Health economics and market access - how to organize it?
Hello everyone,
I hope you all had a nice and relaxing summer! Today, I’d like to get your thoughts on a hot topic. I can’t help the feeling when talking to peers and looking around the industry that the market access hype is ever increasing and I would like to get your opinions on an effective organization of that function.
Before comming to that I also would like to share with you some info around the blog. I have been moving house over the summer and also been travelling a lot lately so therefore it has been a bit more quite than usual. However, I would like to thank the many readers who have sent me comments, news, job post etc. over the last couple of month. I am especially delighted that we hit the 100 regular subscribers mark and also about the many positive and encouraging comments regarding the content of the blog; among those several from folks working in different areas or completely new to the subject. In addition, I have been discussing many career/education issues with students etc. - apologies to those to whom I haven`t responded yet..I will do soon. Needless to say that such a blog lives from interesting and new info in the health economics scene and I would like to encourage you to keep sending stuff that is informative to the broader audience, especially developments around new HTA regulations, cost-effectiveness assessment bodies etc. or management/organizational matters… furthermore, I suppose some more interactive discussions could also be fun.
Now, among the subscribed readership there are a lot of experts both in industry and consulting and I would like to get your thoughts on one point that comes up very frequently in the comments I received lately: Everyone now talkes up health economics and market access (to the extend of becomming a major buzzword), which is on the one hand great for professionals in the area given that in the first years (let`s say early to mid 90’s) we still needed to constantly sell the value of the discipline - but on the downside, we now have the phenomen that all of a sudden everyone appears to be an ‘expert’ and many, let’s just call it ‘freeriders’ spending a lot of lipservice to the subject without necessarily understanding much of it… That goes to the extrem of constant reorganizations within the industry and to a daily (granted probably a little exaggerated) foundation of new consultancies. Within the industry large matrixes and different models are being developed and deployed (there is now almost a daily announcement in the press), functions are or being regrouped etc. - some of my friends ironically say that marketing is re-branding itself to market access, recruiters grazing the market for potential candidates… My question is: how would you ideally define the roles of health economics, pricing and market access in todays healthcare environment? Where should an optimal function/role be located on the org. chart of a biotech / big pharma company? How should roles and responsibilities be divided and organized on a global, regional and country level? What competencies and skills should such a function encompass etc.. It’ll be very interesting to get some feedback as I received a lot of comments about what would be the current status quo, but moreover get a feel for where this might be going?
Thanks very much upfront for all contributions!
Cheers
Ulf
