LEO Pharma embraces patient-centric innovation

Some diseases get a lot of media attention. Other diseases might not have had the same media savvy team or message, though their effect may be quite severe for the patient, regardless of whether they are chronic or not. Like psoriasis, eczema, or acne.

LEO Pharma enhances patient-centric innovation with an aspiration to help more than 100 million people. Innovation is one of their values. ”As a patient-focused healthcare company, we have a responsibility to help people – via our solutions but also via supportive initiatives around the patient,” says Mette Vestergaard, Senior Vice President, Global People and Communications at LEO Pharma, and also underlining the positive potential this also holds for the company; ”It is possible that concrete activities will open up for new services and customers. Innovation and in particular digital innovation will play a central role – it is an agenda that we as a company cannot solve alone.”

Mette Vestergaard is one of the speakers at Responsible Pharma conference, November 30 at the Maersk Tower in Copenhagen.

Founded in 1908 and owned by the LEO Foundation, the healthcare company has devoted decades of research and development to delivering products and solutions to patients in more than 100 countries globally, thereby supporting people in managing their skin conditions.

One quarter of the world’s population suffers from a skin disease, yet their needs are often overlooked. Only a fraction of people have access to optional treatment and many struggle to follow their treatment regime. Because the skin is highly visible, skin conditions are often compounded by social stigma, leading to an addition psychological burden. A focus on quality of life, that also inspire LEO Pharma in their work, as this is essentially the goal of all good healthcare; being able to lead the life you want.

Sustainable health
In this respect, the Sustainable Development Goals is part of the framework  for the future CSR work atLEO Pharma, that launches its new CSR Commitment 2018-2020 in December 2017. The current CSR strategy builds on the following four strategic CSR pillars: ’Environment, Climate and Energy’, ‘People, Health and Safety, ‘Compliance and Ethics’ and ‘Partnerships and Collaborations’.

“We see the SDGs as a framework for working proactively and strategically with CSR, where the advantages are: supporting a global initiative, which drives progress in the world; generating business opportunities and creating innovation within the SDGs,” says Mette Vestergaard, “In 2017, we also focused on developing our future CSR direction. As part of this process, we assessed how we can support the achievement of the SDGs through our CSR efforts, and which specific SDGs to support.”

At Responsible Pharma Mette Vestergaard also tells more of LEO Innovation Lab’s PsoHappy initiative, which tries to measure the happiness gap between people living with a skin condition and the average population – a gap of 12% in Denmark, 20% in the US and 24% in the UK. Combined with a new effort to create the largest database of validated psoriasis photos.

LEO Pharma will do its best to put the skin disease on the agenda and support their own effort of patient-centric innovation – in part also by redesigning the company’s entire approach towards innovation in a new innovation eco-system of R&D, LEO Pharma Open Innovation, Partnerships, LEO Science & Tech Hub and LEO Innovation Lab.

Join us at Responsible Pharma or subscribe to LEO Pharma’s YouTube-channel www.youtube.com/leopharmaglobal