AstraZeneca Innovation Survey
Does innovation mean the same thing to everyone? We asked 6,000 people what they thought – with some interesting results.
Innovation is at the heart of what we do. AstraZeneca’s contribution to better health is founded on our research and development of medicines that can make a real difference for patients. And, for us, innovation isn’t just about leading-edge science. We continuously look at how we can do things differently across all aspects of our activity to drive value for our stakeholders and our business.
But what does innovation mean to others? Does it mean the same thing to everyone? How are perceptions of innovation changing? We wanted to learn more about what it means to different people and how valuable they thought it was to society. So we commissioned an international survey to find out.
The survey's findings, based on responses from 6,000 people in six different countries around the world, reveal some interesting differences in how innovation is perceived in established markets and in the growing economies such as China and India. National differences strongly emerge — from what represents the greatest innovation of the past 100 years, through which professions and which countries are the most creative, to who will be the leading innovators of the future. Clearly, innovation can mean different things to different people.
Scientists and doctors across academia and business work for many years to identify incremental improvements in medical science and, given the complexity of their work, these are rarely celebrated outside the scientific community. Despite this, our survey suggests that public perceptions of innovation and creativity are strongly associated with these areas of expertise.
AstraZeneca is committed to achieving better outcomes for patients and enhanced value for our stakeholders through a clear focus on innovation across all aspects of our business. This survey has given us a better understanding of the kinds of innovation that society values and has provided valuable insight for us as we drive our business forward.
Video of survey highlights
Running time 3m:22s
Innovation at AstraZeneca
Here are some examples of our commitment to finding new and better ways of doing things, both within AstraZeneca and working in partnership with others, to bring benefit for patients, our stakeholders and our business.
Looking at things differently in the fight against lung cancer
Courageous innovation means looking at things from a different perspective and exploring all the opportunities, however small they may seem at first. Iressa, our lung cancer therapy, is a good example of the benefits of taking a new viewpoint and working with others to identify the ways in which our medicine can best be used.
A pioneering partnership to explore new combination cancer treatments
AstraZeneca and Merck are working in a first of its kind partnership, focused on evaluating the potential for combining candidate molecules at an early investigational stage of development. In general, such combinations would only be studied when one or both of the drugs has entered late-stage development or received marketing approval. By looking at the opportunities at a much earlier stage, we hope to be able to more quickly advance a potentially promising cancer treatment.
Right medicine, right patient, right time
In an ideal world, every medicine would be effective for every patient, everyone could take the same dose and no one would experience side effects. The reality is quite different. Medicines work differently in different people, depending on individual physiology. Personalised healthcare (PHC) is the matching of medicines to patient characteristics, often using diagnostic testing. We are boosting our PHC capabilities We are currently investing in finding new ways to differentiate patients who are most likely to benefit from our drugs.
Creative collaboration to beat bacterial resistance
Finding new antibiotics that will be effective against bacterial resistance is not impossible, but it’s a complex and challenging area of research. AstraZeneca is one of a few key players who have continued to invest in antibiotic research in the last 10 – 20 years, and have leading capabilities in the field. But no single company can win the battle on their own which is why we partner with other research companies to accelerate the delivery of next generation antibiotics.
Going beyond the medicines
A recent survey showed that up to 50% of patients don’t take their medicines as they should - even cancer therapies. This fact triggered our Global Packaging team to take a close look at how the packs that our medicines come in could help to encourage patients to take the medicines as prescribed. Improving adherence by just a few percent could significantly improve treatment outcomes for the patient (and the associated sales would also be good for our business). We are pursuing the opportunity to use pack design to influence adherence through a range of ‘customised’ initiatives. In Canada, for example, a version of our breast cancer therapy, Arimidex, has been launched in packaging that resembles a cosmetics case to make the pack more discrete and less intimidating for patients to use. In Spain, the packaging for our paediatric asthma inhalers now features an image of a kite – associated with fresh air and physical activity – to help children feel more positive about taking their medicine. These are the first in a range of packaging innovations that we are planning to help patients along their medication path and we will be publishing more about these on this website shortly.