7th Annual Patient Centricity and Engagement conference, 25 June 2025, London UK
Laura-Lee Southall, MPharm MBA MCMI PGDip
Patient Strategy Director, Atlantis Health UK
Turning Insight into Action Across the Drug Development Pathway
Insight Report
Who was in the room?
This conference brought together leaders from across the life sciences, patient organisations and healthcare industries—spanning R&D, medical affairs, patient advocacy, digital health, and compliance. Speakers included experts from AstraZeneca, Roche, Pfizer, Novartis, Boehringer Ingelheim, Mundipharma, NHS England, and national patient organisations. Their focus? Making patient centricity a reality, not a buzzword—cross clinical trials, engagement strategies, and long-term outcomes.
Atlantis Health was proud to sponsor and attend the event. Niamh Ward (Country Manager, Atlantis Health UK) and Dr Debbie Cooke (Head of Health Psychology, Atlantis Heath UK) shared a presentation during the main session ‘The Missing Piece?'
Their session explored how behavioural science can illuminate hidden unmet needs, those often overlooked in traditional engagement models, and how technology, when designed with psychological insight, can deliver greater value without losing the human touch.
By applying evidence-based behavioural frameworks, the presentation demonstrated how we can better understand patient motivations, barriers, and beliefs to co-create more meaningful, sustainable health outcomes.
Contact us if you’d like to receive a copy of the presentation.
Key themes and action points
Here are three standout themes—and how behavioural science can turn these insights into action.
1. Shared decision making needs a reboot
Despite being central to good care, shared decision making remains an unmet need:
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🔍 40% of patients aren’t involved in decisions about their treatment
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📉 59% feel unsupported in managing their condition
Too often, patients remain passive recipients rather than active partners. Behavioural science offers proven strategies to shift this dynamic: by helping healthcare professionals speak with empathy, and support patients to better understand their health, ask questions, and make decisions based on what matters most to them.
Atlantis Health in action:
We design behavioural training for HCPs that improves how they talk with patients helps shift unhelpful health beliefs, and supports self-management.
Our programmes also include tools that guide patients to make informed choices based on what matters most to them.
By combining these approaches, we help patients to build skills and confidence, making shared decision making a practical, everyday part of care.
2. Clinical trials must start with patients, not protocols
Despite growing awareness, patient-centricity in clinical trials remains more aspiration than reality. The data speaks for itself:
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📊 85% of trials fail to retain enough participants
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🚫 30% dropout rate and 66% of sites struggle to recruit
Why? Patients often face travel burdens, long study visits, complex questionnaires, unclear communication, mistrust, and limited support, which all plays a role.
Behavioural science helps us understand and address these barriers. It reveals how beliefs, emotions, and lived experiences shape patient decisions, and offers tools to rebuild trust through empathy, transparency, and cultural awareness.
Co-designing trials with patients from the outset can boost engagement by 20%, but this must go beyond just token involvement with trust and follow-through are essential. Meaningful patient input, clear communication, and feedback loops that show how their voices shape the trial are essential.
Atlantis Health in action:
At Atlantis Health, we apply behavioural science to support pharma to create trials making them more inclusive, engaging, and effective.
We co-create trial experiences with patients to reflect real patient needs—addressing both practical and emotional barriers to participation, enhancing trust, and using behavioural frameworks to improve recruitment, retention, and relevance.
We also set up patient steering committees, create easy-to-use decision tools, and support advocacy so patients can have a real say in how trials are designed and run.
Patient-centric trials aren’t just better for participants; they’re better for science.
3. Quality of life is the ultimate outcome
Patients want more than a medicine that improves clinical results, they want to feel better, live fully and stay in control over their lives. Quality of life means being able to enjoy everyday activities, maintain independence, manage emotions, and stay connected with others. It’s shaped by more than physical health; it includes mental wellbeing, social support, and the ability to do what matters most to each person.
However, knowing about a condition or treatment doesn’t automatically lead to change. Many patients struggle to apply health information in ways that improve their daily lives. This “Information–Action Gap” can leave people feeling stuck, unsupported, or overwhelmed, limiting their ability to achieve the quality of life they’re striving for.
Pharmaceutical companies have a real opportunity to change this. Patients want to be treated as whole people, not just as cases. That means offering solutions that go beyond medicine, and provide support that fits into their lives, helping them feel more confident, capable, and connected.
But quality of life is complex and shaped by more than clinical outcomes:
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🧠 Education alone isn’t enough, knowledge must lead to action
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🧭 Pharma engagement is often stalled by legal uncertainty or unclear ABPI guidance
Closing the “Information–Action Gap” requires tailored behavioural support, genuine storytelling, and clear guidance for pharma teams to engage with confidence and compliance.
Atlantis Health in action:
We translate educational content into personalised behavioural interventions, helping patients take action.
We also support pharma to navigate patient engagement safely and effectively, ensuring compliance without losing authenticity.
At Atlantis Health, we use behavioural science to help pharmaceutical companies deliver solutions that go beyond clinical outcomes and improve patients’ everyday lives.
Our tools are designed to build emotional wellbeing, confidence, and daily functioning, supporting patients to feel more in control and connected.
For patients, quality of life isn’t a bonus, it’s the outcome that matters most, and we help make that happen.
Final Word: What this means for you
Across the development lifecycle—from trial design to launch to long-term adherence—patients expect more than information. They expect relevance, empathy, partnership, and outcomes that matter.
This conference made one thing clear: patient centricity is no longer a future ambition; it’s a present-day expectation.
Patients are asking for more than medicine. They want solutions that help them live better, not just get better.
For pharmaceutical companies, this means shifting from product delivery to life improvement. It means recognising that quality of life is the ultimate outcome, and that closing the gap between information and action is essential to achieving it.
Whether it’s designing trials that reflect real patient needs, supporting healthcare professionals to communicate with empathy, or creating tools that help patients take meaningful action, behavioural science offers the frameworks to make it happen.
Our capabilities across the development pathway
Atlantis Health helps you deliver on that promise.
We apply behavioural science to identify real barriers, build lasting motivation, and create patient experiences that work in the real world. We turn insight into action, co-creating programmes that are inclusive, compliant, and grounded in what matters most to patients.
Because when patients feel heard, supported, and empowered, outcomes improve. And that’s not just good for patients, it’s good for science, good for systems, and good for pharma.
If you’re ready to move from insight to implementation we’d love to talk.
👉 Let’s design behaviour change solutions that put patients at the centre, wherever you are in the product journey.
📩 Reach out to our team at www.atlantishealth.com or connect with me directly via LinkedIn.