Patient-Centricity in the Pharmaceutical Industry: A Review and Research Agenda

Abstract

The concept of patient-centricity has gained much attention in the healthcare ecosystem in the past few decades. While most healthcare stakeholders have embraced this model of placing the patient at the center of their focus, pharmaceutical companies have only started to adopt patient-centricity more recently. To date, the literature on patient-centricity in the pharmaceutical industry has focused on isolated initiatives, departments, or processes, leading to a fragmented view of the concept. To address this gap, this article conducts a systematic literature review of 46 peer-reviewed articles from the Scopus database. This study uses the “Theory, Context, and Methodology” and “Antecedents, Decisions, and Outcomes” frameworks to organize and structure the literature review. This article offers a comprehensive framework and definition of the concept of patient-centricity in the pharmaceutical industry and concludes with a research agenda to address the gaps. This study provides a unified understanding of patient-centricity and guides future research to develop it further while providing practitioners from the pharmaceutical industry with a framework of initiatives to shift toward patient-centricity.