Lead Patient Safety Physician

The Importance of Patient Centricity: 7 Questions with Maria Weber

Lead Patient Safety Physician Maria Weber tells us about why she joined Boehringer Ingelheim, and the importance of patient centricity in everything she does.

How long have you been at Boehringer Ingelheim? 

I’ve been at Boehringer Ingelheim for 6 years now, but I’ve worked in Patient Safety in very different settings for 20 years.

What was your journey to your current role?

Before joining here, I had my own consultancy business, and Boehringer Ingelheim was one of my clients. I thought the work the company was doing was really impactful with an amazing pipeline of drugs. I was also impressed by the culture and people, very smart, scientific, collaborative, and putting safety first. So when the opportunity came to work here, I took it.

What was your main motivation for joining Boehringer Ingelheim?

My previous two roles were  focused on business development and pharmacovigilance processes, and I wanted to get back closer to my roots - medicine and science.  I wanted to utilize my medical and scientific knowledge as a physician in a complex, global environment, join a diverse and dedicated team, and engage in exciting projects that make a real difference in patients’ lives. 

How does your role enable you to help patients?

Even though I don’t any longer see patients as their doctor, in a way I still have patients. We in Patient Safety & Pharmacovigilance are looking after them – in terms of  identifying and minimizing unwanted effects of drugs on the market and new compounds used in clinical trials. We do detective work on case reports of patients experiencing potential side effects, very similar to differential diagnostic thinking in clinical medicine. We support study design and conduct to safeguard the trial participants. We also need to ensure patients have the information they need to understand side effects and potential risks of marketed and investigational drugs, to be able to make informed decisions. Patient-centricity is important to all departments at Boehringer Ingelheim, but I think in Patient Safety & Pharmacovigilance, it is especially intrinsic to what we do.

What challenges do you face in staying patient-centric?

I think one of the most important things we need to do is to listen to patients and incorporate their voices into how we work. For example, we as physicians may have a different perspective on importance of side effects compared to the patients that actually take the drugs, something very important to figure out. Also, participation in clinical trials can be quite a burden for people – or at least inconvenient, so we need to find ways to reduce the burden, at the same time maintaining their safety.  It’s about asking the right questions, be open-minded to take a perspective different from my own, and to change approaches based on patient insights.

Do you have any examples of listening to patients?

A really nice example is from a project when we were interviewing clinical trial patients to ask about their trial experience. One of the key insights was that patients are deeply interested in the performance of the novel treatment they are testing. However, once their trial participation is finished, they rarely hear about the drug again. So now BI is following up with trial participants and show them the results of the trial in a format and language understandable to patients.

What’s next for Patient Safety?

So much! Improving how we take on feedback from patients and refining our approaches to make them more patient-centric is always going to be a priority. But something else that excites me is the use of technology. Wearables and apps are potential gamechangers, enabling us to tailor trials to better meet patient needs, monitor safety, and enhance overall patient experiences. Patient Safety is a really exciting space right now, and I can’t wait to see where it leads us.