Listen to the evidence
“It is a capital mistake to theorise before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.” Sherlock Holmes knew a thing or two about the importance of hard evidence. In the event of his sleuthing career not taking off, he could have made a good living as a pharma consultant.
If launching drugs was like solving a murder mystery, Detective Pharma would decide the butler did it before the investigation had opened, then quietly ignore the fact the poor chap was on holiday in the Maldives at the time.
Our industry is notorious for backing flawed strategies in the face of overwhelming evidence that we should change course. Ask an expert why and they’ll tell you the obvious: siloes prevent effective communication; long lead times mean immovable ‘milestones’ that make it impossible to pivot; and, naturally, the constant, overbearing compliance burden.
These excuses add up to an admission that the plans we make are flawed by design and that the only option we have is to lock up the wrong guy. The unbearable thing is, the better we get to know our markets, the easier it is to detect when our plans are faulty. With modern technology, especially LLMs that increase the power of qualitative insights, we can gather better evidence than ever.
Not only this, our markets are changing rapidly; patients are having a much greater say in their treatment options as social media is opening new engagement channels. It has never been easier to gather clues, which only means that it becomes even more obvious that set-in-stone theories are flawed.
It’s easy to say that we should totally transform the go-to-market model in response (and clever consultants will line up to sell a beautiful idea of what this might look like), but we should look for solutions on a smaller scale.
Working within the rules, we all regularly come across blockers that prevent us from making the evidence before us count. We must mark out the decisions that solid evidence, surfaced from HCPs and patients, should overrule. How can we ensure that unprompted HCP skepticism, surfaced months before launch, drives what we say in the field? How do we plan our messaging so that real-life obstacles to adherence are actionable as soon as they’re identified?
We don’t need sweeping changes to start work on this; we can start right now, even if it is uncomfortable and expensive from a personal and professional point of view. There’s only one Sherlock Holmes, but a team of Dr Watsons will gather soon to share their own thoughts on this riddle.
The game is afoot on the Pharmageddon EU Waiting List, open now.
