Novartis uses AR to mimic a leukaemia patient’s experience at ASCO
It is common knowledge that a person with chronic myeloid leukaemia (CML) is constantly carrying a heavy load. Novartis wants medical professionals to understand the difficulties that CML patients face.
To that end, Big Pharma has added a state-of-the-art feature to its display at the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology, which is coming up soon in Chicago. Conference goers who stop by Novartis’ booth will be able to look in a mirror and see themselves holding a big rock, simulating what it’s like to live with CML, thanks to augmented reality technology.
Gail Horwood, chief marketing and customer experience officer at Novartis in the United States, stated in a conversation with Fierce Pharma Marketing that the ReThinkCML effort is an element of the the company’s broader efforts to improve the patient’s understanding of therapy options throughout the entire course of treatment.
In particular, Horwood said that while CML is now treated as a chronic illness and that results have improved, patients still endure excruciating exhaustion, nausea, pain in the muscles and bones, and even diarrhoea. He said that the researchers intended to use this knowledge to assist doctors in prioritising and understanding the patient experience, since many components of the medications that are now available have a significant influence on patients’ everyday life.
Because of skeletal and motion detection technologies powered by infrared and depth sensors, medical practitioners will be able to virtually place themselves in their patients’ shoes as a result of the immersive experience at ASCO. Simultaneously, pertinent images from the “ReThinkCML” campaign (without augmented reality technology) will be placed around the conference and its surroundings.
The boulder imagery can be seen on the campaign website, which also offers a variety of written and video materials for CML patients and medical professionals. With a focus on tyrosine kinase inhibitor (TKI) therapy, these materials clarify the possible adverse effects of popular treatments for the condition and provide evidence that treatment continuation despite side effects may lead to increased effectiveness.
The website does not include Novartis’s TKI, Scemblix, which has been officially approved for certain CML patients from late 2021 and is intended to be a replacement of the TKIs that are currently used as routine therapy.
