Roche tops pharma rivals for reputation among rare disease patient groups

Roche was ranked first for corporate reputation in the field of rare disease by patient groups surveyed for PatientView’s annual report.

The Swiss pharma giant topped rivals BioMarin and Amgen, who finished second and third, respectively.

The survey was published this week and analyzed 31 drugmakers, including 15 Big Pharma companies. 

Roche was named the company with the best corporate reputation by rare disease patient groups that were the most familiar with the company and had worked with the company.

Among Big Pharma companies that rare disease groups were familiar with, Amgen finished second, followed by Sanofi. For the same cohort, Amgen finished second and AstraZeneca finished in third when ranked by how they worked with rare disease patient groups.

This comes one year after Roche finished in second behind Horizon Therapeutics in the overall familiarity rankings listed in the survey, though Roche topped its Big Pharma competitors.

While Roche topped the list, Amgen rose the most in the upper rankings for familiarity from 2022 to 2023, jumping 27 spots. Novartis rose eight spots, BioMarin increased seven spots, while AstraZeneca and Sarepta both rose four spots.

As for the working relationship, Amgen jumped 26 spots in the upper rankings, followed by BioMarin at 12 spots and Novartis at 10 spots.

This is the latest analysis by PatientView of the pharma industry’s reputation, after the organization released its annual pharma corporate reputation report in late April.

After experiencing a brief boost during the COVID-19 pandemic, the pharma industry’s reputation has begun to drop again in the public’s eye.

Only 57% of patient groups said the pharma industry’s reputation was “excellent or good” in 2023, compared to 60% in 2022. 

Pharma’s corporate reputation dropped in the U.S. over the past year and patient groups pointed to several issues that they believe need to be addressed: pricing drugs more equitably, improving access to medications and allowing patients to have greater involvement in research and development.

Of the more than 40 drugmakers included in the survey, ViiV Healthcare, Gilead Sciences and Roche finished in the top three spots. Among Big Pharma companies specifically, Gilead, Roche and Pfizer topped the list.