Laurie Meyers
Head of Patient Engagement (Commercial, Medical, Government Affairs)
Genentech, a Member of the Roche Group
Advocate for Data-Driven Co-Creation
Data is not just about numbers, figures, and cold-hard facts. It is also about getting to the heart of what matters, and in healthcare, nothing matters more than patients. And nothing matters more to Laurie Meyers than serving patients.
Laurie has been with Genentech for over 17 years and currently leads the patient engagement function within the CMG (commercial, medical, and government affairs) division, a department she built with the purpose of shifting the organization’s approach to collaborating with patients in developing solutions meant for them.
An extremely empathetic person who is well-connected within the patient community, Laurie is also a big advocate for data-driven strategies. That’s why she has commissioned Snow Companies to build a council of patients across therapeutic areas served by Genentech to co-create solutions for patients with patients. A good example of that is the periodic Patient Experience Reports that allow for transparency, and present insights and recommendations for branded and unbranded engagement with the patient community. The reports capture broad quantitative as well as deep qualitative data. This way of working ensures that Genentech is investing their marketing dollars in a way that will truly resonate with patient and caregiver expectations.
One thing learned from these engagements is there is a real demand within the patient community for a more informal way of communicating with Genentech’s patient navigators, a preference to discuss certain topics over a text-like channel in addition to a voice channel (e.g., phone). Laurie’s team collaborated with patients to develop a patient-preferred communications platform, which is designed to comply with regulatory requirements and to protect patient privacy. The new system has just launched in one therapeutic area, with plans to scale across the organization later in the year.
In most industries outside pharma, user acceptance testing (UAT) is commonplace and a well-established concept. With her digital-forward co-creation strategy, Laurie is harnessing the promise of UAT for the biopharma industry as well.
