Healthcare reform is re-shaping the pharmaceutical marketing landscape. In the same way that quality adjusted life years (QALYs) and the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) were game-changers, we believe new currencies such as patient-reported outcome measures (PROMS), patient-reported experience measures (PREMs), patient-orientated outcomes (POOs) and disease-orientated outcomes (DOOs) will become the new outcome demonstration currencies for successful product commercialization.
The pharmaceutical industry will need to move beyond promoting its molecules and into a world of promoting demonstrable product/service outcomes aligned to evolving customer agendas.
Some of our biggest pharma brands are in for a shock. Over the years many have built their reputation (and market shares!) around efficacy, safety, tolerability, convenience and, in some cases, cost-effectiveness-based arguments and communications. However, we believe that future pharmaceutical brand leaders will be those that are promoted on platforms of demonstrable outcomes rather than endpoints, and we are calling these the OutcomeBrands®. As an agency specializing in pipeline product commercialization, we are in the business of transforming pharma molecules into OutcomeBrands.
PHASE II can help you better understand the implications for your brand(s) and to optimize your plan of action.
So what will an OutcomeBrand look like?
As healthcare reform continues to re-shape the pharmaceutical marketing landscape, the industry is beginning to react. We recently met with a brand team charged with maintaining their £500 million revenue stream and we are now working with them to address two core strategic imperatives:
- To better demonstrate value and outcomes (to payers) in order to ensure that continued access to the brand is maintained
- To design, develop and implement "value added" brand associated service offerings that further support brand differentiation vs. key competitors
In the UK, we are seeing the Government’s White Paper, Equity and Excellence, result in a paradigm shift in the way healthcare products and technologies are commercialized. In the same way that NICE and QALYs were game-changers, new outcome demonstration concepts, such as PROMS, PREMs, POOs and DOOS, as well as program budgeting and value-based pricing, will become the new currency of successful product commercialization.
And what will it take to become an OutcomeBrand?
We do not believe that becoming an OutcomeBrand will happen overnight. It will depend on where your product is in its lifecycle and this will determine how rigorous we can be. If it is a well-established brand that needs "sustaining", a different approach would be taken from one used for a Phase II molecule 3 years from market. In either case, transforming the product into an OutcomeBrand will require market intelligence, analysis and understanding, in addition to rigorous strategic thinking and high-impact communication programs, in order to reach customers with the OutcomeBrand proposition.
What does this mean for the UK markets?
In the UK, pharma companies will need to decide how best to address new healthcare reform challenges presented by the emergence of:
- NHS Outcomes Framework
- Product and service outcomes demonstration
- Value-based pricing
- Any willing provider
- Program budgeting
- Practice-based prescribing
- Treatment pathway (origination and place of therapy)
UK pharma companies will also need to define how best to reach/influence emerging customer targets/stakeholder groups such as:
- The NHS Commissioning Board
- Regional commissioning board(s)
- GP consortia (pathfinders and followers)
- Health and wellbeing boards
- Monitor
- The Care Quality Commission
- HealthWatch England
- Local HealthWatch
- NICE (new)
The challenges for our international counterparts
As healthcare reform continues, we believe international pharmaceutical companies will need to address several market environment challenges:
- Understanding and utilizing the emerging outcome currencies: PREMs, PROMs, POOs and DOOs
- Engaging with health IT, better utilizing digital/social media data and mobile health to show improved product/service outcomes
- Developing and implementing consumer-based health awareness and empowerment
- Responding to customer value-based pricing requirements
- Demonstrating comparative effectiveness vs. available therapies
- Risk-sharing agreements with healthcare stakeholders
Here to support you
Our market intelligence, strategy development and communication teams have spent the last decade supporting pharma and biotech clients in commercializing their new and existing therapies. What is more, they have spent the last 12 months understanding and reacting to the UK healthcare reforms through an intelligence network of healthcare customers, many of whom are now responsible for implementing healthcare reform/changes.
To share what we have learnt and what we think you can be doing to align your business to healthcare reform, contact PHASE II for a confidential discussion – and let us help you make your brand an OutcomeBrand.
