By Cheryl Lubbert, Reverba Global CEO.

A New-Year Perspective on Patient Engagement

The biopharma industry talks a good game about patient engagement.

We talk about personalization, digital transformation, empowerment, omnichannel experiences, and meeting patients where they are. The language is polished. The frameworks are plentiful. The slide decks are impressive.

And yet, many patients still experience engagement as fragmented, repetitive, and designed around internal workflows rather than real life.

That gap between what the industry says and what patients feel is where many so-called trends continue to survive. Not because they work, but because they are familiar, scalable, and easy to justify.

As we look ahead, it is worth asking a harder question: which patient engagement “trends” are actually signals that our industry has not evolved enough yet?

Six patterns stand out:

1. More Touchpoints as a Measure of Patient Engagement

Why it persists:
More channels feel like progress. More messages look like momentum. More activity fills dashboards.

Why it should not be a trend in 2026:
Patients do not experience engagement as a volume metric. They experience it as interruption or support. When every channel is used all the time, nothing feels intentional.

More touchpoints often mean more repetition, more confusion, and more cognitive load, especially for patients already navigating complex care journeys.

What should replace it:
Intentional engagement. Fewer interactions, clearly timed, clearly purposed, and clearly valuable. Engagement should help patients move forward, not keep them busy.

2. Superficial Personalization Disguised as Patient-Centricity

Why it persists:
Personalization is easy to claim and hard to define. Adding a first name feels like progress.

Why it should not be a trend in 2026:
Patients know the difference between being recognized and being understood. Using personal data without contextual relevance erodes trust rather than building it.

Personalization that ignores disease stage, access barriers, emotional state, or decision readiness is not patient-centric. It is polite automation.

What should replace it:
Contextual relevance. Engagement that reflects where the patient actually is, not where a journey map assumes they should be.

3. Digital-First Patient Engagement Without Respect for Digital Reality

Why it persists:
Digital promises efficiency, scale, and control. For organizations, it is often the path of least resistance.

Why it should not be a trend in 2026:
Digital does not automatically mean accessible, usable, or helpful. A portal that goes unused is not engagement. An app that adds friction is not innovation.

Patients vary widely in access, comfort, trust, and preference. Designing as if they do not is a fast way to lose them.

What should replace it:
Digital-appropriate engagement. Digital when it genuinely improves clarity or convenience. Human when reassurance, explanation, or trust matters more. Hybrid by design, not as an afterthought.

4. Measuring Patient Engagement by Interaction, Not Impact

Why it persists:
Clicks, opens, and downloads are easy to measure and easy to report.

Why it should not be a trend in 2026:
Interaction metrics tell us what happened to content, not what happened to patients. A click does not mean understanding. An open does not mean confidence. A download does not mean action.

When engagement success is defined by surface-level behavior, we miss whether it actually changed anything.

What should replace it:
Outcome-linked measurement. Engagement tied to decisions made, steps taken, adherence supported, or burden reduced. If nothing changes for the patient, engagement has not succeeded.

5. Patient Engagement That Starts at Product Launch

Why it persists:
Historically, patient engagement has been owned by commercial teams and funded around launch timelines.

Why it should not be a trend in 2026:
By the time a product launches, many of the most patient-relevant decisions are already locked in. Protocol design. Endpoints. Evidence strategy. Even language.

Calling engagement patient-centric at launch is difficult if patients had little influence earlier, when those decisions were made.

What should replace it:
Lifecycle engagement. Patient insight embedded across clinical development, medical affairs, and commercial teams. Engagement that shapes studies, evidence, and relationships long before a product reaches the market.

If patient engagement starts at launch, it started too late.

6. Empowerment Without Enablement in Patient Engagement

Why it persists:
Empowerment sounds progressive and reassuring. It also requires very little structural change.

Why it should not be a trend in 2026:
Patients do not lack motivation. They lack time, clarity, energy, access, and support. Telling patients they are empowered while handing them complex systems and unclear processes shifts responsibility without removing barriers.

That is not empowerment. It is expectation management in disguise.

What should replace it:
Enablement. Practical support that simplifies decisions, reduces burden, and helps patients act with confidence in the real world, not just feel encouraged in theory.

The Bigger Pattern in Biopharma Patient Engagement

What these trends have in common is not bad intent. It is organizational inertia.

They persist because they fit existing structures, metrics, and ownership models. But patients do not experience healthcare in silos, campaigns, or quarters.

By 2026, patient engagement in biopharma should feel calmer, clearer, and more respectful of how patients actually live. That should not be a trend. It should be the baseline.

And if any of these still feel innovative, it is a sign that we still have work to do.