PNS187 DEVELOPMENT OF A MIXED-METHOD APPROACH TO CAPTURING AND COMMUNICATING THE PATIENT JOURNEY (PATIENT JOURNEY MAPPING)

Abstract

Research to describe the patient experience from pre-diagnosis, treatment initiation, and through to maintenance can be used to better understand a condition, identify unmet needs, and provide a starting point for outlining interventions which may support the patient trajectory. Current approaches to understanding the patient’s psychological journey includes literature reviews, social listening, and/ or qualitative interviews with patients, their caregivers, and healthcare professionals. The objective of this methodological abstract is to describe an approach for integrating data from these approaches to develop a cohesive, interpretable patient journey map. The development of this journey map involves four pillars: 1) defining the audience and disease areas for the patient journey; 2) critical assessment of existing research to support development of a rationale; 3) social listening to provide a preliminary conceptual framework; 4) qualitative interviews with patients, caregivers and healthcare professionals involved in the journey. The information collected above is synthesized into a single or series of interactive patient maps describing the patient’s movement through the most frequently observed emotional states across the pathway. This is visually displayed with interactive representative quotes or videos embedded alongside the visual depiction of movement through the patient journey. Example emotions include content, relieved, hopeful, guilt, fear, hopelessness. While the patient-centered research, as a field, has a number of methodological tools available to describe the patient journey, more work needs to be done to think about how to integrate this data and make it understandable to external audiences. The interactive patient map described herein can be used to illustrate the challenges faced by patients and their stakeholders and provide the audiences with insight into patient lives as a foundation on which to build further research and interventions.