Boehringer Ingelheim has strengthened its position among the most respected companies in rare disease, building on significant gains recorded in the previous year’s survey.
The German drugmaker climbed another four places in the latest PatientView rankings, extending a seven-place rise it achieved in the prior edition of the leaderboard.
PatientView compiled the rankings by surveying 502 rare disease patient groups between December 2025 and March 2026, asking them to rate companies they were familiar with or worked with directly.
Despite consecutive leaps up the table, Boehringer Ingelheim again failed to break into the top three positions on the overall familiarity ranking.
Sobi, Roche, and BioMarin retained the top three spots in the same order as the previous survey, continuing their dominance of the headline leaderboard.
The number of patient groups familiar with Sobi grew between the two surveys, rising from 213 to 225, underlining the Swedish-Danish rare disease specialist’s strong standing among advocacy organisations.
Boehringer performed more strongly in other cuts of the PatientView data, taking third place among companies that patient groups actively work with, displacing BioMarin from that position.
Among Big Pharma companies specifically, Boehringer ranked second on both the familiarity and working-relationship lists, trailing only Roche on each measure.
The company’s six-place climb on the list of Big Pharma companies that patient groups work with was among the more notable movements, knocking AstraZeneca down to third place, tied with Sanofi.
Elsewhere in the rankings, Viatris recorded one of the most dramatic jumps, rising 17 spots on the companies-worked-with list, while Alnylam climbed six places on the familiarity ranking.
Beyond individual company movements, the survey found that overall industry sentiment has improved, with the pharma sector’s corporate reputation reaching a level last recorded in 2022.
Patient groups reported better perceptions of the industry’s transparency across clinical data, pricing, and the funding of external stakeholders over the past five years.
Pricing transparency has historically been a significant weakness for the sector, with more than half of patient groups rating the industry as poor in that category in the previous survey.
The proportion of patient groups rating the industry’s pricing transparency as good or excellent actually edged down slightly, falling from 17% in 2020 to 16% in 2024, suggesting progress in this area remains limited and uneven.