For decades, pharmaceutical companies operated behind the scenes. Their systems, teams, and operating models were built to support clinical development, regulatory rigor, manufacturing scale, and provider-mediated engagement.
The patient was central to the mission, but rarely the interface. That line is dissolving.
Across the industry, pharma is moving closer to the patient through education, digital tools, support programs, adherence services, and direct experiences that resemble consumer health more than traditional life sciences. While often framed as a commercial or branding shift, the deeper reality is operational.
Patient-facing pharma is an infrastructure challenge, and health IT will determine whether it works.
Recent data underscores the urgency. As of January 2026, ChatGPT handles 40 million health-related queries a day. At the same time, healthcare organizations are operating in a higher-risk environment: IBM’s Cost of a Data Breach Report 2024 found healthcare had the highest average breach cost at $9.77M.
Suzy Jackson, Chief Commercial Officer at RVO Health, the nation’s largest health and wellbeing property, has spent more than a decade at the intersection of pharma strategy, digital transformation, and patient experience.
Through RVO Health’s Fullspan Health offering, she helps life sciences organizations modernize engagement, supporting more connected, patient-centric approaches to care
Previously, Jackson built a global career at Accenture, leading pharmaceutical and biotech engagements across Europe, Asia, and the Americas. That experience shaped her perspective on what happens when ambition outpaces infrastructure.
Her view is direct: pharma’s move into patient-facing care is exposing the difference between having digital tools and having a digital foundation.
Jackson says, “Direct-to-patient isn’t a campaign. It’s an operating model. And that operating model breaks if your systems can’t support real-time data movement, integration into care workflows, and trust at consumer scale.”
When Infrastructure No Longer Fits the Model
Traditional pharma infrastructure excels at what it was designed to do: managing trials, documenting safety, scaling supply chains, and engaging providers in structured environments.
Patient-facing models introduce a different reality.
Patients expect connected, responsive experiences. They expect tools to recognize them, reduce friction, and respect how their data is used. As support programs increasingly move through digital channels, transparency and continuity become high stakes.
These expectations create new infrastructure demands: real-time data exchange, identity and consent management, longitudinal views across touchpoints, and interoperability with the care ecosystem surrounding the patient.
This is where many programs stall.
A patient support tool can be beautifully designed and still fail if it cannot connect to what matters: EHRs, care teams, navigation workflows, and upstream data that creates continuity.
“Patient engagement fails when the infrastructure can’t support it,” Jackson adds. “If the experience isn’t connected to clinical reality, it becomes another app someone downloads and forgets.”
Why Agility has Become Non-negotiable
Patient-facing services evolve quickly. Education changes with new indications. Navigation shifts with reimbursement. Adherence programs must respond to real-world behavior, not assumptions.
That pace is difficult to match when core systems are rigid.
Jackson emphasizes that the next era of pharma requires modular, interoperable platforms built to launch, learn, and adapt. That means architectures that support iteration without compromising compliance, and data models that capture signals beyond traditional clinical data.
With in-patient-facing care, the most important insights often come from engagement patterns, behavioral changes, and moments of friction that predict whether a patient will stay in therapy.
“Care is no longer a one-way transaction,” she says. “It’s a relationship. And relationships generate data that may not be clinical, but is still critical.”
Interoperability as a Baseline, Not a Goal
Interoperability has long been discussed as a future objective. In a patient-facing model, it becomes the baseline.
Patients do not want to repeat themselves. Providers do not want parallel systems. Care teams need continuity across settings and time.
This makes integration more important than feature sets.
Patient-facing solutions create real value when embedded into existing care ecosystems rather than layered on top. Integrated experiences support care delivery. Disconnected ones create noise.
Jackson sees the opportunity not in building more patient tools, but in embedding them into clinical workflows so patient-generated insights inform care and care reinforces engagement.
“Patients are already managing a lot,” she says. “If we add tools that don’t connect, we’re adding work, not value.”
Governance Scales with the Consumer
As pharma becomes more patient-facing, data volume and visibility increase dramatically, along with expectations around privacy and trust.
Consumer-scale programs require governance built into the experience, not retrofitted later.
Consent cannot be a buried checkbox. Auditability cannot be an afterthought. Transparency cannot live only in policy documents.
Jackson emphasizes that speed and compliance are not opposites.
“You don’t choose between moving fast and being compliant,” she says. “You design for both from the beginning. Trust is part of the product.”
From Vendors to Strategic Partners
This shift is also changing who pharma needs at the table.
Patient-grade digital infrastructure cannot be built in isolation. Health IT platforms play a critical role in enabling interoperability, managing longitudinal records, and connecting engagement to clinical workflows.
In this model, partners are no longer just vendors. They become the connective tissue that determines whether patient-facing efforts translate into real-world impact.
The implication is clear: as pharma steps closer to the patient, the ecosystem must still function as a single system.
A Systems Solution
Patient-facing pharma is already here. The question is whether organizations will build the foundation to support it.
In a functioning model, engagement tools are embedded into workflows, data flows securely across stakeholders, and iteration is driven by real-world outcomes. Infrastructure supports learning, not just reporting.
“Ambition isn’t the hard part,” Jackson says. “Execution is. The companies that win will have the operational and technological foundations to support their vision.”
Pharma’s shift toward patient-facing care is one of the most significant transformations the industry has seen in decades. It changes how trust is built, how value is delivered, and how outcomes are supported beyond the prescription.
At its core, patient-centricity is not a branding exercise. It is a systems problem.
Health IT will determine who solves it.
Learn more about Suzy Jackson’s work in digital health transformation on the official website or connect with Suzy Jackson on LinkedIn.
