Beyond the Pill: When Medicine Meets Mindset with CEO, Will Hind

Will Hind: 0:00

If everybody were to be prescribed medicines, according to the logic that everybody recites back to you that patients get the most efficacious and the best tolerated medicine possible, then everyone would be on the best medicine in the world, right? No one would have any problems and everyone would be well treated? Well, that's clearly not the case. So there's clearly some hold up that stops people getting those. And it's even more pronounced when you get into

Harsh Thakkar: 0:24

what's up everybody. This is Harsh from qualtivate.com. And you're listening to the life sciences 360 podcast. On this show, I chat with industry experts and thought leaders to learn about their stories, ideas and insights, and how their role helps bring new therapies to patients. Thanks for joining us, let's dive in. Hey, welcome to another episode. So just imagine a world where medicines not only have the power to cure, but they also come with a superpower. And that superpower is the ability to seamlessly fit into your daily life. So things like, you know, forgetting your dose is unlikely as forgetting to brush your teeth in the morning, right. And I never knew about this topic until I was approached by this guest. And today, I'm really excited to have this conversation with Will Hind. He is the CEO of Alpharmaxim. And they're transforming behaviors using great healthcare communication, we're going to be talking about the behavioral science and its impact on Pharma. So let's dive in and have a chat with Will, welcome to the show Will.

Will Hind: 1:31

good morning, welcome.

Harsh Thakkar: 1:33

Yeah, so let's start off. Why is behavior important in pharma? I know there's not a single field, whether it's sales, marketing, whatever you're doing in life, understanding human behavior, I've yet to find one field where that's, it's okay to skip that. But why is it important in pharma to understand that,

Will Hind: 1:53

I think that, you know, there's a couple of issues here that we probably need to touch on and explore more fully. The first is the fundamental thing that actually, if everybody were to be prescribed medicines, according to the logic that everybody recites back to you that the patients get most efficacious, and the best tolerated medicine possible, then everyone would be on the right, the best medicine in the world right? No one would have any problems and everyone would be well treated? Well, that's clearly not the case. So there's clearly some hold up, that stops people getting those. And it's even more pronounced when you get into specialist diseases and rare disease. That's. So that's one reason. And the other reason is that perhaps the peculiar dichotomy within pharma sector is that everything we do is based on data and evidence. Everything except communication that is and the communication is always had this heuristic or this, this habitual approach, of we're gonna launch, we're gonna have a playbook we're gonna have a variety of different things, we need an advert, etc. How do we know we need those things if they're not actually going to have an impact on changing the behaviors and ultimately getting the new drug used? So those the two is the two sides of the same coin? Really?

Harsh Thakkar: 3:09

Yeah, it's interesting that you brought up data, right? I want to double click on that. So you brought up the importance of, you know, having the data and analyzing the data. But in terms of this topic of behavioral science, or understanding how, you know, the drugs are being taken by the patients? What are some of the data points that you, you, you know, when you're talking to your clients, or companies you work with? What are some of the data points that they should be looking for? And why?

Will Hind: 3:40

I think when you're when you're looking at the behavior change, it's really important to start, firstly, to adopt a model that can work. And then secondly, to begin with the end in mind. And that sounds pretty logical, but you have to think about what is the behavior and make that as specific as possible, what is the behavior we need to change. And if you can determine those behaviors that you need to change, there's often quite a leap to get there. So you need to break those down into a series of sequential steps. People often are, in any change, people are often quite comfortable doing what they're doing. The same is true for as physicians, and the same is true for everything. So what we need to do is break things down and talk about this in a in a logical way. And that's kind of where we get into it. That there's quite a lot of background as somebody called the stages of change model, which goes back to the 1970s. I think this really looks at the need to destabilize people's confidence in what they're currently doing. Before you then go and produce an answer for them. People need to be looking for help looking for alternatives before they get presented with something new. So that's part and parcel of this is trying to see stagger all of that information about making people perhaps question what their current behaviors are current prescribing behaviors particularly, and then answer, then providing them the solution. And that solution is the new product. So that's a very basic approach to it. And then you need to sort of look at how models can apply and be more effective at delivering that.

Harsh Thakkar: 5:24

Right, right. No, that's it's very interesting that you mentioned to start with, what's what they're using today. And whether it's working for them or not, right, oftentimes, you know, a patient that's taking a drug or their dose or medication, unless they're, you know, from a medical background and have an extensive, you know, knowledge base of science. An average consumer doesn't know exactly, you know, the steps and everything that goes into play. Right. So we're also seeing this in clinical trials where, you know, there's this thing of having patient Centricity in the clinical trials, because the participants are wanting to know what the process is, how do they fit in, and you know, how the data from their participation is being used to, you know, bring new products to market? So I think that's, that's a very interesting point, too, as you said, you know, to start with, what are you using today? And is it and this applies to, you know, anything as simple as diet, right? Like, if you're working with a nutritional therapist or a counselor, they're probably going to say, Hey, what are you eating for breakfast, lunch and dinner? And are you? Are you feeling sluggish? Or are you are you hitting your fitness goals, and, you know, that's, it's very important to start from that. So

Will Hind: 6:50

you start from that, and you have to then pick apart in big, big questions like that, you have to pick apart what the tool, extent of different barriers are, that you need to try and change that really then leads into defining different types of models. But if you look at, if you look at big changes in public health, behavioral science has been used for many years, and the MS. advocated to be used in this sort of area. So if, for example, you look at COVID, the whole idea of getting people to adopt a different paradigm of behaviors, that, you know, you had to keep your space, you had to wear a mask, you had to wash your hands more rigorously, and wash your face more rigorously, even those simple things, getting people to adopt that on a mass population basis, relied on quite a lot of behavioral science, and it's working out what the messages are that you need to give and who you need to give them to, to ensure that that comes across and is translated and taken up. And that's really where a lot of this stuff comes in,

Harsh Thakkar: 7:56

by the way, that that that's such an amazing example that you gave, because I'm pretty sure no matter who's listening to this episode, and where in the world they are, they can relate to that example, because I've seen the communication of, hey, you know, like, you need to wash your hands, or you need to maintain like six feet distance, it was all similar, but yet it was all different. What I mean by that is, if I went to a restaurant, I saw the same, you know, figures and facts, but they were presented differently, right. And then with visuals, so that makes it more receptive to people who are eating at that restaurant to understand why it's important to follow them. But that same sign at an airport might look something different, right? So that's, that's such an amazing example of the use of behavioral science in COVID. Because that's everybody, I think, can relate to that.

Will Hind: 8:52

And I think that was one of the key things that helps reinforce people's understanding that this is, this is not some sort of witchcraft or some sort of science, there are often misconceptions about actually behavioral science is about manipulation. It's not it's about targeting the behavior that you want to see. And determining what strategies to use to overcome it. And your your points about different types of messages for the same thing in different locations is exactly that. You have to look at how you're going to execute it and what you're going to look at personal centered approaches to doing that.

Harsh Thakkar: 9:31

So then then I want to follow up with a different question there. So you mentioned manipulation. That's probably one of the misconceptions. What are some others that that you've, that you've encountered?

Will Hind: 9:44

The biggest one is this misconception and that's probably fairly similarly that it's not a science and that the biggest misconception is that somehow behavioral sciences this thing was going to make me do something I don't really want to do it. And then there's the the bigger sort of, you know, it's not really a science, you know, the fact that this got science in the title doesn't mean anything. And what we need to have a look at is, actually, we need to provide the logic and the facts. You know, I come back to the point I made earlier, if it were logic and facts that everybody relied on all of the time to make all decisions, then everybody in the world would be on the best pharmaceutical for their needs as possible.

Harsh Thakkar: 10:28

Yeah, that's, that's very true. And then if we take this back into, like, the very early stages of product development lifecycle in pharma and biotech, how do you? Where do you see behavioral science coming into play when companies are researching for novel drug therapeutics, like, how can they use behavioral science way early in the in that r&d phase?

Will Hind: 10:52

I think there's a couple of different areas. The first one is the area in which we're doing some research as well. And that's if you look at particularly distinct therapeutic areas, then there are usually distinct barriers to adoption, and changing the prescribing habits in those therapeutic areas. So that's looking at what those barriers are, if you can determine the mix of those barriers, according to the Kombi model, which is capability, opportunity and motivation, then, once you determine the mix of those barriers, then you can actually determine the right mix of techniques that can be used to overcome. So so if you're doing phase two, phase three clinical trials, then you should be looking at doing some insights work to probably look at the barriers in the given market segment that you're going to enter. The second element is that actually, many times and particularly in rare diseases, where we've done quite a lot of work, there are cases where people have launched and come to launch or about to launch new therapies that breakthrough that really astounding that can really, really help patients overcome the significance of the particular disease that they have. But what they haven't encountered this, or what they haven't concern themselves with is the the behavioral aspects of the patient. And with these diseases, often there's been no previous proper medication for them, or there's often been a significant background and a significant delay in their treatment. So patients in those sort of situations often sort of rely or resort to rather different manners of modification. And they kind of accept that they've got a substandard life that perhaps poor quality of life than you or I would like, but that they're still in the hive. So they go into this incredible routines of different management techniques to cope with the disease that they have. But they settled into an equilibrium, that where we tried to come along and offer them a no new drug, and you're offering them a new drug that's going to disrupt that equilibrium. So you need to bring that patient understanding into any research that you do as well. So two elements then?

Harsh Thakkar: 13:07

Yeah, yeah. And and as I was listening to that, it was like, a question popped up, in my mind is why. So you obviously pointed out that there's this gap, which companies have not, not understood the behavior components? So like, I'm trying to figure out, why is that is this like, is it a knowledge gap? Or is this they don't want to do that to to add extra work on to the onto the workflow, because there's trying to get that drug to the next phase? What are some of the reasons why people skip that or companies skip that?

Will Hind: 13:43

But what are the what are the main reasons is just is lack of knowledge and lack of of skills of being able to to adapt to it really, I think a lot of people haven't really looked at this in in detail and recognize what it can offer them, both in terms of how they can reach the right patient, but also in terms of how it can make their communications much more demonstrable to give it a clear return on investment. So I think one of the key things is that people, there's a lack of knowledge about it, about how to properly employ behavioral science in those sorts of situations, unless there's a high degree of habit as well, and the people have forgotten to look at the broader context of what they're entering into.

Harsh Thakkar: 14:28

Okay. And you also mentioned an interesting point, which I want to read, I want to go back to it because I think it was very important. You mentioned about the com model, right? So it was what was it again?

Will Hind: 14:41

The com B model? Yeah.

Harsh Thakkar: 14:42

Yeah, can't be. So can you rephrase the acronym again, I want to make sure I got it right.

Will Hind: 14:49

The basically it's getting people to understand that change of behavior that B part depends on an individual or groups capability, opportunity and motivation. There will be different mixes of the levels of capability, opportunity and motivation that anyone and any group of individuals may have that then dictates what the best technique to change the barrier to change to overcome it.

Harsh Thakkar: 15:22

Okay, yes, so So a question that I had is, can you help us with one example maybe where this com B model has, you know, help address some of the barriers, whether it's change among prescribers or among patients? Have you encountered any in your work with companies that you can share?

Will Hind: 15:46

I think it provides a really clear, multifaceted wave if you'd like the one of the key elements that I've talked about a little bit was that Pharma is very good at providing the capability, the knowledge behind a new drug coming out. But the opportunity and motivation sometimes is lacking, so that people might not actually be able to do it, because of peer pressure, because of the opportunities that arise around local formularies. and things of that sort. But if you take an example that we got into where the drug was really a fundamental step forward for the treatment of a certain type of rare disease, the physicians all felt that the current modality that they had was safe and efficacious, which it was, but didn't recognize that a change was demanded almost by by patients and carers because the change was something that was outside of their sphere. So despite the fact that physicians were capable of making the change, they didn't have the opportunity and motivation to do so because the patients were resistant. So you have to overcome the whole spectrum of these things to understand what it is, and and, you know, particularly in rare diseases or things like gene therapy, you have to make sure that you cover the multifaceted approach of all the different stakeholders.

Harsh Thakkar: 17:20

That's, that's an interesting example. So it's not it sounds like it's not. So we have the company that is, you know, investing in this product and trying to bring it to market. And then we have the prescribers, you know, healthcare professionals. And then we have the patients. So it sounds like it's a mix of all three, and you can't sort of focus on one and help that, you know, to carry the weight of the others, because if one fails, the whole cycle sort of breaks apart is that is that what I'm getting at?

Will Hind: 17:52

I would, I would say so in a typical, the typical, perhaps old fashioned, but necessarily, the typical way of launching a drug is to is for pharma companies to provide lots of information education, about the unmet medical needs, education around the whole area, and then lots of information about what their drug is what it overcomes, how to use it. That's great. That provides lots of understanding. But what is the motivation of the physician is it there because the local regulator won't grant the right promising reimbursement? What if the motivation isn't there, because patients are resistant to change? What is the motivation isn't there because they are unable to because the local specialist would prefer them to stick to something else, or the opportunity isn't there because their habit, they habitually have used drug action, they don't see a need to change. So it's addressing all of these parts. And, you know, I would suggest that the traditional routes of doing launch readiness at launch communications have been possibly outlived, and particularly with them, the novel therapies that we're getting into these days that much more patient focused patient centric medications, even as far as gene therapies, then you've got to have a completely different way of doing doing North communications that doesn't involve traditional tell approaches but involves, ask them provide questions type approach.

Harsh Thakkar: 19:28

Interesting. When did you I want to go a little bit you know about about your, your sort of passion and expertise in this area, right. So when did you actually come across that moment where you're like, hey, you know what, I really need to dig deeper into this topic. And this is what my company's purpose or your work purpose about being in this behavioral science field Do you remember, like a moment or a time where you were like, Okay, I'm going to I'm going to up the notch here and go, you know, 2x or 5x on this.

Will Hind: 20:03

I, you know, I started life in MSD. In Europe, Merck in the US, the concept was always that time was to put the patient first and the profit will follow. So that was my starting point. So I've always been very motivated to try and find the unmet needs and try to communicate around that. And then, as we got into communications and building communication stories for clients, we built this idea of the belief continuum, and it's about changing. It's taking people through stages of change, and maybe encouraging folk to question what they're currently doing through to providing them the answer where they're going. So that was kind of where we were going, anyway. And then we got into a discussion and following the Great Simon Sinek. And people of that sort, we've sort of looked at where we were going with purpose and what we wanted to do. And it became clear probably about eight years ago that we needed to get into behavioral science. And as we got further into that, the idea of actually the a light bulb moment of saying, Well, why don't people use this routinely? Why don't we do it as routinely because it makes sure that you're overcoming so many barriers in communication, and therefore the adoption of new medications? It just seems straightforward. But then obviously, as you get into it, you start uncovering the barriers against it, which is often traditional. And we mentioned that earlier. Now, one of the big things that stops people taking up using fully behavioral science is that there's no budget for it, it has to come out of the marketing budget. So when you found it, it often gets disregarded and left behind. And I think one of the key pleas needs to be looked at, if you need to get this under your skin to actually make it really sound way of building communications and changing the paradigms for patients, then, actually, what you need to do is take that those insights on board and routinely use them rather than them being sort of cast aside every time we've dealt with a given campaign.

Harsh Thakkar: 22:09

Yeah, it's interesting, because you actually answered a question that I had is, is there like a behavioral science role that exist in in companies? But I'm not sure I, you know, I don't I work in quality and technology side of things in pharma. But it doesn't, I don't know, is there like a specific title? Or is it usually under marketing, or other?

Will Hind: 22:33

It's usually under medical affairs or marketing, the, what we're seeing is that as the two of those are less opposed to one another, and both of them are now much more intertwined with the communications of planning that it's becoming more prevalent there, there are only a few enlightened people who have a natural behavioral science specialist. But majority of times, it's sort of forced medical, Medical Affairs marketing, or between the two of them. Yeah.

Harsh Thakkar: 23:02

Okay. Interesting. And then, um, with, you know, with the, with the rise of omni channel communications, how do you? How do you think behavioral science sort of like works along that strategy for the healthcare messaging.

Will Hind: 23:19

So I think that if you use existing behavioral change frameworks, then all of a sudden, that plays so well into omni channel approaches, because you can define what you expect to see with each type of communication. So if you come back to this idea of the com B model, you get the balance of what the barriers are to that behavior change. The balance of those barriers can then dictate one amongst 93, different behavior change techniques. So you have a science behind this, that actually dictates what the best technique is to actually change those behaviors. And then you can apply those. So some of the times they can be face to face, some of those times they can be digital, and some of the times they can be pressure or advertising. So you are then able to actually look at the specific triggers that you need to do. And that's how it should be built, I can build these, these approaches, using the frameworks that behavioral science will give you. And you can measure the results, you can determine whether or not they're being effective, and each one of them you can measure the results to as well. So I think for me, the two of them really are intertwined.

Harsh Thakkar: 24:37

And do you I'm not sure if you have any and it's okay if you don't but do you have any examples of any companies or any you know, anybody that's doing it well that others can learn from off of combining this omni channel and help the behavioral science component together,

Will Hind: 24:54

but not log that within commercial and commercial agreement that you But I think you know, the key thing for people to look for is the idea to using this, what they call the appease criteria, which is affordable, practice effective, accepted and side effects. So it's looking at those and you can see, there are certain big pharma who are very good at it and have it nailed on. And if we were to look at those, and maybe you know, possibly it's encouraging for listeners and viewers to have a look at these things and take, well, what is it? Who are the who are the companies that are really working well with this, and you can tell by the virtue of how they are looking at the different omni channel approaches, there's a slight nuance to each one's a slightly differently approach. And you can see how they've actually applied behavioral science to it as well.

Harsh Thakkar: 25:51

Okay. And as, as you're seeing this evolve, right, the importance of behavioral science, how it's being applied in pharma, how different companies are doing it, where do you do you anticipate any newer challenges or anything else happening in the in the coming, you know, 10-20 years that maybe you haven't seen today, but you think it could happen the way the industry is going?

Will Hind: 26:21

Well, I can set you up my hopes. First of all, it's it's more routinely adopted, and that there are better more structured models that can be routinely applied to help pharma build the correct approaches and understand what needs to change as it moves. And as it progresses, I see the potential going two ways, one way would be for that behavioral science, to then feed into some form of digitization. And another way would be to, for that behavioral science to then lean into, particularly looking at the patient centric communications and improving communications between patients, physicians and pharma. So that that that triumvirate that you discussed earlier is much more clear, better communicated.

Harsh Thakkar: 27:11

Okay. And and, you know, this is this has been a very interesting conversation. I've learned a lot of stuff from here, and I'm sure a lot of listeners are also inspired by this topic. What is, once they're done with this, and they go back to their, you know, day to day life in the company that they're working? What is the first thing you want to leave them with? You know, so they can assess whether it's a company or a professional? How can they assess the current state of how behavioral science is being used in this relationship? Like, what do you want them to log off and do first after the after they listen to this?

Will Hind: 27:52

Well, the first thing I would ask them to do is to really think of behavioral science as a central tool for your communications planning. But the actual action I would suggest that everybody does is Think carefully and determine the change, they want to see what that change is to try and pull apart what it is that you want to see at the at the end of your activities. And then you probably start to see that actually, there's a multifaceted need for that to pull it apart in different ways. And I guess the other thing I would say is that that was probably the was a classic phrase in advertising and marketing that is often used, and that was by a man by the name of John Wanamaker, who was the case went on to own the Macy's and things like that, but goes along the lines of half my advertising budget is wasted. I just don't know which half?

Harsh Thakkar: 28:48

Yeah.

Will Hind: 28:50

If you actually look at the whole use of behavioral science, and the whole use of data of linking that to omni channel approaches, you can determine exactly which ones are working and which ones aren't. And you can get much more cost effective communications out of it.

Harsh Thakkar: 29:04

Yeah, that's a that's a great point, right? Because, again, at the top of the episode, you mentioned about, you know, having that data and then analyzing that data, so it goes back to that same point, right. The data is there. Absolutely. Yeah. Yep. Yeah, this, thank you so much. Will, this, this is an amazing conversation, love hearing everything you had to share on this topic. Where can people connect with you or learn more about what you're up to?

Will Hind: 29:31

I'm on LinkedIn at LinkedIn as William Hind, I'm on x as @ Will Hind and they can reach us at Alpharmaxim.com.

Harsh Thakkar: 29:40

All right, that sounds great. And any final thoughts before we wrap this up?

Will Hind: 29:44

I guess the final thought I would have is that we are doing this research and the research that we're looking at is in Parkinson's disease and looking at the barriers to changing prescribing habits in Parkinson's disease. And I'd love to come back and talk to you some more about that when when The research is published.

Harsh Thakkar: 30:01

Yeah, absolutely. Thanks again for coming on to the show and wish you tons of success on this topic and I'll, if I have any follow up questions, I'll message you or shoot you an email or whatever. But this is something I'm learning as well and I have a lot more to digest after this episode.

Will Hind: 30:18

Okay, perfect. Thank you so much.

Harsh Thakkar: 30:19

Thank you. Cheers. Yep. Thank you so much for listening. I hope you enjoyed today's episode. Check out the show notes in the description for a full episode summary with all the important links. Share this with a friend on social media and leave us a review on Apple podcast, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcast.