In this interview, Dee Chaudhary, MBA, Principal at Clarivate Commercial Strategy Consulting, discusses key takeaways from her Asembia 2025 presentation on the strategic design of patient services programs. She explores how thoughtfully crafted programs can deliver tangible benefits for both patients and providers. Drawing on real-world data, third-party perspectives, and patient stories, she shares some best practices from a range of patient services initiatives focused on rare diseases.

Please introduce yourself by stating your name, title, organization, and relevant professional experience.

Dee Chaudhary: I’m Dee Chaudhary, and I'm a principal for Clarivate Commercial Strategy Consulting. I have spent my life on both sides of the aisle—I've been a life sciences consultant and I've also been in industry in the area of market access, customer satisfaction, and patient service leadership for more than 25 years. Being the bridge and working with the manufacturer and seeing the bigger pictures through the lens of several therapeutic areas within various pharma and MedTech clients has provided me a broad perspective on the research we do for our clients, such as the work presented at Asembia.

What strategic design elements of patient services programs set specific manufacturer programs apart in terms of the measurable impact for patients and providers?

Chaudhary: At our 2025 Asembia presentation, we presented the third year of evaluation of hub and patient services, and we looked at small and mid-size companies. In the first year, we looked at oral oncolytics. In the second year, we evaluated neurology products. This year, we researched patient service programs for rare diseases. In each of these research engagements, the Clarivate team detailed criteria that each manufacturer had to hit. We looked at it on a binary system: Were the phone numbers correct? Did all the hyperlinks work? Were the menus intuitive? How was the navigation? We consider these the table stakes for a quality patient service program.

In 2025, we started looking deeper, with the belief that website design and service offerings needed to reflect what was necessary to truly understand things like treatment options. Because rare diseases have such small populations, it was important to find out whether the companies were ensuring the content was easy to find and easy to understand, and that they were providing clear prescribing information. All of those criteria were crucial. We also wanted to see whether they had multiple language options in the design that helped patients understand the content. We then looked at providing additional resources. Did they have things like glossaries or infographics that could help explain the material and have the material be well received?

Because the treatment of rare disease continues to evolve, we wanted to look at some of the new therapies, such as cell and gene therapy. As they entered the market, patients relied on their physicians to be both educated on what treatments to choose and to help them understand the treatment decisions that were made. Some of that was lacking in the rare disease space. We noticed that some of the better hub services stepped up to the plate and were able to make substantive contributions in that area. When you start integrating all of these elements into a good strategic design, that's where you get a top-quality program.

How have SK Life Science and other manufacturers leveraged tools such as real-world data and third-party insights to refine or pivot aspects of their support services, particularly in the rare disease space?

Chaudhary: Initially, real-world data (RWD) collected through things like patient portals and the hub was used as a means to track coverage or look at product compliance. It was also used to assist manufacturers with the Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategy (REMS) programs and to evaluate the appropriateness of the free drug that was used. But over time—even in the last 3 years of research—we started seeing some changes. We saw manufacturing leveraging data for operational metrics, fill rates and, as I mentioned earlier, the area of adherence. But they also started looking at how knowing discontinuation rates, etc, could help improve patient outcomes. They also wanted to start incorporating feedback loops for continuous improvement. So, real-time data and data feedback became more important. They had to address workflow issues, inefficiencies, and how they could start enhancing service delivery. That information was all collected through RWD.

I want us also to think about RWD in a different way. Think of the stories that are coming from the front line. Many of the manufacturers that we spoke with had patient liaisons linked with the patient support programs or those hubs. This allowed the manufacturer to meet the patients where they were and get data and information, and understand their needs. Nurses even started going to advocacy groups and interacted with individuals to support access, create community, and inform patients of their offerings. Through these liaisons, they were collecting real-world impression/real-world data on what the patients and families needed from the product and from the broader patient service program.

The final tool that manufacturers are beginning to leverage to improve their programs is a regular outside evaluation of their offering. You want to look at your own offering and at those of your direct competitor. Then, look at the broader world of patient services and start adapting your program, and fill the gaps to improve from a patient service perspective and how that can impact the patient's outcomes. If all these data are well done, and we get this real world together, you can see pivots in service offerings as long as the manufacturer is listening.

Can you walk us through the most critical turning points in the manufacturer journey from conceptualizing to delivering their provider support services? What are the key challenges, and how must they be addressed?

Chaudhary: There are two points I want to hit on here. The first is an early understanding of the needs of the provider, the patient, and the patient's family. This has to start during the new product planning process. Begin evaluating early, and integrate some of these service offerings as you design your pricing strategy. These include providing guidance for some of the support programs and helping the patient understand the kind of insurance they may need. Implementing these strategies early on makes a difference for what the offering contains. It is critical to evaluate early, making sure to evaluate again as you move to commercialization. You may have to pivot again, because there can be sometime between.

The third critical turning point to delivering the service is to continue moving on. Once you've launched, go back again and see what's working and what's not. The first key challenge for this point was doing what was done at the company that the designer came from. So, let's say I was from a large manufacturer, and they always do patient services a specific way, coming over to the new company and doing it the same way again. Or, if you designed a hub at your existing company and you do the second patient service program exactly the same way as before and it's not keeping up. We have evolved so much in the offerings in the last 3 to 5 years that, if you're doing what you did 5 years ago, you're just offering table stakes—which is doing benefit verification, etc. One of the biggest challenges is to keep fresh, to be where the patients are at, and to let the patients know where you're at. This is the bridge to the second big point, which is you need to let the patient know you're around. It may mean visiting social media sites and making sure you're reaching out through advocacy.

This leads to that second challenge, which is compliance. For example, you may have a legal team that doesn't completely understand what is compliant, and you may not be able to find means to get them to pivot. Again, it's important to know what other companies are doing and where you’re going with the patient service programs that are different from the way they were before and can be conducted in a compliant manner. Sometimes the legal team can be a big obstacle, as you have a group of people trying to keep the company safe, but t 3006 hey may not understand compliance in today's patient service market.

Patient testimonials played a role in this benchmarking analysis. How should direct patient feedback shape a company’s ongoing approach to designing or optimizing adherence and access support?

Chaudhary: This is one of my favorite areas. Again, it's important that you keep reevaluating your patient service program, and that means going to the patient. You can do this with third-party vendors. We do this work, and there are other companies that do this work. Ask both the patients and their families: How have the offerings helped you? What do you need now that you're on this product? What is necessary to best combat this disease or work through it? How can the companies partner with you and help? Patient advocacy groups can offer broad insight without having to go to individual patients. This is direct patient feedback, whether they collect it on their own from patients or they learn it from some of the health care professionals (HCPs).

It's important to make sure that the programs you're offering are really what the patient needs. I mentioned briefly going to the health care provider. Sometimes that can be difficult. Many of these providers are given 10 minutes to talk to the patient. They're not spending most of their time talking with the patient about broader needs. Instead, they may only talk about the functional aspects of the disease. So, while providers can be a good source of information, they can be supplemented with direct patient and patient family testimonials and advocacy group insights. Advocacy groups can be one of the best means that companies can have for adapting and designing their website, optimizing adherence, and helping with access support.

What are the top takeaways or best practices from this year’s benchmarking that you believe other manufacturers—especially those working with rare diseases—should adopt in their patient services strategies?

Chaudhary: There are some wonderful best practices. As I mentioned earlier, one best practice is meeting the patients where they're at. Some of these companies have liaisons who reach out to patients and have long-term personal engagement with patients. There are some profiles of these liaisons, so patients can see their faces and know a little bit about them. Then that liaison ends up developing the relationship with the patient, which helps a lot with navigating problems. People are more likely to share when they know who they're sharing with. Patients and their families are asking for that relational aspect.

The other best practice is to bring education to the forefront. We saw companies that had Continuing Education Unit (CEU) programs for diseases that aren't seen as frequently. Maybe the physician knows a lot about it, but his support staff, his nursing staff may not know as much. All of that training was available through a website. There are other education programs, such as social support programs and links to advocacy, both local and national. Those efforts make a big difference and can be adopted to most patient service programs. The other thing I would mention, too, is that we're starting to see an understanding of the importance of multilinguistic support for patients. For example, there was one company where you could just press the button and everything would switch to a different language.

The final best practice we saw was patient mentors who were available for other patients. Through the program website, you were able to link with somebody who was walking in the same steps that you were. All of these strategies can be adopted into patient services.

The other top takeaway is to continue evolving. Make sure that you look outside of your own organization for what's possible, and know the difference that you make in patients’ lives. Whether they are basic programs that offer financial and reimbursement support for their insurance, or they're more broad, all these programs are vital and need to continue being supported and able to evolve.