Breaking the PEP mould in industry: How Lisa Petermann has the job of a lifetime by infusing lived experience at the c-suite in big pharma.

[MUSIC PLAYING] Hello, everyone. Welcome to Peck Talks. This is the series of podcasts for the International Society for Patient Engagement Professionals. This series is very kindly sponsored by Gruninthal. With me today, I'm very excited because I've got Lisa Peterman with me. And Lisa has the role that we are all intrigued about. Lisa has the role of Chief Patient Experience Officer at Roch Canada. When we saw this job advertise, the whole of the patient engagement network said, what strange thing is this, how magnificent? Lisa, welcome to Peck Talks. Thanks so much for having me today. I've really been looking forward to this. Oh, my goodness. So has this pet. I mean, no pressure. But it's super exciting. Imagine a top farmer company, a big farmer, has not only a Chief Patient Officer, but a Chief Patient Experience Officer. Who knew that this was possible? When it's, I mean, it's incredible to be able to hold this post. And I think what's really exciting for me is how the role came about. So if you want, I can tell you a little bit about that. Do we want? We absolutely do. I am absolutely fascinated about this role, about who created this role, about how you got this role, and what you intend to do with it. This is truly history in the making. And I'm saying that deliberately, because I know that you're a professor of medical history, right? Are you sure I am, yes. And it's interesting to study history and then become part of it. You're at Roch Canada. They've got a genuinely visionary leadership team who thought we can do this differently. And they created the Chief Patient Experience Officer role in collaboration with our patient co-creation council. So this is a love brand disease agnostic group of patients who provide strategic advice and guidance to the senior leadership at Roch Canada. So my role was co-created and not just with patients, but there were key and form and interviews done with stakeholders outside of Roch but across industry with government payers. So anyone who's sort of influential in the patient experience had the opportunity to shape this role. Wow, how long did it take to shape it? So the interview process, if I understand correctly, took about eight months of gathering insights, refining, iterating, and then they were ready to post. Wow, wow. And when you saw it posted, did you like the rest of us have a big intake of breath and go, I don't know what this is. Well, what is this? Were you curious? This was a random afternoon and August for me, Emma. And so my life trajectory wasn't going this way. I don't come from a pharmaceutical background. At the time, I was the Director of Strategy and Operations for the Libyan Cardiovascular Institute, which was sort of a multidisciplinary space where we did clinical work and research. We had patient engagement and education training. And I'd already decided at that point that I was going to migrate away from that space. And my plan was to lean in on my consulting practice. And then LinkedIn sent me one of these automated prompts that said, this position looks like a good fit for your skills and experience. And I remember so clearly just reading through it and going, wow, LinkedIn, this does look like a good fit for my skills and experience. And it's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to do my dream job and what I'm passionate about. And then I sort of thought about it and was like, but I don't come from Pharma, right? I don't-- there was nothing in the job description that indicated you had to. But I had that moment of, but that's not my background. And I thought, you know what, a job like this, an opportunity like this, the potential for impact in a space like this, just give it a shot. And so I threw my name in the ring. And thank goodness you did. I mean, you do say there, though, that you do come from the Libyan Cardiovascular Institute. So you were involved in policy and lobbying and all the other parts of the patient experience that isn't traditionally Pharma, but is very important in the patient's world. Yeah, I've had a really diverse trajectory in my career and typically divided up into three chapters, if you will. So my current chapter is the Chief Patient Experience Officer at Roche, Canada. But without the preamble, it wouldn't have been possible. I don't think to get here. So chapter one, rewind a very long time ago. 16-year-old me is a competitive swimmer at a very high level. And I have an overtraining injury. And I injure my shoulder. And it's at that point, I've made my life decision. I'm going to be an orthopedic surgeon. I am going to help everyone else who has shoulder injuries for the rest of my life. That was my passion, my dedication to help other people. And I went off to university. I studied kinesiology and found out very quickly. I didn't like any of the courses required for me to become an orthopedic surgeon. I'm having this academic crisis of this is what you want it to do. And in my final year, I started to take my electives. And I took things like creative writing and African-American emancipation literature and the history of medicine. And it was just this eye-opening pivotal moment of I love medicine. But what I really like are the narratives and the stories of how people come in and they contribute. And they change our experience of health. But what do you do with that, Emma? I mean, I wanted to be a surgeon. That's the end of chapter one, right? I go off to Japan. I teach English as a second language. And it was this phenomenal experience, right? I was a minority for the first time in my life. I got to see history and the future side by side. Then I loved teaching. I decided, OK, I'm going to teach. But I don't want to teach the courses I didn't enjoy. So I'm going to go back and do a history degree. And I'm going through this whole process. And in my masters, while I was doing that, my mother was diagnosed with gastric adenocarcinoma diffuse type. And she was sick and gone so quickly. And the experience of that is sort of what kickstarted chapter too, I would say. And I didn't enjoy her experience of being ill. I didn't enjoy the interactions that we had with the health care providers at that time. There wasn't much in the way of a peer support network. And I thought, we can do better in this space. And so I'd already accept it to do my PhD in medical history. And I thought, I'm going to go through, and I'm going to finish that. And I'm going to process what's happened to me. And in the sort of chapter three, I was sitting in the British Library reference checking. And I thought, is this really what you want to do? I am the people person, and I am alone. Academic citation referencing. And there wasn't something there for me. And at that time, the Canadian Cancer Society posted a role for a 10-month contract to coordinate the creation of a cancer prevention strategy. And I thought, yeah, this is what I'd like to do with my time, because if I could contribute to other families never experiencing what I went through with my mom, then that's what I want to do with my time. That's how I want to dedicate my life, which throws me back to 16-year-old me. Remember, she started off with wanting to make that difference. And so I was successful in getting the job. And I never looked back. I stayed in cancer for a number of years. From there, I went to mental health, because you see people getting cancer diagnosed. Mental health was such a big space. And so chapter three sort of concludes this year. And I remember driving in my car in Calgary before I relocated for this job. And there was a report on the radio from the American Cancer Society and talking about the number of people who now survive cancer beyond where people were in 1994. It was over 4 million. You've got to eat a long time in cancer prevention, like 20 years, to see that type of impact, right? But it's there. All of that sort of work and that contribution. And I remember thinking, OK, what we set out to do, in some small part, I got to contribute to that. And the experiences across all of those chapters, Emma, my mom's passing, my own sort of experience later on, all of the jobs, the training, all of that comes together to make this really amazing opportunity with Roch. I totally relate. And I'm not going to shy away from this. I'm sitting here with a tear in my eye. And these things really do shapers. The stuff that happens to us at those young ages really does. I was 15, and my mom had a very serious stroke. She's still recovered, and she's doing brilliantly. But she was very young when she had that stroke. And I can remember very clearly just the HCPs. They were busy. They had stuff to do. And they just did not want to communicate with a 15-year-old, who would then be responsible for her mom's convalescence, had to take time out of school to all the things that you have to do, and that families and caregivers do. And so the experience that we had was that the health care system was right there when that urgent treatment was needed. But then who sees these things through? I can definitely remember 15-year-old me being really frustrated. Like, I can understand this. If you find the language, if you explain what's going on to me, but they just didn't want to. I remember very clearly that feeling of fast forwarding, some 25 years, and then being the global patient officer, and one of the medicines in the portfolio was for post-stroke's plasticity. And I remember very clearly thinking, I can remember a year after my mom's stroke that suddenly she had a plasticity of the muscles, and her arms went, and she fell over. And she was doing something as every day as she was making us toast. These things stay with us. I think that the job that you've got within Roche Canada is bold and really courageous, because it's asking medical scientists, pharmacologists, pharmacists, drug developers to really look at what it's like to be a patient navigating all the different health care systems. That's pretty bold. I'm curious around if it's something that has to be trialed within one of the affiliate organisations. Because I certainly know from being a global officer in a global role, I didn't quite have the freedom to do the things that some of the affiliate organisations do. Can you share any insights with this pepper round? Why that role is in Roche Canada and not Roche Global? So I don't have any insights in particular about those conversations. They would have happened before I started. But I can tell you that the core and governing philosophy for Roche is that everything we do for patients, we do with patients as partners every step of the way. And so at a global level, we have the global patient network that's run by Rebecca Vermeulen. And a team of, I think, 16 people who have various patient engagement activities that are influencing in shaping the global environment. And within the affiliates, each affiliate looks at their environment and how they want to tackle it. And Roche Canada, what that meant, was in order to drive towards where we want it to go in terms of nothing for patients without patients, they tried a new model, a new way of working of embedding a patient at the most senior decision-making level within the affiliate. And so now we get to learn and determine is this impactful? Am I able to amplify the voice of patients the way we hope that I can? And look at that across all of our workflows. I just presented in Switzerland about my role because people are curious about it, right? This is an interesting thing Canada has done. It's bold, it's brave, and timely. It is bold and brave, and it is timely. And like I said, the world is watching because everyone is delighted that you don't have that traditional medical development background. You know, you are firmly from a different route. I have to ask that PhD in the history of medicine. We're recording this in the week where is Pep reaches a milestone moment? You know, we are a year. We're still in our infancy. So which of those medical milestones in the history of medicine have formulated your confidence to take up this bold challenge? First, Emma, congratulations. Yeah, we did it, we all did it. It's phenomenal to watch the community rally and ask for what they need and create opportunities together. It is just truly wonderful to see what's happening with this, Pep. So massive congratulations on that. And the irony for me is my PhD looked at the evolution of pediatrics as a specialized discipline. So what are the go? I mean, you don't do things in small meshes, do you, Lisa? I mean, I try not to. But when you think about that, what I looked at was the professionalization of pediatrics, right? You needed to have journals. You needed to have dedicated training. You needed to have key opinion leader champions who would carry the core messages to the highest levels within the medical profession and eventually within government. And now watching ISPAP in the evolution, watching EU Pati, watching all of these different organizations that are coming up in the different country spaces. It's like watching and being part of the professionalization of patient engagement. And the time is now. I mean, this is, it's not a nice to have. It's not a fad. It's not a trend. This is a culmination at this point of 75 years of targeted evolution around the patient in the health care encounter and shaping the health system. So if we look back and please, Emma, forgive me, as a medical historian, I'm going to give this to you. No forgiveness needed. We want this. ISPAP once says, please, give us the chronology we all want. So Carl Rogers was an American psychologist and he coined the term patient centered care around building trust between the provider and the patient in order to achieve the optimal clinical outcome. OK, so that's 1950. You fast forward by decades. You have the civil rights movement that triggered patient rights. You have the '80s and '90s where you have health care consumerism. And now it's about patient choice and the rise of the patient advocacy groups to push that choice forward in different arenas. 2001 is our landmark, the IOM Report Institute of Medicine Report, Crossing the Chasm, where it states unequivocally patients should be considered as partners in their care. And then the digital revolution. So we have been gaining momentum and speed over this 75-year period where patients are now key drivers of choice in their care. And for people like me, in my role, it's to amplify that voice so that we're being responsive to the needs of patients in their care. I mean, I love it. I love the chronology. We have to look back at the lessons and what comes next. And as you said there, we speed up. There's now a wonderful expectation that clinical trial design will include a patient reported outcome measure, an experienced measure, a caregiver reported outcome measure. And we could not have had even that conversation three years ago, making it a routine inclusion in clinical trial design. And yet here we are. And it thrills me when farmer companies put out their data and their stats. 86% of our trials are co-designed with patients. This was a Nevada statistic of this year when they did their two-year update on their commitment to patients. And then when you say to them, what happened to the other 16% they say, well, there was no need because those were pharmacologically-based trials. And it would have been a burden on patients to include them in trial design. So not only are we now including patients in clinical trial design, we are able to say it will be wasting their time if they're in these trials. Now that is evolution. That is not just saying include patients, include patients, collaborate with patients. That's saying there's better things that patients can do with that time than be involved in those 16% of our trials. Now that is true collaboration. And I think what comes next is how we work as a community to reassure and bring the regulators up to speed. So I am super excited about what that next milestone will be because it will happen. This is an evolution. We've done the revolution bit. So the next piece will come if we keep collaborating. I couldn't agree more, Emma. And on the regulatory side, the last three years, we've seen that veritable explosion of including the patient voice within decision making frameworks. Here in Canada, it's the Canadian drug agency. We see it in FDA in Europe. If you track it, it's almost an exponential increase in patient inclusion in the regulatory processes. And you've mentioned something so beautiful. One of the pillars we have in our patients' strategy here at Roach Canada is around precision engagement to the right patient for the right project at the right time. And your comment really sort of rolled model that. And if I looked at two trends coming forward, precision and professionalisation would be the two, I think, that we're going to see as we move forward in this space. Who do you reach to when you're struggling? And who should we reach to for motivation for our next pep talk? Well, there's sort of two avenues I go to with that, Emma. Sam not is on our global team. And her role is that positioning between global and the affiliates, but she has been in the discipline for 20 years. She's a phenomenal peer. She's seen the professionalisation of medical science writing. And so her lessons from that space and time in the patient engagement space are invaluable. And then the second group I always go to, it depends what I'm struggling with. But I go back to my patient communities. And I liaise with either individual patients, my patient co-creation council, or the patient advocacy groups that are best placed to answer whenever that challenges. So those would be my two recommendations. And you do know that these pep communities now are going to come to you. Any day, please, I'm open. Please put my contact details out there. This community is so warm and welcoming. And it's only by working together that we're able to move from doing things for patients to doing things with patients in partnership. The final thing I have to ask you, and I'm being a bit naughty here, because I feel like having some fun, OK? This is such a phenomenal role. You are absolutely the right person for that role. So that allows us to put our serious stuff aside and be a bit funny. So I notice that you, in fact, did your PhD at one of the most prestigious establishments in the UK. And I do know that people who aren't from the UK really struggle to pronounce the name. So I'm just going to say, how do you articulate the University of W-A-R-W-I-C-K? Well, Emma, I'm a proud graduate of the University of Warwick. Yeah, you did it. It took me a very long time to get that. And I still can't say "wester" appropriately. So my time in the UK was only successful in one of those two. Well, as long as you're speaking the language of the patient, that's all that counts. Lisa, thank you for your time with Pep Talks. Thank you very much, Emma. It's been an absolute pleasure. I'm looking forward to seeing more in the series. What a super Pep Talks from Lisa. I have to confess now that history was one of my worst subjects at school and it was my lowest grade. So I feel that that's come full circle because I've been speaking to a history of medicine doctor who's actually making history for us in our future as in his Pep community. See you next time.