Rare diseases: Pharmafield specialist delegates

Today, more than fifty Pharmafield employees work on rare diseases to provide information to physicians and promote existing treatments. An interview with Benjamin Levistre, CEO.

What is your position on rare diseases?

For these complex and often life‑threatening pathologies, we raise awareness among doctors through high‑quality scientific and medical information. The goal is to help them suspect this disease (which they often have little or no knowledge of) by comparing symptoms that, taken in isolation, would not lead to this suspicion. In addition, we inform them about specialists or expert centers that will be able to validate or not their diagnosis and treat the patient.

How do you do it?

The priority is to build a real network between practitioners who are in contact with patients and those involved in diagnosis and care.

To do this, our delegates meet with all stakeholders: general practitioners, city and hospital specialists, expert centers, etc., concerned by a rare disease.

Leading to the earliest possible diagnosis of the latter will in fact make it possible to limit the patient's diagnostic wandering (sometimes more than three years) and avoid multiple prescriptions (potentially harmful) that can be made by the practitioners consulted, on the basis of diagnoses distorted by partial knowledge of the patient's file. These different actions contribute to preserving the patient's chances.

How are your delegates trained for this type of mission?

All our staff have scientific backup to easily assimilate information about the disease. A perfect understanding of the patient's environment is also of paramount importance.

Scientific training is essential; both initial and ongoing, so that delegates master an often complex pathology. This training is provided by the laboratory, accompanied by our scientific experts and medical communication specialists. Our teams must be able to fully understand the network between practitioners, their expectations, and their needs in terms of proper use of medication.

How do they operate?

First, they align their actions with the reality of patient care pathway structures. In practice, initial meetings take place in person, and then it's important to introduce digital interactions to supplement the information and stay in constant contact with practitioners. This type of exercise fits well with the policy of exclusive and dedicated networks that Pharmafield has been implementing for more than four years.

Have you developed a very specific strategy for rare diseases?

Absolutely. There's a lot of work to be done targeting physicians and identifying the patient journey to ensure the flow of information. We've been refining this strategy with our laboratory partners for over three years. It's now one of our recognized areas of expertise, enabling the effective promotion of rare disease treatments. We now have seven clients working for in this area and are continuing to develop this activity.