A Day Spent with Patients - Understanding, Experiencing Firsthand, and Taking into Account the Issues Faced by Patients -

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June, 2011

“We need to learn more about the realities of patients and continue to develop new medicines while keeping them at the forefront of our minds.” Motivated by this idea, the employees from Eisai's Tsukuba Research Laboratories asked a hospital in Gunma Prefecture to allow them to accompany its physicians and nurses as they visited patients' homes to provide medical care services.

Aiming to “provide patients with personalized care so that they can continue to live comfortably in their own home,” the hospital's home nursing staff offer a wide array of medical care services, from the treatment of chronic conditions such as diabetes and kidney disease to the palliative care of cancer patients.

Through this program, the Tsukuba Research Laboratories employees made some new important findings, leading them to resolve to improve the quality of their daily work and expedite the development of new medicines as follows:

  • Patients need medicines that not only treat their illness, but that are also easier to administer while improve their quality of life.
  • While this recent visit provided insight into one aspect of patient care, it is necessary to continue to make efforts to learn more about what actually happens on the medical frontlines.
  • One of the patients the Tsukuba team met on their visit said, “Sure, I would like to be able to get up and move around, if I could. But I know I can't. So I've decided to try and do the things I still can do right here in my bed!” Perhaps this was the flipside of her uneasiness talking. Eisai must speed up the research and development of new medicines so as to offer even greater hope to patients as soon as possible.

By learning firsthand about the realities faced by patients, Eisai not only aims to address their explicit needs, it also seeks to gain a deeper understanding of their unspoken wishes, thereby generating “Customer Joy,” a concept that goes over and above simply providing “Customer Satisfaction.”