The time to advocate for changes in medication labeling has arrived. As the patient moves to the center of healthcare, medication labels must be designed to meet their needs. The healthcare sector needs to work to deliver an output that the patient can read, understand, and adhere to. Collaborative healthcare efforts are essential to facilitate this process of designing realistic solutions to simplify patient’s lives. It is the collective responsibility of the healthcare and other pivotal sectors within the digital health eco-system to come together to solve this real-world challenge. 

This webinar will discuss how we can improve our electronic patient communication, with a focus on medication labels, to improve patient safety. The webinar will bring a health equity lens to discuss the difficulties faced by low literacy and under-served communities that may have problems getting the help they need to understand their medications and take them safely. Join this expert panel to understand the issues, challenges and strategies to improve how we communicate medication information to patients.

View recording and slides.

Moderator:

Dr. Yuri Quintana, Chief, Division of Clinical Informatics, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center; Assistant Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School

Panelists:

Patient Advocacy View - Stephanie Walker, Retired Registered Nurse; Member, MBC Alliance Executive Group; Project Lead, BECOME initiative

Patient Advocacy View - Claire Saxton, Vice President, Patient Experience, Cancer Support Community

Pharmaceutical Industry View - Dr. Shimon Yoshida, Executive Director, Head of International Labeling Group, Pfizer

Pharmaceutical Industry View - Craig Anderson, Director, Information Management, Pfizer

Stephanie Walker, Retired Registered Nurse; Member, MBC Alliance Executive Group; Project Lead, BECOME initiative

Stephanie Walker  was diagnosed in July 2015 with de novo Metastatic Breast Cancer. She is a retired Registered Nurse with close to 40 years of clinical practice and secondary teaching experience. She brings experience in pediatric and adult critical care, working in level 1 trauma centers to critical access hospitals. Her last 15 years of nursing was with End of Life/Hospice care. She is married and lives in Tarboro NC with her husband, John and rescue dog, Rex. They have 3 adult children and 6 grandchildren. 

Stephanie Walker is a member of Metastatic Breast Cancer Alliance, LBBC volunteer, Komen volunteer, recipient of the Spirit to Impact award, among multiple other organizations. Stephanie believes in advocating for men and women in rural areas as her own for equal access to quality healthcare, treatment modalities, and resources. As part of her role with the MBC Alliance, she has submitted and presented the BECOME initiative (Black Experience of Clinical Trials and Opportunities for Meaningful Engagement). She plays an instrumental role in the presentation of Black Wo(men) Speak Symposium held the Monday prior to SABCS for educating the healthcare team about how to have the conversation with Black men and women with MBC about clinical trials.

Claire Saxton, Vice President, Patient Experience, Cancer Support Community

Claire’s current role at the Cancer Support Community (CSC) focuses on sharing CSC’s patient insights externally and ensuring the patient experience remains central to all that CSC does.  Prior to becoming VP of Patient Experience, Claire led CSC’s national patient education and outreach efforts for 5 years. The award-winning Frankly Speaking About Cancer education programs were co-created with cancer patients & caregivers. Programs were culturally-adapted to meet the needs of specific populations and speakers of multiple languages and produced in a variety of print, digital, and in-person formats. 

 Claire came to CSC from the Urology Care Foundation, where she managed national patient education programs and disease awareness campaigns with partners including the National Football League.  As Executive Director of the Bladder Cancer Advocacy Network, Claire developed the first National Bladder Cancer Awareness Day.  While the Executive Director of the Breast Cancer Resource Center in Austin, Texas, she doubled their patient advocacy and outreach programs.  Claire began her work in health advocacy while part of the team that opened the National Domestic Violence Hotline in 1996. 

Claire holds an MBA from the University of Oregon and an undergraduate degree from Rice University. 

Dr. Shimon Yoshida, Executive Director, Head of International Labeling Group, Pfizer

Dr Shimon Yoshida is an Executive Director in Pfizer’s Global Regulatory Affairs department and has worked in the industry for more than 20 years. Shimon leads the International Labeling Group from which he oversees a portfolio of e-labeling and digital health projects and consortia in Europe, the UK, Japan and a number of developing markets worldwide.

Craig Anderson, Director, Information Management, Pfizer

Craig Anderson is a Director, Information Management at Pfizer. In this role, Craig oversees systems and information driven solutions for Global Regulatory Affairs. These solutions cover topics such as data standards, terminology management, electronic labelling, and medicinal product information.

In addition to having biopharmaceutical industry experience, Craig also has regulator experience from Health Canada where he led various information management projects ranging from data standards to Structured Product Labelling.

Craig is also Co-lead of HL7’s Vulcan accelerator project for electronic Product Information (ePI) and a member of the Canadian delegation to ISO/TC 215 Health Informatics Working Group 6.