Position on Patient Engagement

At Astellas, patients, families and care partners are at the heart of everything we do and every decision we make. We are dedicated to listening, learning and collaborating with patient communities and patient organizations to understand what truly matters to patients, to improve their healthcare experience and to make a positive difference in people’s lives by connecting their experiences and needs to our science and employees. This helps shape the way we discover, develop and deliver medicines and support programs to meet patient needs most effectively.

We believe that appropriate collaboration with patient organizations will help us better understand how we can meet patients’, families’ and care partners’ needs throughout their healthcare journey. We can advance our ability to discover, develop and deliver effective medicines by better understanding the patient’s perspective and desired outcomes while enriching our knowledge and understanding of the broader healthcare environment. By working together and developing long-term relationships with patient organizations, we can achieve our shared objective of improving the experiences and outcomes for patients and care partners.

By working with patients and care partners, patient organizations possess a unique knowledge of the patient’s experience, their unmet needs and the factors driving the care they receive. We respect the immense value these insights can offer to help Astellas better understand the patient journey. For example, where appropriate and possible, we work with patient organizations to enhance the quality and scope of our research and development. Astellas is currently engaging in efforts to include patient input in the optimal design and execution of clinical trials and identification of additional relevant endpoints important to patients.

We believe that we can build trust with patients and other relevant stakeholders and deliver even more value within the healthcare ecosystem by working and collaborating with patient organizations. Together, we can advance awareness, education and support to make a positive difference in people’s lives. For example, by supporting the critical work by patient organizations to improve the health literacy of their members, we can help patients and their care partners to better understand and manage their own health.

Patient engagement requires working together with integrity, in a transparent, ethical, and professional manner. This is accomplished when relationships are based on an independent, mutually respectful, authentic, and trustworthy foundation. We are committed to pursuing the development of these meaningful relationships and transparent interactions with patient organizations in compliance with relevant laws, local regulations, and rules and guidelines of the innovative pharmaceutical industry.