Inside Noble’s connected approach to patient support (Sponsored)

0:00You're listening to a sponsored episode of The Top Line.

0:11Welcome, everyone. You're listening to The Top Line, brought to you by Fierce Pharma and Fierce Biotech. I'm your host, Lauren Ledger, and this episode is sponsored by Noble, an Aptar Pharma company. Today's healthcare landscape is shifting rapidly towards self-administered therapies, placing greater responsibility on patients to successfully initiate and manage treatment at home. As pharmaceutical companies work to improve patient confidence, adherence, and long-term outcomes,

0:41many are discovering that patient onboarding, device training, and engagement cannot be treated as separate initiatives. Joining us today is Adam Shane, Vice President and Head of Business Transformation and Growth and Government Affairs Lead at Noble, an Aptar Pharma company. Noble has evolved beyond traditional training devices to help pharmaceutical brands translate the patient voice in the integrated onboarding and device training solutions that drive measurable outcomes. Through a connected approach that combines human factors insights, training strategy,

1:14physical and digital learning solutions, and ongoing patient engagement, Noble helps brands create more seamless experiences that support patients from first dose through long-term therapy use. Adam will share why integration matters, how pharmaceutical companies can eliminate fragmentation across the patient journey, and what leading organizations are doing to build confidence, improve adherence, and create stronger outcomes for both patients and brands. So with that, let's jump in, Adam.

1:46Thanks so much, Lauren. When I really think about the challenges around having multiple vendors, I don't think you ever get away from having multiple vendors. I think what's really key is how you identify and connect all the different vendors that you have to put together. So one of the areas that's always key when we talk to our customers is the first thing you have to do is understand the patient. And that's really what you need to use as your North Star when you really start to think about

2:17how you're going to engage your different solutions that you're going to put together to help support the patient. Ultimately, when you think about, and patient, you touched on a lot of different elements that a lot of the, whether it's the commercial companies or the device teams and pharma or the marketing teams, there's a lot of different challenges that pharma companies are trying to solve when they think about how you manage a patient on specific therapies. The critical element is initially having that dialogue with actual patients, understanding where their pain points are going to be during their therapy,

2:47and then really trying to leverage all those different solutions that could be out there. Because again, one vendor can't make everything for you, right? You're going to have companies that make your video manufacturers, you have your device manufacturers, you have your digital health companies that are out there. So really the key is trying to get through that noise and identifying what are the right solutions for those patients. Because what you do see in these types of therapies, and especially for certain brands, you almost have what's a kitchen sink approach where a pharma company will just try to throw everything at it

3:23because they're not quite sure what will work. What's critical is really listening to the patient in the beginning and then trying to identify what's the right tactic for the patient at the right time. And that's really the critical piece is really do the work up front. Think about, talk to the patients. And at that point, when you start to think about the different solutions that are out there, that's where you can start to navigate the different vendors and help coordinate and consolidate as much as you can to make it seamless for the patient.

3:54Because that's the other piece is really you can throw a lot of different things at the patient to help support them in their journey. But if you make it complicated, if it's clunky, if it's not seamless, then the patient, and we all are patients or users ourselves, you know when it's not a seamless experience. And that's where you come off therapy. You don't feel confident with your product. And that's ultimately the key things, whether it's us here at Noble or any of our pharma clients, it's really about what can we do that best serves the patient.

4:28And giving them a seamless experience is critical. Right. Thanks for outlining some of those points, Adam. I'd like to take a step back and talk about the role of the patient perspective and what that plays in shaping these programs. So Noble frequently talks about translating the patient voice into action. What does that mean in practice? And how do patient insights influence everything from training design to ongoing engagement strategies? So thanks for that question. For us, like I was saying before, it really starts by understanding the patient at the very beginning of it.

5:04Because from our standpoint in art, when you start to look at the history of Noble itself, we started making demo devices and training devices for self-injection systems. That really came along because there was a critical flaw that one of our customers was having in the patient journey that they were seeing where self-administration was a problem. And patients were not administering their drug properly. They were making mistakes, not getting the therapy to the point where the product was at risk from being pulled from the market that we came in and really tried to listen to what the needs.

5:38And it wasn't a product perspective. It wasn't a device problem. It was really just making sure patients understood what they need to do at that moment. And once you start thinking along those elements, you can really help have a patient use any kind of administration device. So for us, what we do from a process perspective, whenever we're having a conversation with our partners about putting together an onboarding program for them, the first thing we do is we have to obviously understand the patients before we go and talk to them, understand the disease areas, where they are in their journey, how many different are they.

6:13This is the first time they're being diagnosed with a disease. And really at that point, we bring them in. We have conversations. We, in some instances, will even post studies in their home to really just try to see what their different challenges would be for any kind of a self-administration product. And from that point, after really having those conversations with patients, potentially depending on the therapy, their caregivers, the HCPs, we really build a longitudinal journey for what the patient is going to go through. And at that point, we start to identify what the different touch points, tactics, what's

6:46the right type of onboarding experience that a patient should have. Does it require a device? Does it require a digital therapy? Does it require some sort of a companion element for it? But again, it's like that user research that we always have to start with in order to make sure we get things right up front so that way we can be as efficient as possible. Really helpful perspective. As the industry continues to evolve, I'd like to get your thoughts on what's changing. So as more therapies move into the home and self-administration becomes the norm, what are the pharmaceutical

7:19companies doing differently to help patients feel confident from day one? Great question. I talked a little bit about it before. So when we first started doing this almost 16 years ago, with the first training onboarding systems for self-injection, there weren't a lot of self-injection treatments out there. There was the EpiPen, and then you really started with the biologics, this trend of self-injection therapies, auto-injectors, pen injectors, really starting to become the norm for these types of treatments.

7:49Historically, the only other real self-injection systems that were out there, if I go back that far, you also had diabetes and the pen systems that were out there. But it's a very different patient population, and the way those devices get used are critically different. Some of the biggest challenges with a diabetic patient, you have the initial onboarding part that happens there with pen injectors. But pretty quickly, because someone's administering insulin daily, they develop the training and the onboarding and the confidence relatively quickly because they're administering it sometimes

8:23two, three times a day. Fast forward to where we are today with a lot of the self-injection systems for a lot of, whether it's atopic dermatitis or GI or rheumatoid arthritis, a lot of these treatments are weekly, bi-weekly, monthly. You have treatments that are being extended out for as long as even six months and still being administered at the home. So that's what we've seen from a self-injection trend. So obviously, there's more. With more, there's more variety.

8:53So there's all kinds of different injection systems. You have 1ml injection systems. All the way up to 5ml injection systems, and that starts to talk about how long an injection actually takes. So when you start to factor in all these sort of nuances and differences, throw in now the GLP-1s where people are now more and more comfortable and more at least aware of what a auto-injector or self-injection system is at a home level. There's awareness of the technology itself, but with that awareness, you still have the same

9:25complexity with the differences and the nuances with the different products. So what becomes really critical, the fact that you have more self-injection systems is really making sure at the onset and on the onboarding side of things that patients really understand what they're going to administer, how to do it, how to do it correctly. Because for as much as the awareness has grown over the last 16 years, what hasn't changed is it's still not a normal thing to pierce your skin with a metal object.

9:56Always that initiation phase with a patient for any new therapy is going to be anxious. And this is coming from someone who, you know, I helped develop a migraine product with a self-injection system. And it was testing as a migrainer. And when I was, this is someone like me who's understood the technology, very comfortable with the technologies. The first time I ever had to give myself a shot for managing a migraine, there was still a lot of anxieties at the first time. It's really understanding those elements and couple that with the fact that patients may

10:30now be using multiple different auto-injection systems that work a little bit differently each time. So it's super critical to make sure that from day one, the patients really understand that. And that's where I think pharma is really coming along because of these nuances. There's all kinds of focus. I think historically the focus had always been around just making sure patients had access to the product. So that's your copay card, you're managing your prior authentication. So a lot of that has become standard practice.

11:01And now, again, because there's nuances and you have this commitment to patient experience, there's really a focus that pharma companies are doing to make sure that a patient on a new therapy is going to have the most ideal scenario that the first day they go to inject or take a medication. Because if you don't get day one correct, then it's very possible and very likely that the patient either didn't get their drug or didn't have a good experience with the device

11:34and will then go to their doctor and ask for something else or just not take it. And then that doesn't benefit the patient either because then they're not actually treating their disease the way that it's been prescribed to them by the doctor. So I think pharma really understands that. And that's where they're really trying to focus on that first day one experience. Very helpful. Thanks for sharing that, Adam. And ultimately, many leaders, they want to understand what success looks like and how it's measured. So when organizations invest in a connected patient experience, what measurable outcomes

12:05can they expect to see for patients, providers, and the business? So the way the pharma companies have really started to look at the, again, the total patient journey, there's a lot of the typical work that they had done historically with just making sure patients got on therapy, where you see really a pivot over the last couple of years is for pharmaceutical companies to really understand how you keep patients on therapy. And that's really where you start to see this engagement between both the HCP, medical device

12:42companies, digital health companies, really trying to create a seamless system for patients where they are able to not just take their therapy, but also be able to track it. And you look at all the trends in the markets that you're starting to see and the, I would call it the explosion of wearables that you're having. Everyone, you see the work that companies like Aura and Google is doing with the new Fitbit Air. People are becoming more and more aware.

13:12They're becoming more and more connected with their different devices. So you have more and more data. And that's really where the conundrum is, because just because you have more data doesn't necessarily mean it's processed in a way that somebody in HCP can actually do something actionable about it. So I think where a lot of the research and a lot of the understanding is trying to go today and a lot of the investment is what is the right connected experience when it comes to

13:44medication, right? So we have these conversations on the Noble side all the time is, is it a connected device for adherence and compliance on the medication? Is it looking at things like a connected training experience to be able to ensure that patients are trained effectively? Is it looking at impacts of the medications to wearables? You know, when we start dialoguing the different therapies that the treatments are being used for, what are the right reports and what is the right information that then needs to

14:15be conveyed back to the doctor? How does it then feed into the EMR systems? So really, I think that where there's a lot of research being put in place right now is really trying to understand where it's not too much data, right? So the data is always going to be there, but how do you really make sure it's something that can be consumed in an actionable way? That's some great information, Adam. And I want to thank you for sharing your insights and perspective with us today. It's clear that eliminating fragmentation across the patient journey and creating a more

14:46connected experience can help pharmaceutical companies build patient confidence, improve adherence, and drive stronger outcomes for patients and brands alike. Thank you so much, Lauren. And thank you to everyone for joining us for this episode of The Top Line. I'm your host, Lauren Ledger. For more information, you can learn more in our show notes at fiercepharma.com. And that's the bottom line from The Top Line. I'm your host, Lauren Ledger.

15:29I'm your host, Lauren Ledger.