From social worker to joining the pharmaceutical industry

Tellingly, when asked about a topic she could give a spontaneous 15-minute presentation on, she replies: “Probably patient centricity. I could talk a lot about it.” And she does. Currently based in Japan, the Head of Pulmonary Fibrosis Marketing even centers answers about her job around patients. “I really like that we have the power to change things for them,” she says, identifying a particularly meaningful element of her job. “We can see what we create and change systems that don’t work.”  

Yorisoi, version 2.0

For example, the Yorisoi Partner program, or “Empathy Partner”, began in 2021 to provide holistic support to people living with pulmonary fibrosis. The goal: walk patients through the many complications they may encounter as they manage their disease. Over the course of six months, patients receive a comprehensive information package detailing their diagnosis and its implications in simple (language and regular phone calls with nurses. These calls provide patients the outlet to discuss issues they’re facing, such as symptoms of their disease progression or lifestyle implications. The nurses then complete a report that is forwarded to the patient’s attending physician. Collectively, these measures ensure that the patient’s needs – medical, informational, and emotional – are all met.  

In November 2021, however, the program launched to low registration numbers. So they looked at the feedback and in January 2022, formed the Patient Care Support (PCS) team. It comprises of former nurses and pharmacists who directly engage with patients and physicians, thereby improving the main perceived issue: communication with the program’s participants. This bridged a gap that the team was unaware existed in the first place. Miyuki explains: “We assumed that healthcare professionals would best know the patient’s experience, but patients don’t always talk to their doctors in that way. Some of them can be quite hesitant or worried to share all the details.”  

Learning from failure

As of March 2023, the program has 531 registered patients through referrals from over 200 physicians. Miyuki adds: “We also heard from doctors that the report from the calls provided them a deeper look at what their patients were really going through.” Such a learning process is why 11 years later, Miyuki continues to find fulfillment in her job. “It’s a great environment where we can take risks and know that it’s always okay to fail,” she says. And as someone who believes that even functioning things can be improved upon, our innovation culture is paramount to her. She attributes much of the culture to her supervisors who “believed in me more than I did.”  

Miyuki joined the Japan team in 2012 as a Market Research Manager. By then, she had made several lateral career moves: she had worked as a translator on a non-governmental organization cruise ship and a market researcher at two different firms. Yet she was still hesitant to move from market research to our marketing team. “I’d just had my twin boys and didn’t feel confident in my experience, but with all the encouragement I received from my supervisors, I realized that I may have been limiting myself,” Miyuki explains.  

“Limiting” is not the word one would use to describe a professional who once talked a veteran through his PTSD episode on her mobile phone, while he drove around (city) in his car. Still, this is the exact advice Miyuki would give her 18-year-old self: “I’d tell her, ‘You can do much more than you think. Take a chance, and don’t be afraid to fail.’”