The Informa Connect Health Systems & Pharma Partnering 2023 Summit wrapped up last week after three days of insights from key stakeholders across the industry.
Syneos Health attendees Managing Director Adrian Garcia, Managing Director Christopher Lisanti, Sr. Managing Director Aaron Davis, and Executive Managing Director Tony Lanzone attended the annual conference in Boston. We’ve summarized their takeaways below.
1. Cell and Gene Therapies
Cell and gene therapies are growing rapidly on the manufacturing end, yet some health systems don’t have the best operational infrastructure and financial mechanisms in place to meet this growing demand.
Pharma needs to be prepared to help health systems navigate these changing times by providing the expertise, tools, and resources to set them up for success.
2. Evolution of IDN and Manufacturer Partnership Opportunities
IDN and manufacturer partnership opportunities are evolving, and alignment on shared goals and objectives is imperative to a successful partnership. Manufacturers need to do extensive preparation to understand potential partners’ stated goals and objectives (eg, population health management, quality initiatives) and bring this informed perspective to the discussion.
On top of prep work, manufacturers should leverage tools such as EMR, AI, embedded protocols, and order sets to assist with earlier patient identification and diagnosis by measuring KPIs and other results.
3. Understanding a Health System’s Unmet Needs
When preparing to partner, it’s essential that pharma stakeholders have a detailed understanding of the health system’s unmet needs so they can craft custom co-developed solutions that actually impact earlier patient identification and diagnosis and ultimately improve outcomes.
4. Health Systems Are Changing and Evolving
Some health systems have changed their model to interact with pharma. They now have FTEs in place to liaise with pharma without it infiltrating the system with “noise” and unwanted information.
Promotionally inaccessible systems still want information and resources from manufacturers though. They also want a single point of contact to provide those resources, allowing the system stakeholders to disseminate the information.
Pharma needs to evolve the way it engages with these sophisticated, rapidly changing systems. It needs to look toward custom collaborations rather than a one-size-fits-all model.
5. Meaningful Partnerships Take Time
Health system partnership development doesn’t happen overnight. A meaningful partnership is built on smaller collaborations over time, allowing trust from all parties to develop. As your teams approach initial engagement and partnership development, it’s important to level-set expectations with senior leadership.
6. Integrated Strategies Are Key
Despite pharma's best efforts to work with systems/IDNs to deploy strategies that drive utilization of specific products or protocols, most systems still allow for physician overrides at the point of care. While the system may prefer a specific product or path for treatment, the prescriber’s belief in the best course of action can ultimately drive a different choice.
This means an integrated strategy across field teams, is critical for ensuring an effective top-down and bottom-up approach.
If you’re interested in connecting with our health system engagement experts, contact Adrian Garcia at [email protected] and/or Christopher Lisanti at [email protected]
