Much has been published lately about personalized medicine. The other, similar buzzword is patient-centric.

It seems to me that in these terms, consultants and trend-spotters mesh together two very different ideas, each with associated with different strategic implications.

Personalized medicine in the sense of using biomarkers and genetic information to target therapies more specifically to patients who are more likely to respond to them is an approach that many pharmaceutical companies are embracing.

However, in this context the patient as a person has very little relevance for the R&D process and the commercialization of new products. What he or she feels, thinks, believes or does is unrelated to the peculiar genetic mutation that makes him or her a good candidate for a specific drug.

The second trend, namely focusing on the patient as a person, does not usually play a role in drug discovery. Pharmaceutical companies commonly find themselves in the situation that their compound is the third or fourth me-too agent to market with little incremental benefit. Identifying and targeting a specific patient with distinctive attitudes, behaviours and needs can be a successful marketing strategy in an undifferentiated market.

And while some companies may strive to bring both approaches closer together – understanding the patient as a person and developing new molecules that meet the patient’s specific needs – this is far more difficult to achieve in pharmaceutical product development than in the area of consumer goods.