Life sciences organizations are navigating increasing pressure to support patients more effectively—from early trial recruitment through long-term medication adherence. Whether these organizations are responsible for accelerating trials, launching a new therapy, or rethinking how their brand engages patients beyond healthcare professionals (HCPs), expectations have changed. Patients now compare their healthcare experiences to the digital, personalized interactions they receive everywhere else.
Yet new independent research shows that the tools most companies rely on are not built to meet today’s expectations around education, motivation, and personalization—especially as organizations begin exploring more direct, patient-centered engagement models.
These insights come from a recent survey of 75 U.S. life sciences leaders commissioned by Lirio in Q4 2025 and conducted by Sage Growth Partners.
Here are a few noteworthy takeaways that are be featured in a new report.
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Engagement challenges dominate both trial and post-launch performance—and create cascading downstream effects
Across the lifecycle, leaders identified as their top persistent obstacles:
- Clinical trial patient engagement (79%)
- Post-commercialization medication adherence (72%)
These aren’t isolated challenges. Poor engagement early on reduces enrollment and protocol compliance. Post-launch, the same issues undermine real-world effectiveness, patient satisfaction, and long-term outcomes. For organizations increasingly focused on building direct relationships with patients, these gaps become even more costly—limiting trust, continuity, and long-term value.
This data demonstrates that engagement isn’t a point-in-time obstacle—it’s a continuum that impacts enrollment, trial completion rates, real-world evidence generation, quality metrics, and much more.
Respondents’ insights suggest that even well-designed protocols suffer when engagement is uneven or reactive—and that engagement quality is now as critical as operational efficiency.
Most organizations rely on non-scalable methods, and very few use purpose-built engagement technology
Although respondents acknowledge the importance of tailored patient support, 3% or fewer report using patient-facing digital tools that aren’t proprietary.
Most rely on:
- Site-level coordinators
- Study nurses
- Advocacy groups
- Internally built apps or workflows
These approaches can be effective in pockets—but are costly, inconsistent, and difficult to scale globally. Homegrown tools also struggle to adapt content or timing based on real patient behavior, limiting their ability to support ongoing motivation.
As more life sciences organizations look to move beyond HCP-only engagement toward direct-to-patient and direct-to-consumer strategies, these limitations become more pronounced. Patients increasingly expect consumer-grade digital experiences, underscoring the need to adopt technologies that are built to personalize outreach, detect gaps, and sustain engagement at scale.
Speed-to-market is the top priority—yet organizations lack the infrastructure to support it
More than three quarters of life sciences leaders say accelerating trial timelines is their top strategic priority for the next 12–18 months.
However, the operational focus on speed rarely matches the engagement infrastructure required to achieve it. Many organizations still rely on manual processes, fragmented communication pathways, and site-level variability that make it difficult to manage the patient experience in a consistent, scalable way.
This gap becomes even more challenging as organizations attempt to engage patients earlier, more directly, and across longer time horizons. Without the right infrastructure, efforts to move faster—or go direct—risk increasing complexity rather than reducing it.
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