How we’re moving from empathy to action with patient experience disease simulations

To deliver against our commitment to patient centricity and patient-powered progress, we’ve teamed up with A Life in a Day, the developers of an immersive patient experience that places participants in the shoes of people living with a debilitating disease. 

Initial rollouts, with circa 400 employees who participated in the chronic kidney disease (CKD) A Life in a Day simulation, revealed a knowledge gap that most of us don’t know we have. Essentially, people’s understanding of living with disease is often limited to their own biases and personal or professional encounters.  As we transition from a predominantly scientific vantage point, we are stretching ourselves to better understand the patient experience, including the emotional and practical toll of living with disease.

The intrinsic value of A Life in a Day is that it unlocks a broader patient perspective, especially for colleagues who don’t have opportunities to engage with patients as part of their daily work.

The day that opened our eyes to living with disease 

With A Life in a Day, participants are exposed to some of the challenges and difficult choices real patients face every day, albeit as part of a 24-hour disease simulation. A mobile app guides people through the experience and delivers various symptomatic notifications (i.e., “you have a migraine”). Many use props to help simulate a medical intervention, such as dialysis for those involved in the CKD immersion. All A Life in a Day simulations use roleplay to help bring experiences into sharper focus. 

Participants receive numerous calls and updates about their treatment from actors in doctor or workplace roles. They’re confronted with information about how their disease has progressed. Commonly, they are presented with tough choices, new life adjustments or devastating news that patients receive during their health journey.

Specifically, the CKD experience opened participants’ eyes to the trials and tribulations of living with kidney disease. As Grit Schulze ten Berge, Patient Engagement Lead for cardiovascular, renal and metabolic diseases and lead for the initiative at Boehringer Ingelheim explains: “A Life in a Day is a powerful tool for advancing our culture of patient centricity. To center our efforts on the patient experience, first we need to better understand this experience and relate to it, with both our heads and hearts. Our understanding must extend well beyond the physical symptoms of a condition. Whilst no one can ever fully experience life as a patient, enabling colleagues to temporarily step into the shoes of a CKD patient has led to many profound ‘aha’ moments. Generally, the feedback has included variations of: ‘I never realized’, ‘I have a completely new perspective’ or ‘a new appreciation’ of what it must be like to live with this disease. We are now seeing these realizations drive participants to take action.” 

Investing in disease understanding

Given the simulation’s efficacy, we’ve commissioned disease-specific simulations for heart failure, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and lung cancer. 

In the absence of pre-existing A Life in a Day simulations for pulmonary fibrosis, obesity, and a combined experience for cardiovascular, renal and metabolic (CRM) diseases, we’re also collaborating with A Life in a Day and panels of patient experts with whom we’ve fostered trusted relationships, to create new simulations for our employees. This is a first. Never before has a pharmaceutical company (or indeed any other healthcare company) enlisted and consulted with patients to build out their A Life in a Day experiences. Their insights have already added new dimensions to the obesity experience. 

Bronwyn Lewis, Global Head of Patient Engagement at Boehringer Ingelheim, explains: “We’re going far and wide, across disease areas and teams, because we know first-hand that a broader understanding of the patient experience is a stepping-stone to knowing how to change it for the better. What’s more, at Boehringer, we believe everyone can be an agent for change. Which is why we’re calling on all employees to be patient champions and to integrate patient insights into their work. However, we’re also aware that, as in most large pharma organizations, many roles don’t encompass direct access to patients. We’re leveraging A Life in a Day to expose colleagues, across departments, to the patient experience in an impactful and memorable way.” 

Sharpening our patient responsibility  

While it doesn’t have to be A Life in a Day, healthcare organizations should find ways to increase their understanding of patients’ experiences, perspectives, needs and priorities.

As one Boehringer participant commented: “We have a great responsibility to make a difference.” For us, A Life in a Day simulations is one tool in our toolbox that’s sharpening our sense of responsibility to move beyond empathy and fueling our people to turn patient insights into action.  

The CKD immersion provides a glimpse of the sort of large-scale culture change we’re driving. In the post-experience survey, 97% of participants said stepping into the shoes of patients will motivate them to increase their patient focus; 89% say it will help them be more effective in their role, and 95% say it will help them foster a more patient-centric culture.

If we can replicate these sorts of results across disease areas, we can turn a disease simulation experience that places people in the shoes of patients for 24 hours, into a mechanism for shaping the future of healthcare for the better.