Partnering with patients to innovate where it matters

We think that partnering with patients is a fundamental driver for achieving real innovation when you are developing a new medicine and so we work hard at engaging with patients throughout the discovery, development, and delivery continuum to discuss and identify the diverse challenges that matter most to them along their patient journey. This requires us to ensure patients’ needs are better understood and embedded as early as possible in the development process.

One element of UCB’s stewardship of our portfolio of products and molecules in Development is the Benefit Risk Board (BRB) established in 2012. The BRB is a product-independent governing body that monitors and advises on product-specific and cross-product Benefit-Risk. Over the last 10 years, the BRB focused on the development and improvement of the operational processes, aiming to create a transparent, open, diverse and friendly environment conducive to informed decision making.

As we celebrate the ten-year anniversary of its establishment, we have evolved the BRB, moving from process improvement to partnering, co-creating and innovating with patients. UCB has charted a new path to welcome patient experts to our BRB to fully integrate the patients’ perspectives into our benefit-risk decisions. This additional interaction with patients on our portfolio enables us to make better-informed decisions by considering patients’ insights and perspectives at all stages of a product’s lifecycle. 

Over the next few months, UCB’s BRB will have multiple interactions with patient experts in different disease areas. By taking this new approach, UCB is working to ensure that benefit risk decisions at the BRB are informed directly by patient input. Leading by example, the BRB will ensure that the patient voice is integrated throughout all forums of the benefit risk governance at UCB. Partnering with patients as peers in the co-creation of our deliverables is critical to create sustainable value and make real improvements in the lives of the people we serve, now and into the future. 

By listening to and learning from the patient, we ensure that our work has the greatest impact, delivering purposeful innovations and differentiated solutions that create value that cannot be expressed in numbers alone: moments celebrated, dreams pursued, simple pleasures enjoyed. With these intentional focus areas, deep curiosity, and the courage to ask the most relevant questions, UCB can become a trusted partner to best serve our most important customer: the patient.