How did you enter the Healthcare Communications Sector?
After graduating with a degree in natural sciences, I began my career as an Events Coordinator in the tourism industry in 2019. The company I worked for specialised in tourism in China and was one of the first to shut down due to travel restrictions when COVID-19 hit.
I was applying and interviewing for many roles when the pandemic hit the UK causing recruitment to ground to a halt. It was a time of massive uncertainty for everyone and as a young graduate fresh out of university it was a very difficult and challenging time.
Months later, with the pharmaceutical industry becoming increasingly vital, I was lucky enough to land a remote job as a research executive for a pharmaceutical consultancy. My role involved working in real-world evidence generation and helping conduct studies using patient data. After starting my career in healthcare communications, I chose to focus more on strategy and transitioned into market access consulting.
You will find that healthcare communications and the pharmaceutical industry welcomes people from all backgrounds, so don’t be put off by applying if your degree is not perfectly aligned with the job position. Recruiters like diverse backgrounds, and you’ll find that almost everybody in this industry has stumbled into it by accident, and stayed because they love it!
What area of Healthcare communications do you work in?
I work in Market Access, where I help pharmaceutical companies ensure a smooth launch of new healthcare products by preparing healthcare professionals, regulatory bodies, and the healthcare system for the arrival of the new product. This includes ensuring all stakeholders know exactly what the product does, who can use it, and where it is best utilised in the treatment pathway. I help navigate discussions with those deciding which treatments are allowed to be used by healthcare professionals, considering their benefit, suitability and cost.
Our role is important in helping ensure patients can have access to the most innovative and effective treatments. At a national level, our work can help with reimbursement, pricing, health technology appraisals or national tenders- i.e. making sure vital products are approved and available for use. At a more local level, this takes the form of contracting, tenders and decisions around which treatments can be used by healthcare professionals in a particular region- i.e. making sure if you go to a hospital, this treatment is readily available.
In essence, we aim to demonstrate the meaningful value of a treatment to the people who make decisions on which treatments are available for use by healthcare professionals.
In the UK, for example, just because a treatment is available does not mean healthcare professionals within the NHS are allowed to use it. Decisions must be made about whether the benefits of a treatment are worth the cost, and whether the NHS can afford to use the treatment for all the patients that might benefit. These are difficult decisions, and our role is to help ensure all those involved in making them have all the relevant information about the treatment that the pharmaceutical company can provide.
What does your role involve?
The amazing thing about market access is that you work on vastly different projects, interacting with many different disciplines within the pharmaceutical company, including marketing, market access, brand strategy, Health Economics and Outcomes Research (HEOR), medical affairs, regulatory affairs, and patient access.
We help develop the strategy and materials to communicate the evidence supporting the launch and pricing strategy. This includes written work such as value narratives (outlining the product's benefit), global value dossiers (a global skeleton for all product scientific claims), and objection handlers (navigating negotiations with those making these decisions).
We also work on visual slides, such as toolkits for the company’s representatives to use in their discussions with healthcare professionals or for speakers to use to present the product at conferences.
I particularly like conducting primary research. This involves interviewing or surveying those responsible for these access decisions, and the healthcare professionals who will ultimately use these treatments for their patients, to find out their opinion on the current treatment landscape or to test the messages and communication plans for upcoming products.
Primary research is also used to gain insights on perceptions of a treatment’s perceived clinical value compared to the cost. This information is used to support our strategy for achieving the support within a healthcare system to allow healthcare professionals to be able to use a treatment should they feel it is clinically appropriate.
We also work on modelling pricing and market dynamics. This includes models like budget impact analyses, which compares scenarios with and without the new product, or healthcare resource utilisation tools, which calculate the indirect costs and value, such as time spent by healthcare professionals to administer the treatment.
All of these projects work to improve access to medicines for patients in need. If there is not good market access planning and implementation, patients could be left without the opportunity to receive a treatment which can help their condition.