Person-Centred Healthcare versus Patient Centricity - what is the difference and how are pharmaceutical companies aiming to secure internal representation of the patient voice?

The Sixth Annual Conference and Awards Ceremony of the European Society for Person Centered Healthcare (ESPCH6), dynamically co-created by the ESPCH and WPP Health Practice, was delivered earlier this year at the University of West London on 27 & 28 February 2020 [1]. The purpose of ESPCH6 was to debate how the reintroduction of the historic tenets of humanistic medicine/healthcare could take place within a data-driven modern context, with a laser-sharp focus on the pragmatic imperative of higher quality care at sustainable or lowered cost. The conference brought together a wide range of distinguished clinical and academic speakers, chairpersons, and key opinion leaders from across the globe, including the USA, Canada, Australia, Germany, Switzerland, Denmark, and, in the UK, colleagues from the University of Oxford, University of West London, Manchester Metropolitan University, Kingston University, St. George’s University of London, the University of Hull, and the University of Gloucester UK. Over ESPCH6’s two intensive days, 33 detailed presentations were delivered across 11 academic sessions, spanning a wide range of study areas of immediate relevance to the development and implementation of person-centred approaches within health and social care systems [1]. Notably, and as a direct function of ESPCH’s partnership with WPP Health Practice, a key characteristic of ESPCH6 was the inclusion, as speakers, of a wide range of expert patients and patient advocacy organisations, alongside a range of senior colleagues as speakers from the pharmaceutical and healthcare technology industries. In this Guest Editorial, we report and discuss the results of our recent interviews with senior members of the pharmaceutical industry, principally those who presented at ESPCH6, but also others. We demonstrate how pharmaceutical companies are stepping up to the personcentered care (PCC) agenda, and how their individual and collective approaches are adding value and momentum to the global PCC movement.