I have, is that, is this ever, because we now live in a world where people can look backwards and go, that basically Monday morning quarterback, for lack of a better term? Do you worry about a scenario where someone would come in after the fact and go, you gave X amount of money to this patient, and this patient, you know, was a advocate for your product, you are now beholden to training this patient, making sure that they do all these other things that they were supposed to do, and therefore they might improperly influence the prescribing of your product by in our case, CMS, and that causes own issues. What What is your take when when companies say something like that, or when individuals come in after the fact and say, here's a potential problem you hadn't considered? Well,
Emma
at the risk of sounding really facetious. I don't, I don't wish to be facetious. But patients don't prescribe products, you know, physicians and hcps and medical experts do and they will make those prescriptions based on on the medical data. What patients do is contribute to the clinical trial design and contribute their experience so that we have patient reported outcome measures and patient reported experience measures. What they do is they make it sensible so that when the product lay or the medicine leaves the clinical perfection of a trial, that actually it will perform in the real world. So what is actually happening is here is that we are protecting the long term safety and efficacy of a product so that when that that patient is no longer in a trial when that patient perhaps you know we're coming out of lockdown when that patient isn't seeing their physician as much as we're used to that that that that product that device whether it's a digital therapy or a patient support program or or a straightforward medicine pharmacotherapy that is actually been wrapped defied in the real world setting much earlier in our system. So what this does is it actually increases the safety of the approval system. So the first answer is, you know, patients don't prescribe products, so that medical experts do. But there is no doubt whatsoever that including the patient experience in product design and development. And then this is why the regulators are starting to ask for problems and trends from clinical trials, because those products and devices need to translate into the real world. So we have spent most of our pharmaceutical lives focusing on translation from, you know, from the lab to a clinical trial, what patient engagement catalyzes is that translation from the clinical trial to the real world? So there is absolutely no doubt that the benefits far outweigh the concerns. What do you do with any concern, you get in front of the concern and you deal with it, you manage the risk, you don't let the risk manage you. So I'm, I have no doubts whatsoever, that all of the pharma companies I work with their their practices, and their compliance with patients is absolutely top rates. Because let's remember, this is the most heavily scrutinized and regulated industry. So in actual fact, what happens is the smaller pharma companies become too concerned about the wrong kind of interaction with patients the wrong kind of patient engagement. So that puts them almost in a in a paralysis. So again, it's our job. It doesn't just have to be patient, of course, you know, I lead by patient, I want people to buy our services and strategy. Of course I do. But anybody who was a consultant will actually work with a pharma company and know their stuff, and make sure that these these practices are fully compliant. That's why leaders like myself, now we put out white papers, and we put out case studies. And that's why groups like the CIA, you know, they actually try and put case studies out so that people aren't, you know, paralyzed by the fear of what might happen. So, you know, it's it's, it's as simple as sitting down with a compliance people sitting down with the patient experts sitting down with the regulators, and making sure this is the business of patient engagement. Are we all delivering a transparent transactional business of patient engagement? Nine times out of 10? The answer is, of course, we are that one times out of 10 means what do we need to do to make it appropriate?
Darshan
Now, tell me again, in your role at prime global, do you tend to work globally? Or do you tend to be UK and US bit? Like, do you have a region?
Emma
Yeah, well, well, my mind is mine is a global role. And the central axis has a global role. And in fact, where we're just as soon as as soon as the you know, it's, it's fine to travel again, you know, we'll be over with our, with our west coast, American clients and patient groups there. And we're gonna be doing some work, we're launching some new products or services, we're launching a patient voice, publication, and a lot, we're launching patient insight, positional papers, again, working with with patient groups, and with clients to understand the business of patient engagement. So now the plan is, is for us to be to be doing that after Labor Day, which is hopefully when, you know, the US will be back open for for business travel when it's safe to do so. But no, I, again, the hard sell on on prime and we have we just opened our eighth office, I think in San Diego, but we have, we have offices worldwide. So you know, it's a global role. And it's important that it is a global role. I'm currently, I'm not going to give it away, but I'm currently recruiting for someone who has a very, very trusted big name in patient engagement platforms, platforms that lead to clinical trial recruitment. And that is specifically a person who can be based in the US, I'm trying not to say he or she so that they have an absolute understanding of the nuances and the regulatory differences. So no, we have a global reach, and it's essential that we do of course, what we do in one region affects what we do in another region. So it should have the right knock on effect. But no we have we have global reach and I think the last count I think we're 305 people globally that's not patient. But what what is always this is what I've always loved about about agency live and you know, I've worked in a farmer side and I've worked agency side. I genuinely love the creativity and the the the Almost the agility of agency life because you get to, you have different kinds of relationships with patient groups, for example, because they don't have that fear of xoJ x, you know, is this similar from a big pharma company coming to talk to me? Or is this just Emma who, who really passionately believes in patient engagement. So you, you have a really privileged position, it's a lovely aspect to agency life, that you can also advise your farmer clients, hang on, that's not quite right, or hang on, you know, you need to be a bit bolder, actually, you can do more than you're limiting yourself to. So it's a it's an absolutely fantastic mount. I mean, I'm a mom and a stepmom. So I'm pretty used to that blended family. So I think that is very much you know, how I approached my professional life, my my role, and the center of excellence role is to blend together the needs so that we get that triple win. And what what is delightful is we've got so many compelling case studies. Now I think the DA said there were over 100 different examples of patient engagement through all parts of pharma, which really demonstrate that the merits of patient engagement. So we have so many case studies, and so many great companies doing absolutely great stuff, that perhaps then the smaller companies can take their lead from. So if we get patient engagement, right, it benefits us all. So
Emma
I'm
Darshan
sorry, I was trying to make sure I try to mute myself so that I don't drop, we already have people tuning in saying hello, and they're really excited to be here. So hi, Christine. I'm glad you're here. Glad you're listening. Um, let me ask one question. I know I usually try to edit these as you know, 1520 minutes, we're already well past time, but that's not what you're you're so full of information. Passion is awesome. Let me ask you this. So when they want to bring you in, when is the appropriate time? Is it? I'm now a pharma company? I have a study I have in mind. Do I call the CRL? First, or do I call prime first?
Emma
Well, probably if you call the CIO, they probably would have called us anyway. You know, I I'm not I'm not here to take any any work away from any of the CR O's. But a lot of them do have some very good patient engagement programs of their own and set practices. But they also do reach out to patient engagement experts like ours to say actually, how do we have the right messages? How do we actually engage people in creating a prominent program? How do we integrate? And how do we retain people in trials? So we actually do work with quite a lot of sorrows directly. And we have a lot of partnerships where, you know, we're all grown ups here we can all we can all we can all work? Well, there's no reason why we can't. So we often are involved in patient engagement projects that actually take an entire view. So it is that whole view from patient engagement for a trial or a new trial, but through to the long standing patient support programs, and actually, you know, publication of data post trial. So that's what's really great about having a what, what, what what's in what's great about the prime patient team, is we genuinely have experts in each element of the patient engagement, an entire spectrum, right from that translational, you know, clinical trial of recruitment and enrollment, etc, through to patient education campaigns, public awareness, campaigns, advocacy interactions. So across the team, you know, we can be doing one patient survey, you know, questionnaire for company x through two, as you said, you know, how do E's, establish and ratify a patient outcome measure for this trial, through to, you know, working with the patient at the prime access group and other specialists team? How do we have the right conversations with regulators and payers and patient advocacy groups? So it's absolutely it's just wonderful to, you know, to have this incredible team of experts around me, you know, I can then you know, lecture proselytize, look at the strategy of patient engagement and look at that, keeping the sector moving forward because I've got absolute expert colleagues that stay I suppose, you know, in their in their track and focus on those specific things. But it's really lovely for me, because what it means is I can bring you know, I can interweave the right the right kind of people in for, for, for what a client's challenges. So I can find a way to either amplify that patient voice or generate insights for pharma clients, whatever stage of patient engagement they they're at, or they think they're up
Darshan
Question. You're doing so much, how can people reach you?
Emma
I don't want to be reached. Well, you know, obviously, I mean, I can circulate my email afterwards. But you can find me on LinkedIn, you can find me on Twitter at Adorama. We run pep talks, and we run prime patient pep talks on Twitter, which is, you know, a lot of the team running. What we do with with pep talks on Twitter is we try and share case studies and best practices. So it's not about any kind of HSE hardstyle. It's around the sector, and what patient engagement practices Do we need to all be sharing. So you can find me there. And hopefully from from Saturday, you won't be able to find me for two weeks, I'm going on vacation. But yes, yes, just send me an email or drop me a message on LinkedIn or Twitter. I, it probably does sound really trite. But we've got such experts in prime patient that I there will be someone that will be able to help with whatever your patient engagement challenge or insight challenges at any part of your, your engagement program.
Darshan
That's awesome, and
Emma
great people, and we work with great people.
Darshan
I think that's wonderful. Now, let me do a quick summary, we ended up talking about clinical trial participation. We talked a little bit about how you integrate the patient voice, you talked about the actionable insights that you provide to pharma companies. And actually, you can say that in as many words but also to patients to educate the patients to be able to meet those those expectations, and do that to actually use things like contracts, which is unusual, but but welcome. You also talked about being in the business of patient engagement. And now being a business essential for lack of a better term, you talked about this new new positioning, if you will, of being transparent and transactional, as opposed to this wofully engagement that we've had previously, you we discussed a little bit about Crimson problems, we talked about the the difference between promotional and educational. And then we talked a little bit a little bit about the patient activation measure. And what that is, and how that plays a role. We then got into a little bit about working with CRS, and how that comes into play, which is, frankly, they'll just reach out to you. So you are often the genius pulling those topics.
Emma
So I think genius might be a bit of a claim too far.
Darshan
But But Did I miss anything? First of all?
Emma
No, I think I was an absolutely excellent summary. The only thing you didn't say was the triple win, that ultimately it's about getting super win. So engagement that benefits patients, patients, first patients, and pharma and society. And it's, it's completely possible to achieve it. If you have that mindset. That's what we will work towards. Very, very
Darshan
cool. I do have a couple of questions for you. Okay. Here we go. Based on what we discussed, what would you like to ask the audience?
Emma
I would like to ask the audience, if they do believe that triple win working is achievable within their organization?
Darshan
I usually try to answer it, I would say yes, it absolutely is. But I think it takes a little bit of thought to get there. It's not people think that you can do a triple win simply by saying I'm gonna do a triple win. And it's actually usually the result of hard work and actually active tuning into what those wins are, as opposed to sort of doing it and then going and backtracking and going, I probably have a triple win. And that's not helpful. And patients see through that very quickly.
Emma
They do. I should have had two questions. So can I have
Darshan
a couple more? I have a couple more. Oh, I'm sorry. I thought you have two questions that go ahead. Go
Emma
ahead. You have another question. If I could,
Emma
oh, no, that's
Emma
okay. So I'd like to ask them within a farmer organization, which department do they think rejects patient engagement as being part of their role the most?
Emma
rejects
Darshan
that it's not so okay. I would say Who do I need to have a face to face with us? So here's what I would say. I think that I'm currently director for a group of factum I which is probably the top 20 or 30 pharma companies and their medical affairs departments. And I know that they're all making a push that the patient voice needs to be part of what they're doing on a very consistent level. The big question is that you you have to deal with from a compliance perspective is the way medical affairs works by definition It's always been a scientific discussion question is, in a true scientific discussion, does the other person have to be a clinician? Or if or a PhD or the like, which is why your medical affairs department is staffed with MDS, PhDs and farm days? So the question is, is it appropriately placed in medical affairs? Or is it? Is it a, does medical affairs have to change the scope? Or does a new department needs to be created? The alternative question is, shouldn't be in commercial. And I think the argument in commercial is the fact that commercials oftentimes trying to push the product, they may not have the goodwill that medical affairs often does. So that educational component, even though it's being done with the right, intent, and can be done appropriately. Question is, do you have the ability to do it. And in terms of patient engagement, one of the things you do have to consider is patients are going to ask the questions they have not the questions you want. And unfortunately, if you're in commercial, whether that's marketing, whether it's, that's something else, yep, you can't keep going, I'm going to have someone else contact you, which is what you'd have to do, if it's in commercial. And they're asking off legal questions. So how does that play out in your individual organization? Is there a new team that needs to be created? Because we know, as you pointed out several times, the FDA and ama want you to engage and have patient engagement? So what does that look like? What does that do structure? So
Emma
it's not a trick question. Because what I'm trying to explain is, it requires an infrastructure. And for a company just to say, well, we have a patient engagement person, and it all set with them is as a nonsense, because it's unfair to that person. And also, it's the whole it takes a village to raise a child, right? It takes an infrastructure, a business infrastructure to deliver patient engagement, that is effective return on investment is compliant, and ultimately benefits patients from society. So it is about the infrastructure. And the reason I asked that question is because a lot of what I personally do so my personal my personal strength, not just leading the team is looking to help companies create that infrastructure. I've I've created the infrastructure inside a couple of pharma companies, myself different kinds of companies to, and I've helped to co create that infrastructure with my former colleagues in their environment. And a lot of what I personally have to do is, is literally lobby and help present internally, and we call it our pep talks program, which stands for pep talks pep talk, but it stands for patient engagement practices. So what we do is, we deliver either one to one or in a group setting, we deliver the we deliver six modules about patient engagement in practice, with the intent to sorting out the infrastructure. So what infrastructure Do you need for your company to make sure that everything is in the right place, so that the ROI that you invest in patient engagement has a business return? So you know, you would Why would you would just go and spend you know, money on something that you didn't know how it worked? So what we say is, don't don't listen to anybody who comes to try and sell you this patient education campaign or a patient awareness campaign. If they're not saying to you, what is your infrastructure for sensible business delivery. So your infrastructure, right? Look at your strategy, and then you will deliver effective patient engagement, which is why it's quite hardcore. And it's nice, because, you know, for me, this represents 15 years, 20 years of trying to persuade pharma and patient groups to interact. The fact that we're now at the place saying, what is the infrastructure? What is the compliance? And what is your patient engagement practice? That's a great place to be because that has elevated it from that nice two to an essential a business essential. It's not a nice to, it's a must do. Love it.
Darshan
Question for you. My first question is what made you happy last week,
Emma
maybe last week? What made me happy last week Ah, well, my stepdaughter nailed performance in her end of year end of prep school play as Captain pink beard and she maintained her pirate accent throughout that made me very happy. Children manage to have a sports day so I have like two children, two stepchildren, so there's like always for adolescents around here to tell me you know how dreadful I am. And actually we, on the professional front, we welcomed a new expert into our team. And he will, he will be I shall, I shall, I shall say just yet because we're just finishing up on some stuff with him. But he will be leading our patient recruitment and patient retention. That was absolutely thrilling. First time Ross, he wrote the book, I'll give you some more clues. He wrote the book on how to use social media channels for patient engagement and recruitment is trial. So go look him up. So that was absolutely fantastic. And we actually recorded our first patient voice publication with a patient with muscular dystrophy. So that was incredible. Because what what we've got there is a big, you know, a real expert joining the team, which is fantastic. And then we're actually doing a patient voice publication with a with a patient. And a couple of clients who I've worked with in the past said they might like to do some more work with us. So that's always nice, right? So last week was great. Oh, I think it didn't it didn't England when some sort of football match against Germany and
Emma
tell you, I couldn't tell you if I tried. I think I think the entire was quite happy. There
Emma
was a good week last week.
Darshan
Last question, oh, what did you learn last month?
Emma
But last month? Oh, do you know what, that's a really funny thing. Because I was on a leadership course, and I love all those kind of courses because it's time to think. And someone said to me, the course leader said that leadership is when people will follow you, even if they don't have to. And I use that as a conversation with lots of different people. So it really sparked off, but it made me learn something about myself and that I kind of sat there thinking I don't want anyone to follow me. I'm busy right now. But I just thought that was a really nice insightful thing to think about that actually. That's what leadership is, it's when people don't need to follow you, but but you, you, you, you, you kind of innovate them or inspire them such that they they want to they're not quite sure maybe what it is maybe you're kind of questing and pioneering together. But they want to believe that you know, if you work together, that something good will come and and I just thought that was really interesting because we see so much stuff about you know, what's a leader? What's a manager? So, um, that that definition just just did sit in my head for a while, and it was in a lot of the conversations I was having with colleagues and clients last week. Yeah, so
Darshan
um, again, about where can they reach you? What's the Twitter you suggest?
Emma
T dot Emma. And LinkedIn, I'm Emma Sutcliffe. I shall I get my email address is Emma dot sutcliff. It's su TCL I FF E, at prime global people.com.
Darshan
There you go. And you can reach me at DarshanTalks on Twitter or find me on our website at marshawn talks calm about this was wonderful. Thank you so much for being on.
Emma
Always a pleasure. Can't wait till next time.
Emma
This is the DarshanTalks podcast, regulatory guy, irregular podcast with host Darshan Kulkarni. You can find the show on twitter at DarshanTalks or the show's website at DarshanTalks.com
