It’s not enough to identify the symptoms of a disease: We also need to be aware of exactly how those symptoms affect the lives of people living with the disease. Which household tasks or parts of their daily routine do they find challenging? Are there social situations that they find uncomfortable? What’s the most disruptive symptom for their day-to-day life – and which symptoms are they sometimes able to overlook?

At Grünenthal, we’re constantly seeking the answers to questions like these by entering into open dialogue with patients and patient advocacy groups. Through a combination of focus groups, interviews and surveys, we’re able to hear pain patients’ voices and integrate their input in our development programs. We value the insights we gain highly – and we’re always looking for new opportunities to establish long-term relationships of this kind.

Our vision is to have patients involved in every step of the R&D process, engaging in an open dialogue eye-to-eye – as partners seeking a shared goal. By combining our expertise with their first-hand experience, we’re able to design more patient-friendly trials, creating enhanced recruitment and retention rates whilst translating the patient insights into relevant clinical endpoints to ensure new treatment options address the most disruptive symptoms of their disease.

Patients and patient advocacy groups are increasingly keen to enter into dialogue with pharmaceutical companies: Patients recognize that their active support gives the experts in our R&D teams a holistic understanding of how their disease affects them day-to-day – and increases our ability to create treatments that improve their quality of life. An added benefit we as a company bring is to help them connect with each other and build the relationships needed to advocate for their cause at a national or international level.