Pharma’s role in healthcare is changing amid the rise in more-targeted treatments and a shift in emphasis to preventative medical interventions. Gérard Klop of Vintura Consultancy looks at how pharma’s new role might evolve in an increasingly value-based healthcare scenario.
Traditional models of healthcare delivery are being replaced by increasing emphasis on patient outcomes and measurable value. With ageing populations who have greater morbidities, all stakeholders need to take a more holistic approach to healthcare, with an emphasis on wellness; earlier targeting and tracking of emerging conditions; and pre-emptive interventions.
This changing marketplace is also an opportunity for the pharma industry to refashion its role and contribute more directly to a healthier future – one with a more integrated ecosystem. The major players have known for some time that the days of simply supplying pills are over. Becoming more deeply embedded in the delivery and monitoring of patient outcomes offers pharma companies a chance to reposition themselves as trusted healthcare partners who can play a role in transforming value-based healthcare, and build their reputations both individually and as an industry.
But how can companies position themselves optimally for such a future?
Accept the inevitable
Pharma has little choice about whether or not to transform its role. The cycle of developing and patenting blockbuster drugs and maximising sales before they fall into the hands of generics manufacturers is coming to an end. As more-advanced, personalised and targeted therapeutics take over, pharma companies need to be able to justify the high prices of those treatments through closer real-world monitoring of their impact.
Most leading pharma companies recognise the need for a switch to value-based and value-managed healthcare and, in many cases, have already started to nurture new types of partnership with hospitals and physicians.
However, this journey will be a marathon, not a sprint. Although a shift away from each ‘function’ or set of stakeholders in the healthcare ecosystem operating from its own agenda is an important step forward, for pharma to really assume a role as a trusted partner it must first identify what it is bringing to the table, beyond access to products and therapies.
The same teams cannot simply approach healthcare providers with a different Powerpoint presentation and expect to reset the terms of the engagement. Instead, there must be long-term engagement at different levels of the healthcare system, from physician up to national authorities, to reposition the pharma role and shape the readiness of value-based healthcare ecosystems for upcoming innovation.
Ahead of the curve
Compared to physicians who are delivering care in the here and now, pharma companies are ahead of the curve in their scientific knowledge and have deep research and valuable clinical development-based insights they can share. And because they understand precisely how more-targeted therapies optimally work, pharma companies have an opportunity to help shape the evolution of the healthcare system and the way that it contracts and budgets for treatments.
As proficient collators and analysers of data, pharma could also help to transform the monitoring and reporting of outcomes, by providing advice on shared access to appropriate IT infrastructure and making it easier for clinicians to capture data more routinely and consistently.
Meaningful transformation
While it might be tempting to send ‘advisors’ into individual hospitals to establish individual projects linked to a particular treatment with a view to accelerating progress, this approach is likely to backfire. A piecemeal approach risks driving up costs without achieving critical mass and, more crucially, without driving an overarching strategy.
Meaningful transformation requires conscious C-level reflection on the kinds of roles pharma companies want to play in the future. It is only by aligning any future decisions and actions with their core vision and focus, and by building therapeutic leadership and a differentiated company brand, that pharma companies will be able to justify the status of ‘trusted partners’ to physicians, and reduce their exposure to patent expiry/revenue loss.
New measures of success
Inevitably there will be consequences from pharma’s repositioning. As well as adopting a different mindset, the shift from selling products to becoming more intrinsically involved in patient care requires that pharma companies develop new ways of measuring their own strategic progress – rather than continuing to rely on new and repeat product sales and short-term gains in market share.
Greater involvement in the care pathway, for example, will afford pharma teams a chance to capture new insights into the impact of their therapies. Working more closely with care providers will also help to create fertile ground for the given therapeutic area and the way that associated and innovative care is delivered. These are conversations that drug sales reps are not equipped to have at the present time. So, companies will need to factor in adjustments to their core capabilities.
Forging partnerships
The reinvention of pharma will be gradual and right now it makes sense for companies to concentrate on shaping the environment and forging sustainable and strategic healthcare partnerships ahead of the launch of more-advanced therapies.
Here, progress is likely to occur in three stages. First, via a ‘Traditional +’ model, a company can prepare market access, introducing the new therapy and its value story. Then it can pave the way for associated care to be delivered in partnership with healthcare providers, facilitating the adoption of innovation. Finally, to maximise long-term sustainability, companies should be looking to shape the healthcare system itself.
The starting point for emerging long-term strategies has to be the current product pipeline and any therapeutic areas of importance. These will help define the new role that each company could play in a more integrated healthcare ecosystem. However daunting the required transformation might seem right now, the pharma industry can play a valuable role in the marketplace as a trusted partner with therapeutic expertise.
About the author
Gérard Klop is a partner at Vintura Consultancy, which provides strategy consultancy to pharma and healthcare providers embracing transformation. Gérard has been a strategy consultant to the pharma and medical device sectors for two decades, and has written books on value-based and value-managed healthcare (VBHC and VMHC). Vintura, based in the Netherlands, Germany, France and the UK, is a recognised expert in VBHC and VMHC, and is specialised in strategy consultancy services targeted at both life sciences and healthcare providers.