Despite extensive experience in clinical research and our growing patient advocacy group network, we’re far from where we want to be with putting ourselves in the shoes of patients. Absolute patient empathy is an evolving process, and we’re determined to push the learning curve as far forward as we can every day.

At a recent all-hands meeting, our team challenged each other to think from the perspective of our patients and patient advocates in new ways. One of my big takeaways was that we too often focus on the feedback we want to hear to do our jobs, and don’t always dig deeper at the root causes of feedback. When taking a step back it became clearer that there so much more depth to the voice of the patient that we aren’t listening to, capturing and acting on nearly enough.

• What endpoints matter most to patients?
• How burdensome is dealing with comorbidities?
• What lifestyle adjustments have already been made?
• How far-reaching of an impact does this leave on family members and caregivers?

While we’ve had a lot of successes moving research forward in the past 2-3 years, and we’ve done a lot of great work building patient centricity into clinical research, we’re still getting better at what we do. We’ve made strides to see beyond the limitations/restrictions/walls that we face to bridge the gap between patients and researchers. The choice for us is a relentless pursuit of evolved patient perspectives or fail.