Experience wins everywhere else: why pharma is primed for change

Experience wins everywhere else: why pharma is primed for change

Experience wins everywhere else: why pharma is primed for change

For as long as I've worked in healthcare, we've been good at explaining why pharma is different.

And of course it is. It's highly regulated, grounded in science and the stakes are real. But I wonder whether we've been so focused on “pharma is different” that we've missed the obvious: nobody else makes that distinction. People base their expectations of healthcare on the customer experiences they enjoy everywhere else. 

Take going to the movies. It used to be a straightforward transaction. You bought a ticket, grabbed some popcorn and found a seat. Today, you can choose where you sit in advance, stretch out in a recliner, order cocktails and even have dinner brought to your seat. The movie still matters but the experience around it has become part of the attraction.

Healthcare isn’t the cinema but the dynamics are familiar. Experience is driving our choices.

Today, patients visit ChatGPT before they see their doctor. They choose telehealth over the waiting room, find alternative routes to treatment and have medicines delivered to their door. Physicians make choices based on experience too, like how difficult a medicine is to prescribe, how much time access issues consume or whether patients typically adhere.

This creates a tension in how pharma handles experience. Often, brand strategy is built first: where are we playing and what differentiates us clinically? Experience only comes later when we start executing that strategy.

We need to move experience upstream. Treating it as a tactic undermines its potential. It should be helping shape strategy up front.

New routes 

The traditional healthcare journey was relatively linear. You became ill, saw a doctor, received a prescription and went to a pharmacy. 

Now that journey has branches everywhere. You might start in urgent care, then find your insurer doesn’t cover your medicine, your pharmacy doesn’t stock it, or another route gets it to you faster. 

Every branch is a touchpoint that can influence decisions.

We're seeing that in obesity, where GLP-1s have virtually become a ‘culture category’. People blog about what they're taking, arrive at the doctor with a preference and look elsewhere if they can’t get it. It’s forcing pharma to think more like consumer brands.

The challenge runs wider, with direct pharmacy and retail healthcare creating new routes to care, and fitness, nutrition and wellness broadening the health conversation. Each brings another experience that shapes what people choose. I saw it myself last year when my kids got flu. I knew which treatment I wanted, but getting it meant pushing back on the doctor and finding a pharmacy that stocked it. The medicine wasn't the problem: the experience of getting it was.

The healthcare journey has more touchpoints than ever. Pharma needs to understand what’s happening at every step.

Standing out

Experience is particularly important in crowded markets. Some medicines have clinical profiles that create clear differentiation, but many compete in categories where the differences are narrower. When that's the case, experience gives you another lever to pull.

Think about a physician faced with two broadly comparable choices. One is easy to prescribe and access. The other means insurance problems, callbacks and patients returning because they couldn't get the medicine. What happens? The best experience wins.

The same is true with patients. You can build preference for a medicine and get all the way to prescription, only to lose someone because they can't afford it or find it. Experience can reinforce differentiation, but it can also undo it.

Ultimately, we live in an Experience Economy. Retailers build loyalty through same-day delivery and easier returns. Travel companies compete on making everything from booking to boarding feel effortless. Across every market, the product still matters, but the experience around it is another reason to choose. Why should healthcare be different?

Experience is strategy

How do we move experience upstream? By widening our strategic lens. I'd start with five things:

1. Understand what drives choice. Look at the experiences patients and physicians are already having. What’s influencing their decisions beyond the medicine? Where is friction causing them to change course or drop out?
2. Consider what might prevent growth. Alongside “where can we win?” ask where we might lose because of the experience. Access, affordability, burden and convenience can all undermine a strong proposition.
3. Look for differentiation in the experience. Where clinical differences are narrow, find other reasons for customers to choose your brand.
4. Learn from disruptors and partner with them. Retail healthcare providers and direct pharmacies are changing expectations. Understand where customers are going, who’s delivering great experiences and when partnering could achieve more than building everything yourself.
5. Be less selective about patient-centricity. It’s easy to focus on insights that support your brand. Pay attention to what patients actually need, even if it challenges assumptions.

Thinking this way can reveal where competitors are winning on experience and where they’ve left gaps.

None of this is easy. The traditional model has worked for decades and, in many ways, still does. Changing it takes courage. Pharma takes enormous financial risks developing medicines. Once a product becomes viable, the instinct understandably changes: make the line go up.

I want the line to go up too. But as people gain more choice in how they manage their health, the things determining that line are changing. Experience is one of them. 

For all the ways our industry is different, the people we serve don’t leave their expectations at the door. It’s time we started building our strategies around that reality.