How industry is meeting today’s challenges with innovation and long-term vision

By Danny Buckland

Launching is clearly a numbers game, with metrics dominating every facet from scientific ideas through to balance sheet performance. But it is also a people game and, without patient and healthcare professional (HCP) insights, the numbers can crumble.

Getting the ‘personality’ of a launch has been a growing target since the pandemic scrambled traditional routes to market and rendered time-honoured templates past their sell-by date.

The pivot to digital and the adoption of a new suite of processes – and ways of accomplishing them – has caused degrees of corporate darkness but it has also revealed diamonds of understanding and engagement that are illuminating a new era of commercial launch excellence.

“For me, it is about starting with and sticking with the patient and the HCP throughout the launch journey, focusing on what they need and what the outcomes will mean to them,” said Tom Griffiths, Head of Strategy and Planning at Inizio Engage XD.

“Every pharma company has talked about patient-centricity but no-one is really practising what they preach: the patient needs to be at the forefront of everything you’re doing from clinical development to trial, throughout launch and beyond, and the challenge is how you’re going to bring that patient to life and how you connect the data story in an emotional and human way with and for HCPs.

“The patient needs to be way more than just one slide in a planning deck. Your approach has to feature deep understanding of everything they are going through so that every decision you’re making throughout the launch cycle is based on them, their lives and their clinical need.”

Tom is part of Inizio Engage’s team of strategists, behavioural scientists, researchers, insight consultants and learning experts and has driven strategy across Bayer, Pfizer, Sanofi, Galderma and GSK. He believes strongly that launch excellence is also characterised by matching patient and HCP needs with a long-term vision.

“The focus at the start is clearly going to be on the medical need and the clinical gap to treat,” he says. “But we have to ask deeper questions about what it means to the patient and the physician whereas, too often, it is a case of having a new drug that is efficacious and safe and with data that stacks up so let’s write some messages and book media space and launch.

“There needs to be more focus on whether your launch plan will not only work first time but if it will continue to work. The focus tends to be on the first 12 to 18 months but the landscape is shifting so fast that if you don’t consider what might happen three, five or ten years down the line for the drug you are launching then you are not doing it properly.”

‘The patient needs to be at the forefront of everything you’re doing from clinical development to trial, throughout launch and beyond’

Sobering statistics back that up, with analysts McKinsey recording that 40% of drug launches from 2009 to 2017 failed to meet their two-year sales goals and Trinity Life Sciences revealing that 62% of drug launches between September 2019 and December 2021 ‘underperformed expectations’.

The waves of uncertainty from the sudden but necessary pandemic plunge into digital are easing into calmer waters and Tom believes they have opened more creative opportunities to both gain patient insight and strengthen engagement. It also makes it easier for organisations to break down silos to create launch harmony.

“I was running global planning workshops pre-pandemic that were successful because we had the country sales director and brand marketing manager in the same room for each market.

“It is clear that the most effective meeting – whether it’s omnichannel planning, customer experience planning or launch planning – is the one where you have everyone in the same room solving the same problems,” he added, “and this is now becoming easier to achieve.

“If you’ve been involved in developing the plan, then you are going to understand not just what you’ve got but why you’ve got it, why it’s valuable and how to execute it – that ownership has been crucial in our successful launches.”

Ashley Stanley is Executive & Product Launch Service Lead at Vynamic, part of Inizio Advisory, health industry management consultants partnering with clients to build transformative strategies across pharmaceutical and biotech companies. She views resources, timings, governance and frameworks as the foundations of launch excellence but advocates for a much more dynamic and flexible approach that can be shaped to nuanced needs from HCPs, markets and patient populations.

She also identifies staff culture, particularly in an age of remote working, as a key contributor to successful launch programmes.

“Launches are fast-paced, highly stressed environments where things can change at a moment’s notice, so a positive, collaborative culture is high on the list of imperatives,” she said. “Post-pandemic, teams are spread all over the world, resources are constrained and there are issues with staff retention so a framework that allows teams to be efficient and effective is helpful, but on top of that you need to unite people.

“We don’t have the large-scale, globally attended, in-person events that were a feature of bringing teams together pre-launch any more, so we need to replace that. Being involved in a launch is a career-defining milestone and we need to ensure that excitement and prestige is included in the planning – recognising team members’ achievements, celebrating big and small milestones, maybe a bit of gamification. We see client’s benefiting hugely from going through that process.

“It’s about being more thoughtful and more proactive to make sure team members feel like they are valued and that the work that they’re doing is making a big impact.

“Let’s take it back a level and make sure we are recognising and rewarding all the stakeholders while staying grounded in the strategy and the vision so they can execute against them.”

Ashley sees a raft of challenges across the post-pandemic launch vista that can be alleviated with earlier launch planning, ranging from launch collaborations to navigating public attention for niche products serving small patient populations.

“Our clients are figuring out legal and regulatory perspectives because the rule books were not written for the digital age – working through those and launching adds complexity and requires a little bit more investment,” she commented. “There are also complex scenarios involved in alliance launches and we have come in where the launch was not fully aligned at the beginning or the cultures are clashing. We have to pause and reset, but it is also a huge advert for getting your framework sorted out at the earliest opportunity.

“Another issue that is prevalent is that new therapies make the headlines, good or bad, and get deeper scrutiny, so thinking through that external communications plan really early on is important for these launches as well.”

Vynamic, part of Inizio Advisory, the consultative arm of Inizio that specialises in unlocking product innovation through market research and patient insights, launch strategy and navigation and strategic alignment, has identified a trend of organisations mobilising small core teams early in the launch life cycle to give launches extra sinews and reduce the risks from misaligned strategy.

‘The challenge is how you’re going to bring each patient to life and how you connect the data story in an emotional and human way with and for HCPs’

“We’ve seen planning activities initiated much further upstream so, if a direct competitor hits the market earlier than expected or a competitor comes out of left field, the core team is better able to address an issue that had not been anticipated,” added Ashley. “When problems arise, being super proactive enables you to pivot and realign the strategy without losing critical time in the early launch planning period.”

She added: “We have clients seeking that structure much earlier in the launch life cycle. Traditionally, we become involved 12 to 18 months from launch but now we are being engaged two to three years out. They want help thinking through what governance needs to look like to set themselves up for success early on.”

The challenges of creating launch excellence post-pandemic are being met with innovation and dynamism but further tremors from digital and AI are expected.

Danny Buckland is a journalist specialising in the healthcare industry