Ever wondered how the medical equipment and drugs are marketed and reach the end-user? Well, it’s because of their Market Access.
Devising a strong marketing access infrastructure is very helpful for the development of an industry. Pharma industry like many others has a Marketing Access that depends on business management, health,national economics, regulatory management, marketing channels, and stakeholders.
Let’s learn a little more about marketing access in the Pharmaceutical industry reviewing the scientific writings.
What is marketing access in the first place and why is it important?
According to a study by Thomas et al. from Gulf Medical University can be defined as the processes, activities, and strategies that are implemented to make sure the products are accessed and adequately priced in a certain health system. It is a multidisciplinary approach and requires all the channels like marketing, research, stakeholder, and leader to collaboratively work on it. The correlation between the coverage of field force to boost marketing and sales revenues are evident from the previous studies.
The approval processes include the report of efficacy reported to regulatory authorities, getting market authorization. Then, the Marketing access division submits the pricing to the regulators. After getting approved, the marketing channels and other parties within the company try to make it available in the market. Governmental agencies, pharmaceutical companies, and Healthcare professionals all are briefed to authorize and prescribe the product (drug).
These Days a more sophisticated group of individuals describe the Marketing Access to the people. This involves the MA to go through an evolving process. Cost-sharing where certain discounts are given, true risk-sharing where the customer and pharma companies pay for the treatment if its effective, and payment by the performance which includes the full cost payment by patient and payback if not effective. A company should consider the implication of the product on the whole market, the impact of change, and communicate the value of the product before introducing it to the market.
Optimizing market access
Further, upon optimizing the market access according to a study by Siegel and Shah with Deloitte, insights mentioned that to make a more productive Marketing Access, the leaders should strategize based on the market data by prioritizing several factors like differentiating their clinical effects to real-life effects, the value defined and market leverage, incorporating a go-to-market position model. Moreover value-based contracting could be done to consider payer convenience, patients’ assistance and preferences. So, the turbulence in the Health systems demand to move away from the volume-bases system to value-based system.
Strategized and structured Marketing access could change the development opportunities for an organization. Although the challenges that could hinder the Marketing access like high costs, and limited resources paired with higher involvement of stakeholders should be addressed to make it more structured in an organization. This could be done by new engagement opportunities between the industries like partnerships, and collaboration would be effective and would increase the value of Pharmaceuticals.
