Content produced using generative AI. Published June 25, 2026

SPEAKERS: 
- Danuta Marchi, Global Head of Patient Engagement & Advocacy, UCB
- Iria Gala, VP, Digital & Customer Engagement, Novo Nordisk
- Lisbeth Oxholm Snede, President, PiCC United
- Lena Förster, Principal, Temedica

MODERATOR:
- Mark Duman, Patient Engagement Pioneer, illuminate PE

KEY TAKEAWAYS: 
- Patient journey architecture, more than channel architecture, determines whether digital engagement produces better outcomes 
- Fragmented apps & digital ecosystems often replicate the silo problem they were trying to solve 
- Time-to-therapy can be significantly reduced, when Omnichannel Patient Engagement is based on clear segmentation and patient journey logic  
- Returning data and outcomes to patients as active partners is the mechanism that sustains engagement over time 
- Patient engagement as an organizational behavior, not a departmental function, separates leaders from laggards 

Pharma has spent over a decade building an infrastructure for patient engagement, including apps, omnichannel programs, patient support platforms and digital companions. The investment is real and their intention is genuine. What emerged at Pharma 2026 is that the investment in multiple digital channels may indeed be compounding the problem it was planning to solve. 

The paradox was stated plainly by Lisbeth Oxholm Snede, President of PiCC United. "We need to stop treating patients like they are experience channels," she argued, framing patients as active participants in their journey, not passive recipients of a channel strategy. This was the undercurrent than ran through every case study, outcome, and example the panel presented during their session. 

When Journey Logic Replaces Channel Logic
Lena Förster, Principal at Temedica, illustrated how Temedica works with leading pharmaceutical companies across multiple therapy areas, from multiple sclerosis, women’s health to rare diseases, to design patient engagement around real-world patient journeys, rather than around individual channels or brand messages. 

In one example, she described an omnichannel engagement program for patients at a critical early stage of their treatment journey. The challenge was clear: patients often face uncertainty, information gaps, and emotional barriers between diagnosis, treatment consideration, and therapy initiation. 

Temedica’s approach was to map these friction points and design engagement sequences around the patient’s next decision. Instead of segmenting only by demographic profile, patients were supported based on their journey state, knowledge level, channel preference, and immediate needs. 

The resulting engagement combined relatable patient perspectives, targeted education, myth-busting content, and practical preparation for physician conversations. Each interaction was designed to help patients move forward with greater clarity and confidence. 

The impact was significant: in that example, time to therapy was reduced by up to 50%. Förster emphasized that the core intervention was not the channel itself, but the journey logic behind it: “I’m not focused on the app. I’m focused on the journey we enable patients to move through.” 

Iria Gala, VP of Digital and Customer Engagement at Novo Nordisk, reached a similar conclusion via a different route. Working previously in diabetes care, she described deploying a program across more than 20 countries that delivered outcomes across three key areas. "Financially, we reduced unscheduled visits, so it made sense for the government. Clinically, we reduced HbA1c But for me, what was far away more important was for the patients: we increased their quality of life." The program didn't succeed because the app was well-designed. It succeeded because the program's architects had first understood the journey that real patients experienced. That understanding came from a single conversation with a father of a child living with diabetes, who told Gala the question that mattered to him had nothing to do with glycemic control: "For me it is what is going to make me decide if my son is able to go to a summer camp or not. For me that was mind-blowing and I started seeing things in a totally different manner." 

The Reciprocity Gap No One Has Solved 
Journey logic requires something most channel architectures don't deliver: feedback. Patients who contribute to clinical trials, advisory boards, or real-world data programs operate on an implicit contract. If that contract isn't honored, the engagement infrastructure loses the one thing it cannot engineer: trust. 

Snede drew on her work with cross-border clinical trial access to identify the mechanism precisely. "Patients are willing to do a lot, but if they are not communicated to and they don't get feedback, you lose them." The finding came from studying both patients rejected from trials and those who had participated multiple times. What distinguished sustained engagement from dropout was not the trial design or the therapeutic area. It was whether the system closed the loop.

Danuta Marchi, Global Head of Patient Engagement and Advocacy at UCB, acknowledged that pharma has not yet solved this, even at companies with genuine commitment to the principle. "That's at least my view, to get the patient back their clinical trials data. Really concretely, how did they perform, or how did the body perform on a given treatment or placebo. That's something that we are currently exploring and advocating for internally with relevant functions. Because I think we also owe that to patients, they dedicate their time and their lives to help us." That framing matters. The barriers here are organisational rather than technical: the functions that receive patient data and the functions responsible for patient relationships do not yet operate under a shared obligation to return that value to patients, and building that alignment is an active internal effort. 

Duman pressed on this by referencing Pfizer's public commitment to return trial results to participants¹. Whether that standard has become industry norm, or remains exceptional, went unanswered, which itself answers the question.  A collaborative real-world evidence initiative - by Temedica together with a pharma partner - produced a peer-reviewed publication on treatment initiation patterns, incorporating patients as co-authors. 

Fragmentation Is the Product of Silo Thinking 
The practical consequence of building channel architectures rather than journey architectures is that patients can end up having to navigate a fragmented ecosystem that replicates the silo structure of the organisations that created it. Snede made this real with an analogy that shifted thinking in the room. "Can you imagine that you have to go through an app to order that drink, and then you need to go to the toilet and you also have to use an app to book the toilet, and so on and so on. Patients have hundreds of them." 

The image is deliberately absurd. The operational reality it describes is not. A patient managing a chronic condition in 2025 may interact with a pharma company's patient support app, a hospital patient portal, a pharmacy platform, an insurance pre-authorisation system, and a patient advocacy organisation's resource hub, none of which communicate with each other, none of which know what the others have already asked the patient to do. 

Duman framed the channel proliferation question directly: "Are we relying too much on digital? Are we putting too many eggs in one basket?" Gala's answer was calibrated. "You need digital, but you don't need digital for everything. And I think that we haven’t yet found of the right calibration of the pendulum." The observation is accurate as far as it goes, but the pendulum metaphor implies a calibration challenge, how much digital versus how much human. The harder problem runs deeper than calibration. Even if pharma found the perfect balance of digital and human touchpoints, organising those touchpoints by channel rather than by patient journey would still produce a fragmented experience, because the boundaries between channels reflect organisational silos, not the way patients actually move through their care. 

Förster's response pointed toward the solution. "It's all about dynamic patient profiles because every patient has different preferences, different priorities and we need to meet them where they are not where we want them to be." Dynamic profiling is the mechanism that makes journey logic operational at scale. Instead of routing patients to predetermined channels, it routes channels to patients based on where they are in their journey and what they need next. The data infrastructure required for that is significant, but Temedica's platform architecture, one hub, multiple therapeutic areas, consented data collection feeding personalised guidance, demonstrates it is buildable. Snede described a parallel initiative in Denmark, where a national committee is working toward a single platform that consolidates everything from organ donation consent to clinical trial enrollment, so that patients have one place to go rather than a different portal for every organisation they interact with².

The Organizational Architecture Behind the Method 
What separates the companies producing the outcomes described in this session from those still optimising channel metrics; it is an organising principle about who owns patient engagement and what that ownership requires.

Marchi described UCB's approach with a precision that signals genuine organisational commitment. "We consciously distinguish patient engagement, which is a team; and engaging with patients, which is everyone." A dedicated function sets standards, builds methodology, and manages external partnerships. The expectation that everyone at UCB will engage with patients means patient insight isn't filtered through a single team before reaching decision-makers. It reaches them directly. That architecture is what makes patient engagement a strategic input to target product profiles rather than a communications task applied to products already in late development. 

"Patient engagement really starts with listening, listening deeply and listening in order to understand," Marchi argued. "And that starts from the earliest stages, the target product profiles. And it really begs the question: what is success for whom and according to what definition?" The pre-channel question, what does success look like for this patient population before we decide how to reach them, is one most organisations skip. They start with the channel because the channel is visible, measurable, and fundable. The listening infrastructure that should precede it is harder to budget and harder to attribute.

 
Gala's closing principle was sequencing rather than scope. Identify the single most concrete friction point for a specific patient cohort and solve that first, building trust and adherence before expanding. She recalled a Crohn's patient who named their primary need as knowing where to find a public bathroom without having to explain themselves. That problem is solvable, and the solution didn't require a sophisticated platform; it simply required someone taking the time to ask what the patient actually needed. 

The organisations closing the gap between patient engagement investment and patient engagement outcomes are not the ones with the most sophisticated channel architecture. They are the ones that first understand the patient journey and then let the channels follow. That difference can for example show up to 50% reduction in time to therapy for patients in certain therapy areas or indications.  Or helping a father determine if attending a summer camp is best for his son. Pharma that cannot connect those two moments; one clinical, one deeply human, is still organising around its own structures rather than around the lives of the people it exists to serve. 

1. https://www.pfizer.com/news/articles/the_importance_of_returning_clinical_trial_data_to_participants (accessed 20MAY26) 
2. Nearly 40 million people in England are now registered with the NHS App https://www.england.nhs.uk/2025/12/record-numbers-using-nhs-app-to-manage-health

To get you highlights of Pharma 2026 faster, we are using generative AI technology to summarise the transcripts of the sessions. If you have any feedback about the summary, please contact lucy.fisher@thomsonreuters.com. 

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