How a patient’s voice drives a system-level care pathway redesign
- May 22
- 3 min read
How a Novartis UK campaign with authentic patient content accelerated system-level redesign
Many pharma campaigns generate awareness. Far fewer create the trust, alignment and stakeholder momentum needed to change care pathways.
When Sunil was given months to live following a heart failure diagnosis, Novartis UK helped to amplify his journey and lived experience to drive a ground-breaking campaign that did something most pharma communications never achieve: a system-level redesign of the care pathway that its solution was created to support.
Fighting Failure is a powerful case study that shows how authentic patient storytelling can become a stakeholder-engagement mechanism to support system-level pathway redesign, collaboration with policymakers, access acceleration, ROI and measurable healthcare impact via a replicable mechanism for collaboration.
System redesign accelerated by 3-5 years versus industry norms for new treatment adoption
Advocacy lag compressed by more than 3 years
Patient access quickened by 3-6 months per patient
Estimated annual ROI of £11.9m-£23.8m on a £300K investment (2021-2023)
More clinicians equipped to intervene earlier, supporting greater system-level patient access.
The conventional pharma playbook treats authentic patient content as a soft contributor - useful for emotional resonance but rarely credited with moving systems but FIXING US’ Fighting Failure challenges that perception by demonstrating how it can actually be a hard imperative.
When content is authentic, it can do more than raise awareness. It can also serve as a strategic engine for innovation as well as a powerful and transparent stakeholder-engagement mechanism that creates more meaningful external and internal relationships and less transactional collaboration.
Fighting Failure is an authentic story of Sunil’s lived experiences following his heart failure and how he, along with his loved ones and stakeholders, engaged with it. No actors, no scripts, no recreations, no brand-led polish. Just real patients, real caregivers, real clinicians. All real stakeholders.
One of the most striking aspects of Fighting Failure is how it started delivering immediately, well before content was created. Once the stakeholders understood the goal and how content would not be scripted, curated or brand-led, they wanted in - as participants, recruitment partners, endorsers, sponsors, supporters and diffusion partners - and co-created a catalyst for trust, collaboration and advocacy.
Fighting Failure brought together the British Society for Heart Failure, the Department of Health and Social Care, the British Cardiovascular Society, the British Association for Cardiac Prevention and Rehabilitation, Cardiomyopathy UK, Pumping Marvellous, NHS clinicians and the UK Secretary of State for Health. In helping them to become co-creators, and not just target audiences, collaborations started earlier and changes were made faster.
This extensive stakeholder-engagement mechanism was meaningful and collaborative, enabling these stakeholders to support the authentic content and messaging which included all their voices. And even before the documentary was completed and broadcast with Amazon Prime Video, its content was being diffused in Parliament, supporting education programmes and initiating changes, accelerating care pathway redesigns, improving access for patients and delivering measurable value for Novartis.
In a category where 80% of UK heart failure diagnoses were occurring only post-emergency hospitalisation, Fighting Failure was able to address a structural primary-care issue which had been failing health systems worldwide.
This article is based upon findings from Malhotra, R. (2026) Authentic content as an effective mechanism for embedding patient voices: a hypothesis and conceptual framework. SocArXiv. (osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/d2n3r_v1), and case evidence cited includes including sources relating to Novartis UK’s Fighting Failure, heart failure care pathways, patient centricity, NHS adoption programmes and related clinical and peer-reviewed literature.
If you are interested in learning about more case studies and exploring more effective internal and external health communications, patient-centred engagement and innovation, we would welcome the opportunity to chat with you, share ideas and to help you in any way that we can.
