Zemplar - Patient's journey
The challenge: Understand the route that Renal Insufficiency (RI) patients must go through in the health system in order to be diagnosed, receive treatment, make life-style changes, and how these changes affect those around them in order to build al comprehensive Patient Journey that would and to identify opportunities for Abbvie to position Zemplar® in early stages of RI, improve their quality of life and increase their patient base.
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My role: Innovation Strategy Consultant. Field Research with patients, analysis & insights, workshops design and facilitation, presentations to the client.
In the Research Phase of the project, 16 interviews with health professionals (Doctors, Nurses, Care-takers, Insurance admin, among others) and 21 interviews to patients and their relatives were done using semi-structured type interviews supported with projective tools for contrast and comparison. Here are some of the tools used for the interviews.
Aweek in the life Journal
Tool that allowed patients to prepare for the interview, to observe their behaviour, and to record the different activities, feelings and decisions they made by in different moments of the day during a week, in private and without pressure. This tool helped as a contrast tool for the interviews and the projective exercises.
Relationship levels Map
Technique used to allow the patient to associate the degree of importance that certain aspects play in their lives. From those they consider core to those that have little to no importance in the patient’s lives.
The Synthesis the results, findings and insights from the previous phase.
4 patient Personas were developed, as well as a profile for the different health professionals that are relevant for the patients during their journeys. These journeys were mapped and compared to identify Drivers and Barriers, where each relevant actor belongs, and where is there potential for Zemplar®.
Ideation. Based on the synthesis presented to the client and after understanding the systemic and cultural barriers Renal Insufficiency Patients have to sort out in order to obtain a proper treatment, we designed and facilitated an Ideation Session with medical, marketing, legal and sales experts of the company using our findings and opportunities as a starting point.
The Results were presented, as required by the client, in the format of a Customer Journey that compiled all Personas, their route, the main findings, barriers, emotional experience of each activity during the journey, relevant actor per phase, and spaces of opportunity for the Brand Team of Abbvie to use as a tool for the decision making regarding the strategy for Zemplar in the near future.
Patient journey navigating the health system for all 4 personas
Outcomes
The Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD) is the next step in Hypertension and Diabetes Melitus and by the time there are signs of Kidney Failure and a patient reaches a Nephrologist, it is too late.
It is recommended that the first efforts must be focused on the medical population related to base diseases of CKD, being a smaller population, easily identifiable and with direct influence over diagnosis and prevention.
The Nephro-protection Program in the Health System is designed to provide care for patients that need dialysis, but makes little to no efforts in preventing that a patient develops a CKD when there is clearly identifiable population of patients that with preventive programs can avoid dialysis for the rest of their lives.
The lack of trust in Medical Doctors, in third parties without medical training, folklore treatments and general avoidance of going to the doctor play an important role in developing a CKD.
* Thanks to the results and experience of the client with this project, several more projects were assigned to us for the following years.