Hi!

At our very first Patient Advocacy & Engagement Roundtable discussion, Patient Stories Without a Fixed Address, the conversation with leaders from Astellas, Bayer, and Atrium Therapeutics focused on what patient centricity looks like when it is treated as a strategic business priority.

A consistent theme emerged: Organizations that build strong patient relationships tend to do so by embedding patient perspectives early, operationalizing what they hear, and protecting the integrity of the function as commercial pressures evolve.

T2B Pro members can watch the replay here.

Here are our top 10 takeaways from the conversation:

1. Start with why before you start with who. Before reaching out to a patient community, clarify internally what you are asking for and whether the problem you are trying to solve genuinely exists for that community.
2. Build patient relationships in parallel with the science, not after it. Engaging patient groups from early research stages and keeping them informed of pipeline progress creates a network grounded in shared goals rather than transactional data pulls.
3. Reframe patient advocacy as enterprise strategy, not functional ownership. When organizations treat patient affairs as a company-wide imperative, territorial friction falls away and cross-functional collaboration becomes organic rather than forced.
4. Governance frameworks are what make creative patient storytelling possible. Clear, compliant engagement processes remove fear, empower teams to think bigger about how to bring authentic patient stories forward, and protect both parties through review.
5. Compensating patients for their time is not yet standard practice, and it should be. Proactively raising fair market value conversations, rather than waiting for patients to bring them up, is a foundational element of genuine partnership.
6. Gathering patient insights without a plan to operationalize them is an incomplete function. Patients share deeply personal stories because they believe it will lead to better outcomes; without clear pathways to apply insights across research, regulatory, market access, and medical, that trust goes unfulfilled.
7. Protect the integrity of the patient centricity function when commercial pressure mounts. Patient centricity is therapeutic-specific and brand-agnostic; allowing it to drift toward brand preference research fundamentally changes what it is and what it can deliver.
8. Patient centricity works best when it works like "surround sound." The most impactful work happens when patient voices are threaded simultaneously across earned media, policy advocacy, internal leadership engagement, and cross-organization convenings.
9. The communicator and patient advocacy lead partnership is a strategic relationship, not a downstream handoff. When communicators are embedded early, they can translate patient insights into business imperatives and ensure the patient perspective anchors strategy as an input from the start.
10. Measure patient advocacy impact beyond reach and clicks. Patient affairs investment is real and measurable; evaluating trust, stakeholder alignment, and influence on decision-making gives a truer picture of return.

We look forward to hearing more from our fantastic Patient Advocacy & Engagement Roundtable!

Lynnea

P.S. – T2B Pro and Student members can access additional resources via their T2B Dashboard here.