Market Access & Pricing Excellence 2015

Jun 3, 2015 - Jun 4, 2015, Amsterdam

Co-create solutions with payers. Get reimbursed for real patient value.

Market Access: A cross-functional priority

eyeforpharma spoke to Jan Weinreich, Director of Market Access at Roche in Italy, ahead of his presentation at Market Access & Pricing Excellence 2015, about his perspective on the future of market access in Europe and the need for the industry to adapt to changes to national healthcare systems.



eyeforpharma: What do you think are the biggest challenges facing pharma market access executives in 2015?

Jan Weinreich: Well, this is probably a specific Italian perspective to this, but it’s also relevant in a broader context. The economic crisis has increased budget constraints in national healthcare systems. This is, on the one hand, making reimbursement negotiations tougher; on the other hand, it leads to ever increasing evidence requirements from payors.

eyeforpharma: How is the industry responding to these challenges?

Jan Weinreich: Our way forward – again, from an Italian perspective – is to develop collaborative approaches with payers for innovative market entry schemes. One of the latest examples from Italy is a model for a product for which we agreed different commercial agreements for different indications. This is reflecting the different value propositions in the respective indications more adequately than a product price across all indications that would have been a somewhat arbitrary average.

eyeforpharma: So how do you define value – and does it correlate with the manner in which payers define value?

Jan Weinreich: One of the problems today is, that value is often defined as a monetary expression of the achieved clinical outcome.  Obviously the clinical value a pharmaceutical product delivers is a significant part of its value proposition, but it is important to take a broader perspective than just seeking optimization on expenditure. It is necessary to take into account potential savings in other areas of the healthcare or even societal system in achieving a given clinical outcome.

eyeforpharma: Is there anything the industry can do to present a united front on value propositions?

Jan Weinreich: As portfolios and business strategies are very different across the industry there is not a unique position from an industry perspective that would help. What is clear to me, is that there is a strong need for a collaborative approach. Only when there is a mutually understood value proposition can the foundation for a successful negotiation be laid. In addition, this dialogue should result in an agreement for future evidence generation strategies in order to create a more reliable framework for drug development.

eyeforpharma:  In many companies market access is considered just the priority of the market access team. If we’re to move beyond silos, how should we be structuring our market access functions? Who else should be involved?

Jan Weinreich: I think this is one of the most important topics out there right now. The perception of market access as a functional responsibility derives from a past where national reimbursement was just a hurdle to jump before the ‘real business’ started.

But market access is a challenge throughout a product’s lifecycle – there are an ever-increasing number of renegotiations on price, and interventions from payers to limit access to the product to certain patient subgroups and so on. So it’s a topic that must be a priority throughout the drug lifecycle.

Having said that, it’s not a functional responsibility, but the aspects of market access centered around arguments on efficacy or affordability – these are also the questions that physicians are now posing. Physicians are becoming even more of a stakeholder, they have budget constraints, they have many decisions to make that were once reserved to payers.

On the one hand, the evidence taken into consideration for granting reimbursement or access was historically based on the pivotal trial that led to the registration of the product; now payers are beginning to ask for real world evidence. So the question now is, are you actually delivering the value you’re promising? Therefore, the medical affairs department needs to be brought on board to meet these increased evidence needs from payers.

This is the drug development of the future; whereas in the past, the main concern of pharma was to get a drug registered, and to get feedback from regulatory authorites, now we are beginning to ask payers what the new evidence requirements would be for favorable reimbursement. This needs to be incorporated in the medical department’s strategy. So market access needs to be more than just a functional responsibility, it needs to be a cross-functional priority.

eyeforpharma: Do you foresee a change in the way pharma companies will change their market access strategies and structures?

Jan Weinreich: I’m not sure whether it’s the structure of the market access team itself that must be changed. I think the implications I elaborated on earlier might lead to other functions changing; for example, the question could be in the future, do we really need a sales force in the shape we currently have? In summary, changes in market access are leading, and will continue to lead, to changes in other functions.


Jan Weinreich, Director of Market Access, Roche will be speaking at Market Access & Pricing Excellence, June 3rd-4th, Amsterdam. For more information, click here.



Market Access & Pricing Excellence 2015

Jun 3, 2015 - Jun 4, 2015, Amsterdam

Co-create solutions with payers. Get reimbursed for real patient value.