Pf Magazine June 2020

JUNE 2020

ABPI & virtual meetings

“ I ncreased involvement means better clinical trials and better products, and better adherence” Page 10

The ‘new normal’ COVID-19 frontline PHARMAFIELD.CO.UK

Pharma marketing best practice SHAPING HEALTHCARE MARKETS TO SERVE REAL BRAND PURPOSE

FREE WEBINAR

Wednesday 8 July | 12:30pm Speaker: Nick Williams, Director, Triducive Register today: www.webinars.pharmafield.co.uk

HEAD OF CONTENT

W

Hello.

elcome to the June issue of Pf. We hope you’re staying safe and keeping well in these difficult times. As we all adjust to life during a pandemic, we at Pf wanted to ensure that we continue to deliver news, features and expert opinion. This issue we bring you a mix of COVID-19 content, new ways of working and general industry updates.

Our cover story looks at the rise of patient power within industry and health; Amanda Barrell explores whether the current climate is a catalyst for further progress.

We know that the health service is working hard to care for patients with COVID-19, but as we go to print, plans are in place to safely return to routine services that had been halted. Oli Hudson looks at cancer services, how patients will be prioritised, and treatments rationed.

There is no doubt that the coronavirus pandemic has accelerated system change in parts of the NHS and this adds to existing plans. Scott McKenzie offers suggestions of where to focus time in accessing Integrated Care Systems, Primary Care Networks and GP Federations.

As industry has adapted to remote working, there has been a rise in virtual communications.

Dr Rina Newton shares her expertise and a useful checklist to ensure your digital promotional meetings stay within the ABPI Code.

When it comes to digital transformation, there is a need for company culture and mindset change; David Reilly explains what is required internally to embrace digital.

No matter how quickly the world is adjusting, Mark Pringle discusses the new ways of thinking that are required as we transition to the ‘new normal’.

This issue of Pf also includes pharmacist Deborah Evans’ view from the frontline of community pharmacy, job seeking during COVID-19, Pf in Conversation, motor neurone disease and what it takes to make a winning brand.

Finally, over the last month, Pf has embraced virtual communications with a series of Pf Webinars with E4H and Triducive. There’s still time to sign up for our final webinar Shaping healthcare markets to serve real brand purpose on Wednesday 8 July at 12:30pm.

To register, go to www.webinars.pharmafield.co.uk We will be making all webinars available online for those of you who missed them, so keep checking the Pf website for updates, along with daily news and exclusive features.

Until next time. Stay safe.

Emma Morriss emma.morriss@pharmafield.co.uk SENIOR EDITOR

Amy Schofield amy@pharmafield.co.uk CREATIVE DIRECTOR

Emma Warfield emma@pharmafield.co.uk GRAPHIC DESIGNER

Olivia Cummins olivia@pharmafield.co.uk COMMERCIAL DIRECTOR

Hazel Lodge hazel@pharmafield.co.uk ACCOUNT MANAGER

Emma Hedges emma.hedges@pharmafield.co.uk NEWS DESK

Hannah Alderton newsdesk@pharmafield.co.uk FINANCIAL CONTROLLER

Fiona Beard finance@e4h.co.uk Pf AWARDS

Melanie Hamer melanie@e4h.co.uk PUBLISHER

Karl Hamer karl@e4h.co.uk HEAD OFFICE

3 Waterloo Farm Courtyard, Stotfold Road Arlesey, Bedfordshire SG15 6XP United Kingdom www.pharmafield.co.uk www.e4h.co.uk ADVERTISING

The content of and information contained in this magazine are the opinions of the contributors and/or the authors of such content and/or information.

Events4Healthcare accepts no responsibility or liability for any loss, cost, claim or expense arising from any reliance on such content or information. Users should independently verify such content or information before relying on it. The Publisher (Events4Healthcare) and its Directors shall not be responsible for any errors, omissions or inaccuracies within the publication, or within other sources that are referred to within the magazine.

The Publisher provides the features and advertisements on an ‘as is’ basis, without warranties of any kind, either express or implied, including but not limited to implied warranties of merchantability or fi tness for a particular purpose, other than those warranties that are implied by and capable of exclusion, restriction, or modification under the laws applicable to this agreement.

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M AG A ZI N E | J U N E 2020 | 1

June HAVE YOUR SAY: If you’d like to share an idea for a feature or collaborate with us on a captivating advertorial, please get in touch.

GET IN TOUCH: hello@pharmafield.co.uk

Contributors

@pharmafield

@pharmajobsuk

Pf Magazine

AMANDA BARRELL 

MARK PRINGLE 

DR RINA NEWTON 

Amanda is a freelance health and medical education journalist, editor and copywriter.

She has worked on projects for pharma, charities and agencies, and has written extensively for patients, healthcare professionals and the general public.

From HIV to COVID-19: Charting the path of patient power, page 10.

Mark is an experienced executive coach, business skills trainer and professional facilitator who has worked with international clients across Europe, Asia and America since 1988.

He is Founding Director of MORExcellent Ltd. New normal, new thinking, page 14.

Rina is Managing Director of CompliMed, experts on the ABPI Code. CompliMed supports any activity that results in better engagement with the ABPI Code, transparency and consistency in PMCPA case rulings and improvements in self-regulation.

The ABPI Code and Virtual Meetings, page 18.

OLI HUDSON

Oli is Content Director for Wilmington Healthcare.

He oversees material for training and education, consultancy services, network meetings, thought leadership, events and webinars. In previous roles at the company, he has worked with the NHS and industry on a wide range of training, access, collaboration and partnership projects.

Cancer reorganised, page 13.

DEBORAH EVANS

Deborah is Managing Director of Pharmacy Complete, a training and consultancy company working with pharmacy and the industry.

COVID-19: on the frontline, page 21.

NICK WILLIAMS

Nick is Co-Director of Triducive with 20 years’ experience in pharma commercial leadership.

Triducive focus on designing practical solutions that help shape and support better decisions in healthcare.

Changing the rules of a market, page 27.

SCOTT MCKENZIE

Scott is an independent management consultant, working inside the NHS. He specialises in enabling the pharmaceutical, MedTech and medical devices industries to deliver remarkable projects with the NHS. Getting focused, page 24.

DAVID REILLY

David is a writer, digital trainer, and Founder of Let’s Learn Digital. Let’s Learn Digital designs digital transformation programmes for the pharma industry and educates clients on the future potential of digital and emerging technologies including blockchain, artificial intelligence, machine learning and virtual reality.

It’s all in the mind(set), page 28.

In this issue 04 NEWS

24

Bringing you the essential headlines

Focusing on integrated care systems

COVER STORY

10

ADVERTORIAL

Charting the path of patient power

Changing the rules of a market

INSIDE NHS

13

28

Cancer reorganised

Culture change in digital transformation

FEATURE

14

30

Post COVID-19: The new normal

Unlocking motor neurone disease

18 ABPI

MOVERS & SHAKERS

The ABPI Code and virtual meetings

Who’s moving where in the industry?

PHARMACY

21

36

COVID-19: on the frontline

Job seeking during COVID-19

22

IN CONVERSATION

Strategy, curiosity and solutions

FEATURE

27 FEATURE

THERAPY

34 CAREERS

“Winning brands redefine the playing field” Nick Williams, page 27

QUICK DOSES The N ATI O N A L I N S TIT U TE FO R H E A LTH A N D C A R E E XC E LLE N C E ( N I C E ) has published final guidance recommending obinutuzumab (Gazyvaro, R O C H E ) with bendamustine for treating follicular lymphoma.

• N I C E also recommends lorlatinib (Lorviqua, P F I Z E R) as an option for treating anaplastic lymphoma kinase (ALK)-positive advanced nonsmall-cell lung cancer (NSCLC).

• TH E E U R O P E A N CO M M I S S I O N ( E C) has granted a marketing authorisation for a subcutaneous formulation of TA K E DA’s Entyvio® (vedolizumab) for use as maintenance therapy in adults with moderately to severely active ulcerative colitis or Crohn’s disease.

• N I C E published draft guidance recommending trastuzumab emtansine (Kadcyla, R O C H E ) as an option for some people with HER2-positive early breast cancer.

• JA N S S E N ’s Stelara® (ustekinumab) has been recommended by N I C E for the treatment of moderately to severely active ulcerative colitis.

• N I C E also recommends B AY E R ’s VITRAKVI®▼ (larotrectinib) for children and adults with TRK fusion driven cancer.

• V E RTE X received a European CHMP positive opinion for Kalydeco® (ivacaftor) for children and adolescents with cystic fibrosis between the ages of 6 months and 18 years with the R117H mutation in the CFTR gene.

4 | P H A R M A FI EL D.CO.U K

COVID-19

ROCHE ANTIBODY TEST

R

oche has developed and launched a new COVID-19 antibody test. Its Elecsys® Anti-SARS-CoV-2 serology test detects antibodies in people who have been exposed to the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) that causes the COVID-19 disease.

Pf View: Roche’s in vitro diagnostic antibody test for COVID-19 has now been authorised by Public Health England, this is a positive step forward in understanding the spread of the virus through the population.

Pf IN NUMBERS

21,000

P f N E W S : B R I N G I N G YO U T H I S M O N T H ' S E S S EN T I A L H E A D L I N E S

COVID-19

Vaccine development COVID-19

Infection survey IQVIA has joined forces with the Office for National Statistics, Oxford University and UK Biocentre to launch an accelerated COVID-19 infection survey.

They have commenced a countrywide testing programme of UK households for COVID-19 infection and immunity.

IQVIA is providing its highly experienced, UKbased nurses to rapidly undertake the collection of blood samples and swabs from people who have agreed to take part.

Launched by the Department of Health and Social Care, the COVID-19 Infection Survey will involve collecting blood samples and swab tests from households to find out how many people have COVID-19, how many people have developed antibodies, and inform the rate of community transmission.

PEOPLE SIGNED A PETITION TO GET

OCRELIZUMAB ON THE NHS From HIV to COVID-19, p10

A

straZeneca and the University of Oxford have announced an agreement for the global development and distribution of the University’s potential recombinant adenovirus vaccine aimed at preventing COVID-19 infection from SARS-CoV-2.

The collaboration aims to bring to patients the potential vaccine known as ChAdOx1 nCoV-19, being developed by the Jenner Institute and Oxford Vaccine Group, at the University of Oxford. Under the agreement, AstraZeneca would be responsible for development and worldwide manufacturing and distribution of the vaccine.

The potential vaccine entered Phase I clinical trials in April to study safety and efficacy in healthy volunteers aged 18 to 55 years, across five trial centres in Southern England. Data from the Phase I trial could be available soon.

Advancement to late-stage trials should take place by the middle of this year.

COVID-19

Genetics and COVID-19

A major new human whole genome sequencing study will take place across the NHS, involving up to 20,000 people currently or previously in an intensive care unit with coronavirus, as well as 15,000 individuals who have mild or moderate symptoms.

Genomics England is partnering with the GenOMICC consortium, Illumina and the NHS to launch the research drive, which will reach patients in 170 intensive care units throughout the UK. The study, facilitated by the University of Edinburgh and multiple NHS hospitals, will explore the varied effects coronavirus has on patients, supporting the search for treatments by identifying those most at risk and helping to fast-track new therapies into clinical trials.

COVID-19

COMMUNITY TREATMENT TRIAL A UK COVID-19 drugs trial – testing whether low-risk treatment in the community can help people at higher risk of complications from COVID-19 to get better quicker, reducing the need for hospital admission – has announced that older people who have had coronavirus symptoms for 15 days or less can now also screen for the trial online.

More than 500 GP surgeries are recruiting people aged 50 to 64 with a pre-existing illness, or aged 65 and over, into the trial.

It is the first trial of COVID-19 treatments to take place in primary care.

M AG A ZI N E | J U N E 2020 | 5

ACQUISITION.

ALLERGAN COMPLETED

A

bbVie has completed its acquisition of Allergan plc following receipt of regulatory approval from all government authorities required by the transaction agreement and approval by the Irish High Court.

The transaction significantly expands and diversifies AbbVie’s revenue base and complements existing leadership positions in immunology, with Humira®, and recently launched Skyrizi™ and Rinvoq™, and hematologic oncology, with Imbruvica® and Venclexta®.

Allergan provides new growth opportunities in neuroscience, with Botox ® Therapeutics, Vraylar ® and Ubrelvy™ and a global aesthetics business, with leading brands including Botox ® and Juvederm®.

COVID-19

KILLING CORONAVIRUS A collaborative study led by the Monash Biomedicine Discovery Institute with the Peter Doherty Institute of Infection and Immunity, a joint venture of the University of Melbourne and Royal Melbourne Hospital, has shown that ivermectin, an anti-parasitic drug already available around the world, kills the coronavirus in cell culture within 48 hours.

Ivermectin, an FDA-approved anti-parasitic previously shown to have broad-spectrum anti-viral activity in vitro, is an inhibitor of the causative virus (SARS-CoV-2), with a single addition to Vero-hSLAM cells two hours post infection with SARS-CoV-2 (coronavirus) able to effect ~5000-fold reduction in viral RNA at 48 hours. The study concluded that ivermectin therefore warrants further investigation for possible benefits in humans.

6 | P H A R M A FI EL D.CO.U K

NHS

NHS Reset The NHS Confederation has launched the NHS Reset campaign to contribute to the public debate on what the health and care system should look like post COVID-19.

The coronavirus pandemic has changed the NHS and social care, ushering in rapid transformation at a time of immense pressure and personal and professional challenge. Over the past few weeks, one message from leaders and clinicians across the UK has been clear: we must build on the progress made to chart a new course.

The campaign will support leaders to: • Recognise both the sacrifice and achievements of the health and care sector’s response to COVID-19, including the major innovations that have been delivered at pace.

• Rebuild local service provision to meet the physical, mental and social needs of communities affected by severe economic and social disruption.

• Reset ambitions for what the health and care system of the future should look like, including its relationship with the public and public services.

Pf View: With the coronavirus pandemic forcing transformation throughout the health system, it would be a wasted opportunity if this is not continued post COVID-19. It is unlikely that life will return to normal any time soon, so it’s important that the NHS continues to evolve too.

P f N E W S : B R I N G I N G YO U T H I S M O N T H ' S E S S EN T I A L H E A D L I N E S

HAEMOPHILIA

Wide variation COVID-19

VACCINE TRIALS

T

he first coronavirus vaccine clinical trial was started at Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute (KPWHRI) in Seattle in March. The Phase 1 clinical trial is evaluating an investigational vaccine designed to protect against COVID-19.

In the UK, the first human clinical trial started in April. Oxford University’s COVID-19 vaccine trial is a collaboration between the University’s Jenner Institute and Oxford Vaccine Group clinical teams. A team at Imperial College London is working on a different vaccine with human clinical trials expected for June.

Pf View: The speed at which vaccine clinical trials have been enabled is fantastic, and shows the efforts of medical, pharmaceutical and academic colleagues to find a vaccine for COVID-19.

MHRA

COVID-19

ADVERSE EVENTS A new online reporting site, dedicated to reporting any COVID-19 treatment adverse events, including suspected side effects from medicines, future vaccines and incidents involving medical equipment relating to COVID-19 treatment, has been launched.

The new and tailored Yellow Card COVID-19 reporting site makes it quicker and simpler for healthcare professionals, patients and carers to report side-effects or incidents.

The site has been developed as part of the MHRA’s work to protect the public through enhanced COVID-19 vigilance and in preparation for large-scale use of potential new or repurposed medicines, medical devices, diagnostic tests and future vaccines.

COVID-19 guidance The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), working with the Department of Health and Social Care and other healthcare partners, has created COVID-19 guidance for industry.

MHRA is also providing information to patients, manufacturers and healthcare professionals.

Guidance covers regulatory flexibilities, clinical trials, inspections and good practice, medical devices and alerts, medicines, and fake or unlicensed medicines.

To mark the 30th Anniversary of World Haemophilia Day, Sobi released the 2020 Haemophilia Index which shows the varied state of haemophilia treatment and examines the quality of life for people with haemophilia in Europe, including the UK and the reach of humanitarian aid across the globe.

According to survey results, European haematologists report high levels of treatment satisfaction and physical activity among people with severe haemophilia, showing that with access to appropriate treatment, they are able to live active lives.

In Europe, Italy reports the highest levels of physical activity among people living with severe haemophilia, while Germany indicates the highest quality of life. Both Switzerland and Sweden report the greatest patient satisfaction levels.

Globally, half of the countries featured in the study rely entirely on the World Federation of Hemophilia Humanitarian Aid Program to provide medication for haemophilia treatment.

M AG A ZI N E | J U N E 2020 | 7

Pf IN NUMBERS

COVID-19

Rapid diagnostics A rapid COVID-19 diagnostic test developed by a University of Cambridge spinout company and capable of diagnosing the infection in under 90 minutes, has been deployed at Cambridge hospitals, ahead of being launched in hospitals nationwide.

The SAMBA II machines, developed by Diagnostics for the Real World, provide a simple and accurate system for the diagnosis of COVID-19 infection. They will be used by healthcare workers at point-of-care to rapidly diagnose patients, directing those who test positive for the infection to dedicated wards.

They can also help identify which healthcare workers are infected, enabling those who test negative to return to the frontline.

THERE’S A

1:300

RISK OF GETTING MOTOR NEURONE DISEASE IN A LIFETIME

Complex and challenging, p30

SIX PEOPLE ARE DIAGNOSED WITH MOTOR NEURONE DISEASE EVERY DAY Complex and challenging, p30

THERE ARE PRIMARY CARE NETWORKS

1259

Getting focused, p24

HEALTHCARE

NHS roadmap Health leaders have set out measures to help local hospitals plan to increase routine operations and treatment, while keeping the necessary capacity and capability to treat future COVID-19 patients.

The guidance falls into five principles: • Careful planning, scheduling and organisation of clinical activity • Scientifically-guided approach to testing staff and patients • Excellence in infection prevention and control • Rigorous monitoring and surveillance • Focus on continuous improvement.

8 | P H A R M A FI EL D.CO.U K

CANCER.

NICE

NEW CEO Professor Gillian Leng, CBE, has been appointed as the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence’s (NICE) new Chief Executive. Gillian has held the post of Deputy Chief Executive since 2007 and was also Director of Health and Social Care.

Funding cuts Cancer Research UK has taken the difficult decision to cut funding to its existing grants and institutes by up to 10% and its national network of Centres by around 20%. This equates to a £44m cut to its research portfolio across the year, Iain Foulkes, Professor Karen Vousden, and Professor Charles Swanton wrote in an open letter to its researcher community.

Iain Foulkes, Executive Director of Research and Innovation at Cancer Research UK, said: “COVID-19 has left the whole world in uncharted waters. And the unprecedented measures to control the global COVID-19 pandemic have had a huge impact on both our researchers’ ability to carry on in the lab, and on our ability to fundraise. Faced with a predicted loss of 20-25% of fundraising income, we are forced to look for savings across our current portfolio.

“Cancer Research UK funds nearly 50% of the cancer research in the UK and making cuts to research funding is the most difficult decision we have had to make.”

P f N E W S : B R I N G I N G YO U T H I S M O N T H ' S E S S EN T I A L H E A D L I N E S PF IN NUMBERS

Rapid COVID NICE has produced a wealth of rapid guidelines on the care of patients with suspected and confirmed COVID-19 and in patients without the disease.

The guidelines cover: • Cystic fibrosis • Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease • Dermatological conditions treated with drugs affecting the immune response • Severe asthma • Managing suspected or confirmed pneumonia in adults in the community • Managing symptoms (including at the end of life) in the community • Rheumatological autoimmune, inflammatory and metabolic bone disorders • Critical care in adults • Acute kidney injury • Immunocompromised children and young people • Antibiotics for pneumonia in adults in hospital • Gastrointestinal and liver conditions treated with drugs affecting the immune response • Acute myocardial injury • Delivering radiotherapy • Bone marrow transplant • Delivery of systemic anticancer treatments • Dialysis service delivery • Haematopoietic stem cell transplantation.

27 PMCPA CASE RULINGS PUBLISHED IN

2019

RELATED TO DIGITAL COMMUNICATIONS

The ABPI Code and virtual meetings, p18

ICYMI

NICE

EVOLVING PHARMA KEY ACCOUNT MANAGEMENT IN A CHANGING NHS Oli Hudson, Content Director at Wilmington Healthcare, explores how pharma key account management must evolve in a changing NHS, based on a recent webinar run by the company’s Digital Learning Academy.

MAKING HCP VIRTUAL EVENTS A SUCCESS David Logue, Senior Vice President of Commercial Strategy at Veeva on how to make virtual events for healthcare professionals a success as appetite for online access to content grows.

HOW EFFECTIVE DATA STRATEGIES IN LABS ARE INCREASING THE THROUGHPUT OF LIFESAVING DRUGS

MORE THAN JUST PRINT. We publish daily news and exclusive articles online at www.pharmafield.co.uk.

Here’s a look at some of the exclusive content you may have missed.

From R&D contract organisations to large pharmaceutical companies, many drug development firms face the same issues when it comes to data: legacy systems and methods of data capture, and inefficient collaboration among teams and organisations. Pietro Forgione of IDBS explains how effective data strategies in labs are increasing the throughput of lifesaving drugs.

GRAPH DATABASES: THE KEY TO GROUND-BREAKING MEDICAL RESEARCH Neo4j’s Alicia Frame discusses how life science researchers can exploit graph databases to get truly granular insight into big data to make major leaps forward in medical research.

M AG A ZI N E | J U N E 2020 | 9

FROM HIV TO COVID-19: Charting the path of patient power Patient power has evolved considerably since it was born to represent the voiceless during the 1980s HIV/AIDS crisis. Will COVID-19 provide the movement with the opportunity to take it to the next step?

WORDS BY

Amanda Barrell

N

ow more than ever, everyone is talking about medical science – from the value of vaccines to the importance of research.

As the world struggles to contain the threat of COVID-19, it has brought the public’s role in healthcare into sharp focus, offering the sector a golden opportunity to further embed the patient voice into future work. Doing so will entail learning from what has gone before.

EVOLVING MOVEMENT

Patient power is essentially a movement of necessity, born of the urgent need to support people living with stigma, discrimination, and indifference in the global HIV/AIDS epidemic of the 1980s.

Fast forward four decades, to another global public health emergency, and the movement has evolved considerably.

It has transformed drug development and market access pathways, making

10 | P H A R M A FI EL D.CO.U K

them more representative and more inclusive – at least on the face of it.

Claudia Rubin, Director of market access consultancy Decideum, said: “Time and time again, patients are being given a chance to speak, but that doesn’t mean they have any bearing on the outcome. Patient voices do not just need to be heard they need to be influential.

“I am a huge advocate of patient involvement in all areas of commissioning, that goes without saying, but we could be doing things better.”

Mark Duman, Managing Director and Chief Patient Officer at MD Healthcare Consultants, agreed that the advantages of greater patient involvement were clear, but the movement’s aims and objectives had not yet been met.

“Increased involvement means better clinical trials and better products, and better adherence to those trials and medicines.

But while we talk a lot about putting the patient at the centre, I think we need a better focus on mechanisms of how to do that.”

TRANSLATING VOICES INTO OUTCOMES

Claudia used the example of highprofile media campaigns around drug approval and funding decisions. While they garnered much media and public attention, they didn’t always make a huge difference to decisions, she said.

“Social media has obviously had a massive impact on patients being able to organise and act more as one community.

The caveat to that is that to what extent does any of it have any bearing on drug approvals.

“There have been a lot of big campaigns, coordinated by very well organised patient groups, but they can sometimes complicate things for themselves,” she said.

News stories that misrepresent the efficacy of new products or give the impression that they would benefit more people than the evidence suggested are often counterproductive, she said, as it often led to an ‘us and them’ mentality, dividing industry, regulators and patients into rival camps.

C OV ER S TO RY

PARTNERING EXAMPLE

The MS Society, which spearheaded a public campaign to secure access to ocrelizumab for some people with primary progressive multiple sclerosis (PPMS), reiterated the value of avoiding this.

“When the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) came to look at ocrelizumab, they approved it for reimbursement in relapsing multiple sclerosis (RRMS), but not in PPMS, where there were no disease modifying treatments available,” said Jonathan Blades, Head of Campaigns and External Relations at the charity.

People who would potentially gain from the drug “felt discarded” by the draft decision, and it spurred the charity to mobilise a nationwide campaign.

More than 21,000 people signed a petition calling for the product to be funded and the charity used case studies and patient stories to lobby MPs and attract media attention. Around 2000 people answered a call to write to their MP, and lawmakers were invited to a drop-in session at the Houses of Parliament to hear how access would impact on people’s lives.

Meanwhile, confidential price negotiations were held between NICE and Roche, and, when the final guidance was published, it confirmed that the cost of ocrelizumab would be reimbursed for some people with PPMS. Strong, transparent working relationships with decision-makers and pharmaceutical companies was essential in this kind of work, said Jonathan.

“When we are all working together, we can make sure that people with multiple sclerosis are included in as many conversations as possible. Even though our drivers are slightly different, we all have the same fundamental aim – for treatments to be available to people who can benefit from them,” he added.

M AG A ZI N E | J U N E 2020 | 11

C OV ER S TO RY

A LISTENING EAR

A spokesman for NICE said it used various patient involvement methods across its different health technology assessment programmes.

Patient organisations were invited to comment on draft scopes and consultation documents, submit patient evidence and nominate patient experts to attend committee meetings, for example. However, this is just one part of the drug approval jigsaw, and industry players needed to work with patients and patient groups to ensure success, said Claudia.

“Ultimately, the patient voice alone is not enough to get a drug approved. It’s all about evidence. It doesn’t matter how loud you shout, if you haven’t got the evidence to prove cost effectiveness, you are not going to get through NICE. “Industry could be doing a much better job of furnishing the patient community with the evidence and research from the start.”

“That’s hugely valuable. If you just showed trial slides and presentations, some people wouldn’t necessarily understand how the drug works, or what the side effects are.”

This education, said Mark, had to be paired with empowerment if it was to further the aims of patient power.

“I think we need to be a bit careful about passive terms like ‘patient’ and ‘consumer’. We need to think a little bit more in terms like ‘citizen’.

“As a patient, I’m a recipient of the healthcare system, and as a consumer, I’m a recipient of what is sold to be consumed.

As a citizen, I have the potential to influence what’s up for sale.

“We are heading towards a more informed public, we need to have more candid conversations and transparency about the effectiveness and non-effectiveness of drugs.”

It is the whole healthcare sector’s responsibility to make sure people have the information they need to play an active role in healthcare conversations and decisions, he added.

EMPOWERING VOICES

While social media has helped to connect people with health conditions and amplified their voice, it has also provided a medium for misleading information to influence medical discussions.

This was evident with the rise of the anti-vaxx movement and has been highlighted again in recent weeks with the spread of false information on stopping coronavirus.

Sheuli Porkess, Executive Director: Research, Medical and Innovation at the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry (ABPI), said an advantage of the current focus on COVID-19 was that it was helping the public to understand the importance of evidencebased medicine and information.

According to Sheuli, it is an opportunity to capture the public’s attention and make people true participants in healthcare.

“The fact that research is being talked about all the time is great,” said Sheuli. “People are seeing the Chief Medical Officer on the TV every day, explaining that research is about risks and benefits and making sure that we’re doing things in the right way,” she said, adding that people were currently seeking out evidence-based information.

Giving people the tools to evaluate evidence was also key to reducing the impact of misinformation, said Jonathan.

“There’s a lot of data out there and a lot of it is in quite technical jargon. I think charities are really well placed to take the research and put it in language that people can understand,” he said, emphasising the importance of co-creation in this task.

ENDEMIC OPPORTUNITY

As patient power started life amid the HIV/AIDS crisis, it seems apt that COVID-19 might give it the opportunity to reach maturity.

“Certainly, during COVID we’re seeing different ways of doing things. It’s really interesting to see how quickly trials are recruiting, and to see public and patient involvement panels for COVID research being set up,” said Sheuli.

“It should provide a really good momentum for doing things like this across disease areas.”

At the same time, the enforced, rapid roll out of digital transformation, including remote monitoring and video consultations, is proving that more people-friendly healthcare services and clinical trials are possible.

Crucially, ‘healthcare’ currently has the undivided attention of citizens. It is a golden opportunity to educate, empower and include, so that all stakeholders can move forward together.

Top 5 Takeaways 1

2

Now is the perfect time to embed patient voice in work.

Patient campaigns in approvals can complicate things.

1 2 | P H A R M A FI EL D.CO.U K

3 COVID-19 is increasing awareness of the importance of evidencebased medicine and information.

5 4 Patients need education and empowerment.

COVID-19 is a golden opportunity to educate, empower and include citizens.

NHS

Cancer reorganised COVID-19 is prompting major reorganisation of NHS cancer services. WORDS BY Oli Hudson

C

ancer services have changed beyond recognition recently following new guidance from NHS England, published in March, outlining how oncology patients should be managed during the coronavirus pandemic.

The Clinical guide for the management of noncoronavirus patients requiring acute treatment: Cancer attempts to shape the priorities for cancer services over the coming months.

CANCER TREATMENT

Under the new arrangements, each cancer unit will be headed by a ‘lead consultant’ who will be accountable for making rapid decisions in areas such as surgery and systemic anticancer treatment (SACT).

Surgery falls into strict priority categories. The first priority level is for emergencies where an operation is needed within 24 hours to save life, followed by urgent cases where an operation is needed within 72 hours.

The second priority level covers elective surgery, with the expectation of cure, required within the next four weeks.

However, most patients will fall into the third category where treatment can be delayed for up to 12 weeks without causing harm.

The guide states that decisions on SACT, which covers chemotherapy and other drugs, will be made on a case by case basis with input from multi-disciplinary teams and patients themselves.

PRIORITISING

Nevertheless, there are strict priority levels, which put curative therapy with a greater than 50% chance of success at the top and indicate that there will be treatment rationing for people with less than a year to live.

However, in addition to these priorities, when determining treatment, clinicians will also have to weigh up a patient’s immune response, stage and progression, and balance them against their risk of contracting COVID-19.

So, for example, some patients on chemotherapy and other drugs that compromise the immune system, may have their treatment paused during the COVID -19 pandemic, regardless of their position on the priority list.

Other changes to drug treatment that should be considered under the guidance include swapping intravenous drugs, that must be administered in hospital, for subcutaneous or oral ones that can be taken at home.

LOCAL SERVICE DELIVERY

It is likely that there will be an increased demand for homecare support from chemotherapy nurses and allied healthcare professionals (HCPs) and also a need for consultant services to be delivered in the patient’s home, to reduce the risk of infection posed by attending hospital appointments. This could include telephone or virtual appointments.

Consultant oncologists, cancer surgeons and radiotherapists may be organised into regional hubs to support local service delivery and help the NHS to address key priorities in cancer care.

It is not clear how long this new guidance will be in place, but as the Royal College of Surgeons has warned, the impact of COVID-19 and the ‘mountainous backlog’ that is developing is likely to create issues that will take many years to resolve.

Oli Hudson is Content Director at Wilmington Healthcare. Go to www.wilmingtonhealthcare.com Sources: Clinical guide for the management of noncoronavirus patients requiring acute treatment: Cancer https://tinyurl.com/ycuaeopd

M AG A ZI N E | J U N E 2020 | 13

14 | P H A R M A FI EL D.CO.U K

F E AT U R E

NEW NORMAL, NEW THINKING New thinking will be required to adapt to the new normal post COVID-19.

I

hate to start this article on a negative note, but we are not going to back to normal after this extended period of lockdown. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news.

The COVID-19 pandemic has changed, and will continue to change, the world and the way we work, rest and play. Some readers might be old enough to recognise I have stolen those words from a certain chocolate bar’s advertising strapline which helps you to ‘WORK, REST and PLAY’. Borrowing from the impactful worlds, COVID-19 has completely changed the way the planet works, rests and plays.

So ‘going back’ to the way we were before COVID-19 is not an option. The challenge, and I think the opportunity, is now to start the process of thinking about a ‘new normal’.

NEW NORMAL

A quote from Ian Davis, Managing Partner at McKinsey, in his article ‘The New Normal’, summarises this: “For some organisations, near-term survival is the only agenda item.

Others are peering through the fog of uncertainty, thinking about how to position themselves once the crisis has passed and things return to normal. The question is, ‘What will normal look like?’.

While no one can say how long the crisis will last, what we find on the other side will not look like the normal of recent years.”

These words were written 11 years ago, during the global financial crisis, but they could easily have been written about the current COVID-19 pandemic. We have faced many challenges as a human race and overcome them, however the other side of each of these challenges has looked very different.

This pandemic challenge we will get through, but we must face the fact that this will dramatically change the way we work, rest and play.

We cannot re-write the chapters of history already past, but we can learn from them, evolve and adapt. The new normal may even be a better normal, certainly a different normal

WORDS BY

Mark Pringle M AG A ZI N E | J U N E 2020 | 15

F E AT U R E

THEORY OF ENVIRONMENTAL ANALYSIS

T

o help think about what the new normal could look like, I have used a theory of environmental analysis first coined in 1987 for the US Army War College to describe different types of battle zone conditions.

In the last few years, this principle has been picked up by many leadership experts and related the idea of the VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous) world to a corporate setting. If you Google VUCA, you will find much sage advice on what to do when faced with these four different situations.

I have highlighted a short synopsis of the conventional wisdom for each situation and contrasted that with an alternative view for the new normal world we will be creating soon. The definitions have been adapted from the Cambridge English Dictionary, 2020.

V FOR VOLATILE

U FOR UNCERTAIN

C FOR COMPLEX

DEFINITION: Likely to change

DEFINITION: Not knowing what

DEFINITION: Involving a lot

suddenly and unexpectedly, especially by getting worse.

• Food and essential supplies have been in a volatile state of availability since lockdown.

• The situation was made more volatile by the fact that people were not sticking to the instructions to stay at home.

to know or believe, or not able to decide about something.

• She is uncertain about whether she should take the dog to the park in lockdown.

• He was uncertain whether to wear a face mask or not.

of different but related parts.

• We live in a complex network of information and data.

• Supplying the right PPE, to the right people is a complex logistics operation.

DEFINITION: Likely to change

DEFINITION: Not known or

fixed, or not completely certain.

• Many furloughed workers face an uncertain future.

• The political landscape is uncertain.

DEFINITION: Difficult to

Counteract uncertainty with certainty.

understand, explain or find an answer to because of many different parts.

• Lockdown is a complex situation to which there is no straightforward answer.

• The data around COVID-19 is complex and can be difficult to interpret.

CONVENTIONAL OLD SCHOOL WISDOM:

POST COVID-19 NEW THINKING: Many people

CONVENTIONAL OLD SCHOOL WISDOM:

Counteract volatility with stability.

like things to be settled, organised and placed into a comfortable routine. Others thrive on uncertainty and love the opportunities it brings. Wherever you sit on this continuum you will need to embrace rather than fight the uncertainty. Think about using this uncertainty to consider what could be possible in the new normal.

New York Times bestselling author Mandy Hale captures the new thinking best in her quote: “Trust the wait. Embrace the uncertainty. Enjoy the beauty of becoming. When nothing is certain, anything is possible.”

Counteract complexity with simplicity.

emotional state very suddenly, especially by becoming angry.

• She had a volatile temper and could be difficult to work with virtually.

• He has a volatile nature and can be unreliable and unpredictable.

POST COVID-19 NEW THINKING: How can

we leverage the volatile world to look at new ways of working? Stability is good, but rarely a fertile space for innovation and creativity. The new normal will be different, and how we approach this volatile time will depend on how we adapt. To adapt means to change so let us think proactively about how that change might look.

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CONVENTIONAL OLD SCHOOL WISDOM:

POST COVID-19 NEW THINKING: When we

can’t simplify, we must get creative and look to new ways of dealing with the complexity we face. Just look at how the pharma world is collaborating in a new spirit of discovery to crack the complex problem of finding a vaccine and therapeutics for the challenges of COVID-19. Leaning into the complexity rather than fighting it can be the fuel to spark ingenious solutions.

A FOR AMBIGUOUS DEFINITION: Having or

expressing more than one possible meaning, sometimes intentionally.

• The Minister’s response to that question was ambiguous.

• The wording of the guidance could be seen as ambiguous.

DEFINITION: Difficult to

understand because of conflicting or opposite facts or characteristics.

• The data is ambiguous and could be used to draw different conclusions.

• The situation is ambiguous and there is no clear solution.

CONVENTIONAL OLD SCHOOL WISDOM:

Counteract ambiguity with clarity.

POST COVID-19 NEW THINKING: When there is

no clarity, maybe we need to just embrace the fact that we need to look at things differently, think differently and act differently.

Best summed up by the author and thinker Deepak Chopra: “The measure of your enlightenment is the degree to which you are comfortable with paradox, contradiction, and ambiguity.”

When faced with ambiguity and paradox, we often try to solve the perceived conflict, and this can lead to frustration and wasted time and energy.

Instead learn to live with paradox and ambiguity; life is not a series of binary choices.

Life is a spectrum of colours and shades, not black and white. So learn to love all those paradoxical and ambiguous situations, because hidden in there are opportunities to find the new and exciting.

Ashfield Wherever you sit on this continuum you will need to embrace rather than fight the uncertainty

A BETTER NORMAL?

If you are looking forward to coming out of lockdown and returning to the old normal, think again. The current situation is tragic, heartbreaking and filled with fear and anxiety. However, there are thin silver linings there if you look for them.

This is our chance to reinvent and create a better world where we can all work, rest and play in the new normal. We cannot re-write the chapters of history already past, but we can learn from them, evolve and adapt. The new normal may even be a better normal, certainly a different normal.

So during the remainder of the lockdown period ask yourself these questions about your version of new normal: • How can I reinvent the way I work to best utilise the new normal?

• Where can I reform my lifestyle in order to rest in the new normal?

• What can I do to reimagine how I play in the world that will be my new normal?

FINAL THOUGHTS

If you think you have the personal power to reinvent, reform and reimagine your own new normal, then you are correct, you do.

If you think you don’t have the personal power to reinvent, reform and reimagine your own new normal, then you are correct too, you don’t.

Either way, I look forward to seeing you on the other side, in the new normal world where we will work, rest and play together again.

Mark Pringle is Founding Director of MORExcellent.

Sources: https://tinyurl.com/yawve8bm | https://tinyurl.com/y9zzh7yq

M AG A ZI N E | J U N E 2020 | 17

The ABPI Code & Virtual Meetings

As the pharma industry looks to virtual meetings and teams work remotely, what considerations are there around the ABPI Code and virtual promotional meetings?

WORDS BY Dr Rina Newton

W

hilst the NHS has undoubtedly got bigger things to worry about than wonder how pharma will promote its medicines without face-to-face calls and meetings, pharma has a lot to be worried about in these unprecedented times: from cancelled activities and unused materials to field customer-facing teams confined to working at home.

It’s true to say that many of us are adapting to new ways of working and things may return to a ‘new normal’ after lockdown. But as we are working remotely there is, undoubtedly, a rise in the use of virtual meetings. This article does not address how we should increase digital promotion during lockdown but suggests ways we can embrace it in the future and remain compliant with the ABPI Code of Practice (Code). This will be the first of a series of articles on digital promotion, this one exploring virtual promotional meetings.

CODE AND GUIDANCE

Digital marketing within the pharmaceutical industry has been utilised for many years. The topic causes much debate with agencies and pharma generally asking the ABPI for ‘more clarity in the Code on specific digital areas’ and the PMCPA responding in several ways, including the following: • The PMCPA produced guidance on digital communications in 2014 (updated since).

• ‘Clause 28: The Internet’ was renamed to ‘The Internet and other digital platforms’ in 2019.

Despite this, there continues to be complaints relating to digital communications, with 27 related PMCPA case rulings published in 2019, suggesting companies’ own guidance is required.

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It is always useful for guidance to consider case rulings as well as what might go wrong with an activity, in order to then find ways to mitigate these risks

Therefore, in order to better understand how we can promote our medicines digitally, it is this company guidance that should be clear, unambiguous and based on common practice.

It is always useful for such guidance to consider published PMCPA case rulings. This helps us to understand what might go wrong with an activity, in order to then find ways to mitigate these risks. These mitigation ideas essentially form the basis of a ‘compliance checklist’ for this activity, which is then ideal to sit in company guidance.

If Code requirements don’t help us, is a better understanding of them able to at least not hinder us in optimising future digital opportunities?

DIGITAL PROMOTION EXAMPLE: VIRTUAL MEETINGS COMPLIANCE CHECKLIST

Over and above the normal requirements for face-to-face promotional meetings, the table opposite describes the extra Code compliance considerations if such a meeting was held virtually.

PMCPA CASE RULINGS, STANDARD OPERATING PROCEDURES AND SIGNATORIES

As with all compliance checklists, insight is gleaned from relevant PMCPA case rulings to develop meaningful and comprehensive checks. In their absence, company standard operating procedures should be clear and unambiguous. In addition, discussing planned activities with modern and constructive final signatories plays an important part in achieving not just compliant virtual meetings, but ones that are also highly educational, useful for customers and commercially impactful. Dr Rina Newton is Managing Director of CompliMed. Go to www.complimed.co.uk

ABPI

RISKS

RISK MITIGATION

Delegate may not have been invited and therefore not appropriate.

• Companies should ensure planned invitees are eligible to attend (i.e. suitably qualified and content is relevant to their role).

• Invitees should be asked not to forward on invites to anyone else.

Delegate has not given permission to receive promotion via digital methods.

• Delegates should give opt-in and explicit permission to receive promotion via digital methods.

• If prior permission does not already exist with a company/agency, it may be prudent to consider a meeting registration webpage to allow delegates to confirm their health professional status and also give permission.

Email invite may disguise the fact that the meeting is promotional.

• The invite (which may be non-promotional in itself) must make it clear to invited delegates that the virtual meeting promotes a medicine.

• If the invite links to the promotional content or if the promotional meeting invite is attached to the email, then the email itself will be considered promotional.

Member of the public might access meeting and be inadvertently promoted a medicine.

• Meetings should contain access restriction, such as log-in password, to prevent the public from accessing inappropriate content.

Member of the public might overhear/see meeting.

• Both the invite and meeting registration should make it clear to delegates that they should be in a quiet area, using headphones and their screens must not be readily visible to the public.

• It is prudent to remind the audience of these points at the start of the meeting too.

Prescribing information embedded in content is not visible or missing.

• Prescribing information must be provided with promotional material – either embedded or as a link.

• Prescribing information should be legible if embedded within the slide deck – consider devices that the audience will use to access the meeting.

• The speaker(s) must allow adequate time for the audience to read prescribing information.

• If the virtual meeting is recorded for accessing on another platform at a future date and prescribing information is not embedded, the platform itself must contain prescribing information or a link to it.

Link to prescribing information missing/not working.

• The link should be a single, direct click to the current prescribing information.

• This link can be in the chat function or for recorded virtual meetings, the link can be on the same page of the platform where the meeting is accessed.

Delegates choose to dial-in (rather than log-in) and therefore will not see obligatory aspects of the meeting content.

• It should be made clear to delegates (either on the invite, registration page or through disabling certain functionality) that the meeting content must be viewed.

Certification is improper.

• It is prudent to consider certifying the final form of the meeting content by viewing it on the device that the intended audience will likely access the meeting.

• Links should be verified as correct and working, once they are made live.

Third parties may let the pharma company down.

• Agencies used to deploy virtual meetings should be well-versed in Code requirements.

• Arrangements with such agencies should be carefully documented e.g. only the final certified content to be displayed etc.

M AG A ZI N E | J U N E 2020 | 19

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PHARMACY

COVID-19 ON THE FRONTLINE Insight into community pharmacy during the COVID-19 lockdown.

A

longside panic buying of toilet rolls and non-perishables, the March coronavirus lockdown saw patients rushing to their pharmacies to stock up on their prescription medicines.

GPs, thinking they were doing the right thing, issued double or even triple quantities of repeat medicines. Patients who had not ordered medicines for some time, requested ‘when required’ items just in case; particularly inhalers. Over-the-counter paracetamol went out of stock as medicine cupboards across the country were filled.

The supply chain was under extreme and unprecedented stress with a number of medicines unavailable. Wholesaler bills also mounted to reflect the increased items and duration of treatment, resulting in major cashflow challenges.

FINANCIAL SUPPORT

In response, NHS England provided a welcome advance payment of £300m to the sector in April and May, representing around £17,000 per pharmacy in the first month. In many cases, this was about half of what was needed. This payment is a loan on future earnings and at the time of writing (April 2020), an agreement has not been reached for additional funding required to cover increased COVID-19 related costs.

PERSONAL PROTECTIVE EQUIPMENT

Many pharmacies did not receive their Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) until mid-April, and even then, supplies have been limited. Socially distancing as a team in the average dispensary is not practical and yet we don’t have enough PPE to wear routinely. To add further to our anxieties, pharmacists and their teams have faced abusive and angry members of the public.

WORKING TOGETHER

Thankfully, pharmacies have adapted well to the new normal and put in place measures to protect themselves and patients from the spread of the virus, whilst managing an efficient operation. The Chief Medical Officer wrote to all GPs instructing them to prescribe no more than the normal prescription duration and advised that asthma patients should be reviewed if their symptoms worsen, outside of their normal care plan. Working together has been key, and a greater use of electronic repeat dispensing is being implemented.

Thankfully, we have been allowed to work behind closed doors for up to 2.5 hours per day, to ensure we can catch up and keep both ourselves and our patients safe. We have business continuity plans and will do all we can to keep our communities well. Volunteers in many areas are helping to deliver medicines to those who cannot leave home.

WORDS BY

Deborah Evans

PHARMACY SERVICE

Our new service-orientated contract is largely on hold with our focus on provision of medicines, ensuring delivery to our most vulnerable patients through a new Pandemic Delivery Service and providing advice and support for common illnesses, which still occur alongside COVID-19.

It was and remains critical to maintain an effective pharmaceutical service during the pandemic; it’s unimaginable to consider the impact of not being able to provide millions of patients with their regular medicines such as antihypertensives, immunosuppressants, insulins, anticoagulants, painkillers, respiratory medicines, etc.

Pharmacies have been working hard on the frontline and putting the care of patients at the core of their work. Thank you to all pharmacy colleagues for the brilliant and mostly unrecognised work you do and thank you to our pharmaceutical industry for keeping medicines in the supply chain; the response to the unprecedented demand was swift.

We are all in this together.

Deborah Evans FFRPS FRPharmS FRSPH is Managing Director of Pharmacy Complete, a training and consultancy company working with pharmacy, the NHS and industry.

Go to www.pharmacycomplete.org M AG A ZI N E | J U N E 2020 | 21

I N C O N V E R S AT I O N

Strategy, curiosity & solutions

Mehrnaz Campbell shares her experience of running a UK business from the US developing strategies to align pharma and the NHS. INTERVIEW BY Emma Morriss

W

hat’s your career background?

I started my career as a nurse and then a Nurse Adviser selling medical equipment. I joined the pharmaceutical industry as a hospital representative in 1992. It appealed to me as I had a hunger for learning and had heard pharma invested in people development.

When I joined, my manager encouraged me to undertake a post-graduate diploma in Management. Working full time with a young family was quite challenging. I remember working evenings and weekends with my son in the bouncer on the office doorframe. In 1997, we moved to Scotland and I took a year out but continued studying and obtained a post-graduate diploma in Marketing.

I worked various hands-on and leadership roles in sales and marketing with a significant period in account management.

I was invited to enrol on Parke-Davis and Pfizer’s leadership development programme which gave me theoretical knowledge and supported me to complete my MBA at Manchester Business School. It also offered me job rotation and secondments to experience a variety of roles. In 2008 I left Pfizer and joined Takeda as a regional account director in Scotland.

I had a huge amount of autonomy at local level with responsibility for P&L, marketing and budget. It was like running your own business. This was the best training ground because it forced me out of my comfort zone to make decisions, mistakes and learn from them. I applied my theoretical knowledge and understanding of running sales and marketing to refine my skills. I was Multichannel Strategy Director when I left and founded Cheemia Limited in 2017.

What do you do now? I am the Founding Director of Cheemia. We have a team of specialists that work across the UK providing expert advice to pharma on the NHS in devolved nations. We also develop tailor-made sales and marketing strategies and multichannel marketing mix to accelerate sales growth. I am passionate about developing innovative strategies that align NHS and pharma. When it comes to implementation, some clients want us to use their own sales team, creative agencies and media suppliers and ask us to lead the process and coordinate it, whilst other clients ask us to lead and manage their sales operation.

Our strategies have led us to triple our clients’ sales in a brief period, whilst simultaneously saving NHS valuable resources and benefitting patient care.

What made you set up your own company?

In 2017, I joined my husband in the USA and initially looked at pharma jobs, but none worked geographically. I always wanted my own business and was aware that my experience and understanding of NHS Scotland could offer value to many UK pharma companies. So, I decided to set up a Scottish company based in the UK and work remotely.

Consider the question ‘Am I just busy?

Or am I adding value?’ seriously. The answer can drive you to abandon things that don’t add value and focus on what really matters

22 | P H A R M A FI EL D.CO.U K

What are the challenges of running a UK business from the US? It is less of a tangible challenge, than a ‘perception’. In the early years, some clients were sceptical, but the arrangement worked as we consistently over delivered on our promises in a timely fashion. We embrace digital technology and the time zone difference allows me to schedule client meetings, NHS interactions and team catch-ups in the morning and frees up my afternoons to focus on projects and service development. Furthermore, the rest of Cheemia employees and contractors operate from the UK. I understand you were a Pf Awards winner, what was that like? I won the 2015 Account Manager Pf Award. I was also a top finalist in the same category and the Ethical Leadership in Sales category in 2010. Winning the Pf Award had a positive impact on my career but not in a way I’d anticipated. At that time, I was preparing to move to the US and because the Pf Awards are a benchmark and demonstrate my capabilities, I thought winning would help me secure a position in the US job market.

However, preparing for a strong submission forced me to dissect and re-examine my skills and achievements to distil the key success factors. I also searched out what the judges determined worthy of winning. This led me to realise that sustainable sales growth comes as a result of strategic alignment between NHS, patients and the brand agendas. This changed the way I approached the Pf Awards Assessment Day, and fundamentally changed the way I managed accounts from that day onward. I developed a more effective commercial strategy for Scotland that saved NHS Scotland significant sums of money and rapidly tripled my employer’s brand market share.

At the Pf Awards Assessment Day everyone was given the same case study to solve based on NHS England. Although I had limited knowledge of England in 2015, I applied common sense and basic principles to assess the accounts and make recommendations. It taught me that common sense and the fundamentals of account management work well even if you don’t know the market in detail.

Winning the Pf Award gave me confidence to apply these principles and the belief that I needed to get out of my comfort zone and take on new challenges.

What’s it like being a Pf Awards’ independent judge? Speaking to Melanie Hamer at the Pf Awards Winners Club I mentioned the value I’d gained from Pf. I offered my support and she invited me to join the judging panel.

I think Melanie is doing a fantastic job and it’s important we support her work.

As a Pf Awards judge I enjoy meeting candidates at the Pf Awards Assessment Day. They are top performers and have excelled in their jobs to get to this stage.

It is a rich experience to see and hear the candidates’ initiatives and the creative ways they approach their challenges.

I am inspired by their fresh perspective.

Standards are increasing and it can be very difficult to select only one winner.

There is always healthy competition and genuine camaraderie.

What’s the best career advice you were given? To focus on adding value, especially when you are busy. Consider the question ‘Am I just busy? Or am I adding value?’ seriously. The answer can drive you to abandon things that don’t add value and focus on what really matters.

What motivates you in work and life?

Interacting with people and intense curiosity in finding creative solutions to problems are common motivators for me.

The belief that a solution is always within reach and the sense of achievement from coming up with a practical solution that is meaningful energises and drives me.

What does the future hold? I love what I do, I love the team I work with.

I anticipate our team will grow and may expand into America. Right now, I am developing a Software as a Solution (SaaP) to address an unmet need and add value to individuals and organisations. It’s very exciting and will increase our client service capability leading to other digital tools.

We are also investing in local Scottish projects that promote and address health and social inequality. We support a charity that repairs donated bikes and provides kit for refugees, giving them a means of transport. They also support women who have never ridden a bike due to religious or social restrictions.

Mehrnaz Campbell is Founding Director of Cheemia. Go to www.cheemia.co.uk and www.linkedin.com/company/cheemia

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FOCUSED It’s essential that pharma professionals have a detailed understanding of their local Integrated Care System (ICS) to best focus their time in the new NHS structure. WORDS BY Scott McKenzie

T

he Primary Care Networks (PCNs) are the bedrock of any ICS; indeed, without a Foundation Trust (FT) and General Practice, engaged via the PCNs, there can be no ICS. This is why some parts of the country have ICSs that are only in the early stages of development, as lead FTs have only recently been agreed.

This is also why ICSs can be at different stages of maturity.

Where ICSs are developing, it’s essential to map the structures and the people leading within these, as well as unearthing those who have influence within the system. This is time well spent and you can do most, if not all, of the research online.

Figure 1. EXAMPLE OF AN INTEGRATED CARE SYSTEM

PRIMARY CARE NETWORK 1

PRIMARY CARE NETWORK 2

SUSTAINABILITY AND TRANSFORMATION PARTNERSHIP

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PRIMARY CARE NETWORK 4

GP FEDERATION

LOCAL MEDICAL COMMITTEE

INTEGRATED CARE PROVIDER

PRIMARY CARE NETWORK 3

INTEGRATED CARE PROVIDER

INTEGRATED CARE PROVIDER

INTEGRATED CARE SYSTEM (COVERS THE WHOLE STP)

INTEGRATED CARE PROVIDER

PROVIDER ALLIANCE

F E AT U R E

The key to the model in figure 1 is that General Practice has come together to form four PCNs. They all work with support from the local GP Federation, which has been in place for almost six years and has a strong track record of delivery. It holds a subcontract from the local hospital for 24-hour ambulatory blood pressure monitoring as well as directly commissioned contracts with the clinical commissioning group for diabetes insulin initiation and titration, ear irrigation, PCN development and 24-, 48- and 72-hour ECG. It also has a track record of working with the pharmaceutical industry to implement projects that alleviate workload pressure and positively impact the workforce. If a project doesn’t deliver either of those it will not be considered.

Each month, the PCN clinical directors and manager meet with the Board of the GP Federation and to that they add the support of the Local Medical Committee. This ensures one strong and coherent voice within the health economy for General Practice. Everything is agreed within that meeting and people then attend the provider alliance, integrated care provider and ICS meetings to represent the views of General Practice.

WHAT DOES THIS MEAN FOR PHARMA?

In this area at least two of your targets are likely to be the GP Federation and well as the PCNs. My suggestion, therefore, is that you take the time to draw the local map for your own ICS. For GP Federations, you are looking for those that are business-ready and have a track record of high quality and consistent delivery over time.

In my experience, they are likely to engage quickly and want to get to delivery. They will see the relationship as two way and work with you, supporting you to support them.

IDENTIFYING GP FEDERATIONS AND PCNS

There is no definitive list of GP Federations so you may need to do some internet searching. Once you have the name of the GP Federation head to Companies House to search for it. The company record will give you some very useful information.

Overview: Here you can establish how long the Federation has been in business, which comes in handy when you move to the second tab.

Filing history: On this tab look for their most recent accounts. These will give you an indication of turnover and income over the last two years (you can go back further if you wish) and show whether it is fully functioning as a business. If the company has been running three or four years and there is no income to speak of, I would move on and find another target.

People: This tab will give you an up-to-date list of the Board of Directors, which provides you with a list of people to speak with.

Lastly, you may want to look at the Federation’s website to see what services they are running and whether they list what they have in development. Doing this prior to making an approach will help to ensure you target the right federations.

IDENTIFYING PCNS

For PCNs, NHS Digital has published Organisation Data Service (ODS) codes for all that exist. In addition to the PCN codes, ODS data will include information on the core partner relationships from practices to PCNs and the relationship between the PCN and a clinical commissioning group.

You can access the details of all 1259 PCNs via the website and can then map them to the local GP Federation. From there you can start to identify who the key people are in the PCNs. You may also then want to map the PCNs to the local GP Federation to see if any people overlap. It is not uncommon to find clinical directors and practice representatives in the PCN also on the Board of Directors of the GP Federation. You can also search for local PCN plans.

Top 5

Takeaways

1

Primary Care Networks are the bedrock of any ICS.

2

Not all areas have established ICSs.

3

Pharma should map the structures of ICSs and the people leading within these.

4

Identify GP Federations that are business-ready and have a good track record.

5

Projects must alleviate workload pressure and positively impact the workforce.

M AG A ZI N E | J U N E 2020 | 2 5

F E AT U R E

Each area of the country has parts of the system that are at differing levels of maturity and business-readiness, and you need to do your homework to establish that in the areas in which you work to ensure that you approach and engage with the right people

WHO IS MY CUSTOMER?

CONSIDERATIONS

When it comes to the right customer you have to identify and access healthcare professionals who will be interested in working with you; please don’t assume that this will be everyone.

Develop your own criteria to filter them. This might include identifying those who are business ready with a track record of developing and implementing value added projects. When working with them you then focus on developing key opinion leaders who will advocate the project for you. That process creates a pathway and service redesign, which embeds your product and service within it and makes the programme completely replicable. And don’t forget your project should alleviate workload pressure and positively impact the workforce, too.

By way of example, as leaders of PCNs, clinical directors may be the most obvious people to approach when looking to engage with your local PCN, but they have limited time and a significant volume of work, responsibilities and tasks. Consequently, even when they are willing, you are unlikely to find they have the time to engage with you.

I strongly advise you to establish who represents the PCN constituent practices instead. Where there is a GP Federation, identify who sits of the Board of Directors. Both groups may make for good targets for you.

As mentioned earlier, check if the PCN and/or GP Federation are business-ready. Again, do they have a track record of project and service delivery and examples you can point to that suggest they will engage? Have you completed your research to build a clear picture of why this is the right group to engage with?

Another thing to bear in mind is that, COVID-19 apart, the majority of PCNs contain practices who have not had to work together in this way previously and are getting to grips with their own internal relationships. Also consider that many ICSs are in the process of forming and have only just got into the starting blocks. In a nutshell, each area of the country has parts of the system that are at differing levels of maturity and business-readiness. Do your homework to ensure that you approach and engage with the right people. If you do that well, I am confident you will watch your projects come to life.

Scott McKenzie is an Independent Management Consultant, working inside the NHS. He specialises in enabling the pharmaceutical, medtech and medical devices industries to deliver remarkable projects with the NHS. Go to www.scottmckenzieconsultancy.co.uk

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Useful websites Companies House https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk NHS Digital website https://tinyurl.com/ybj6wk8w

A DV ERTO R I A L

CHANGING THE RULES OF A MARKET The bigger questions that winning brands ask.

T

WORDS BY

Nick Williams

he global health emergency that we are all a part of right now is an example of how conventions can be powerfully re-shaped, originating new trends that will drive market behaviour across multiple markets and in a way that some will respond to with real success. Multiple shifts will be at play. Examples may be a drive towards virtual connectivity, and towards a greater sense of community and belonging.

The way that markets behave, the conventions they operate with and environment they create for businesses and products to win or lose within are always changing. Winning brands either respond fastest, with greater conviction or even better, shape these changes themselves.

This is critical because the ‘status quo’ is usually only good for market incumbents.

The rule of three for markets put forward by the Boston Consulting Group describes the 40:20:10 paradigm. There is only really room for three significant entrants in any market and they tend to achieve respective shares in these ratios. So, if your brand is third or later to market in a given class, with limited functional difference then it would be extraordinary to expect anything better than 10% peak share.

New pharmaceutical products entering established markets always start on the back foot; product utility is largely being defined by customers and competitors against the prevailing market attributes, not by you and often not against the attributes you’d prefer.

The playing field will not be easy to win on.

Winning brands redefine the playing field; change the rules and ask the bigger questions in three areas:

1. UNDISCOVERED PRODUCT VALUE

WHAT’S POSSIBLE

• Which attribute(s) of the treatment

“Winning brands redefine the playing field; change the rules and ask the bigger questions”

The vehicles needed to be developed alongside these allies may vary but their application requires thought and activity on multiple fronts to encourage, enable and engage with sufficient emphasis to catalyse a change in behaviour.

The competitive battle in the erectile dysfunction market was dominated by a marketing heavyweight. The manufacturer defined the most important attribute for treatment selection as efficacy or strength of the effect on the patient. A market was born, and a little blue pill took it by storm.

Most GPs were aware and generally willing to prescribe. This was the landscape as new oral competitive entrants arrived.

The tempting approach may have been to explain why slight compound differences of a similar pill could provide better efficacy.

But those competing for market share realised they would be falling into the leader’s trap – raising the attribute that fuelled their growth without convincingly bettering performance against it. No amount of promotional firepower would unseat the leader. Instead of taking a confrontational position, the competitor recognised that the strength of their molecule lay in duration of action, albeit not yet valued in this way.

With the help of experts and patients’ partners they shifted the perspective from purely practical to practical and emotional.

From a situation where intimacy seemed to need to be ‘planned and organised’ to one where spontaneity and ‘normal romance’ was possible. The challenger ended this battle with the dominant UK market share.

Triducive has a wealth of experience of supporting healthcare brands to shift the field and increase their relevance with wider clinical audiences, commissioners and policy-makers – it takes structure, discipline and skilful engagement… but is achievable and arguably is the most effective way to differentiate, demonstrate value and win.

To find out more about market shaping, sign-up to the Pf Webinar Shaping healthcare markets to serve real brand purpose Wednesday 8 July | 12:30pm www.webinars.pharmafield.co.uk

does the market risk overlooking that could improve clinical outcomes or utility?

• Which patients may be missing out on benefits that the new treatment can specifically provide?

• What changes could the treatment enable to the way the wider pathway delivers outcomes and efficiency?

2. POLICY (& BEHAVIOUR) LIMITATIONS

• Which stakeholder group(s) would

need to change their behaviour and conventions for value to be discovered?

• What kind of policy already exists in this market (formal treatment guidelines, commissioning policy, informal conventions of stakeholder groups)?

• What are these missing and who is losing out because of this?

• What new policy/guidance/convention could improve treatment utility, outcomes, system use or costs?

3. EXPERT BELIEF

Making behaviour change happen alone is virtually impossible; a congregation of voices is needed. Clinical experts are often the main source but other stakeholder groups (such as payers), professional bodies or patient/carer groups may also be key.

• Who believes in our cause and will be willing to help change the game?

• What will the package of critical activities be that will prove sufficient to break an existing habit and start a new one?

M AG A ZI N E | J U N E 2020 | 27

It’s all in the mindset The importance of mindset and company culture to enable digital transformation. WORDS BY David Reilly

A

s the COVID-19 pandemic shines a spotlight on the pharmaceutical sector’s ability to develop potential vaccines and new treatments at speed, what are the challenges of digital transformation in the industry? Is there a business case for a revolutionary shift in culture, business models and mindset to enable digital transformation to happen?

It is useful, when evaluating digital transformation, to understand the current maturity of digitalisation.

McKinsey has a proprietary assessment tool for diagnosing a company’s digital maturity

called the ‘Digital Quotient’ (DQ).

This research evaluated how 100 digital leaders perform across 18 common practices spanning four dimensions: • strategy • capabilities • organisation and • culture across 200 countries.

The pharma industry scored 27 against an average of 33, lagging behind highly regulated industries such as banking (32) and insurance (31).

Given the enormous investment in new technologies, digital and agile training and appointments of Chief Digital Officers,why is pharma struggling to adapt to a digital world?

UNDERSTAND COMPLEXITY AND REGULATION

The first challenge is understanding the unique complexity of industry. Starting with the basic business of research and development, the manufacturing, distribution and logistics, legal, regulatory, corporate governance, financial, business management and, of course, sales and

marketing, this complexity can place an immediate destabilising block into any well-intentioned transformation project as each stage needs regulatory approval.

One solution is to integrate digital approval at every stage to mitigate delay. This approach is adopted by Bayer, as Sam Pinner, Multi-Channel Marketing Lead, explained: “We identified regulation as having a massive bearing with any digital transformation project, so we have addressed this by embedding a medic at the beginning of the digital process to ensure speedy sign off. This has really sped up the approval process.”

Medical affairs teams are an increasingly critical part in digitalisation and speeding up approval, consider whether you are leveraging their full potential across all stages.

70-80 49

Figure 1. DIGITAL MATURITY BY INDUSTRY

36

37

42

GLOBAL AVERAGE

31 22

27

Public Sector

Pharma

Insurance

32

Banking

Media/Entertainment

Telecom

Source: Closing the digital gap in pharma, Mckinsey.

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Retail

Travel/Hospitality

Digital Leaders

F E AT U R E

CREATING THE RIGHT CULTURE

Another key contributor is cultural agility.

Every company has its own culture; unwritten rules, norms, history and values that influence people in its own unique way.

The often-repeated adage ‘culture eats strategy for breakfast’ is incredibly relevant to pharma. Change managers can design a digital transformation effort to the tee, but if the organisation doesn’t possess the right environment and culture to nurture it, then the effort can be lost.

Some commentators argue that culturally pharma and healthcare are relatively resistant to change due to an historic tendency to subscribe to evidence-based reasoning. For example, if they cannot see exactly how a new tool or process will help them take better care of patients, they might believe it’s not worth implementing.

This is where agile working and cultivating adaptable mindsets is so important. This is a view endorsed by Digital Strategist Tinkara Pavlovcic Kapitanovic: “Agile and agile thinking across the company is the most important skill for digitalisation to happen.”

Another challenge is reframing staff mindsets to get used to more frequent levels of uncertainty. The current pandemic will provide invaluable lessons and pharma leaders must prepare for future major events like COVID-19 while still adapting, innovating and improving.

PEOPLE

Related to culture is people. Too often the emphasis with digital transformation can default to conversations around new technology, automation and processes.

Perhaps the greatest challenge of any transformation project is the people.

Transformation requires teams to come out of their siloed mode of operations, collaborate, and trust each other to deliver on their commitments. My experience of designing digital disruption programmes is shaped around embedding agile staff mindsets at incremental stages before examining technical solutions. Many companies in regulated industries over-engineer the technical part of digitalisation, squeezing out all the uncertainty. However, empowering individuals to manage uncertainty is an essential ingredient of digital transformation.

TRAINING AS A KEY PART OF TRANSFORMATION

Supporting training and promoting an ‘always-be-learning’ mindset must be embedded into the change aspect of any transformation project. A proper training programme offers an opportunity to shape the minds of key stakeholders and provides the right framework to engender speed whilst helping to smooth over roadblocks.

Bayer’s Sam Pinner supports the importance of constant training: “We have definitely experienced and observed changes in people’s mindset and approach to digital across the business as a result of training, and the digital team is now far more agile and collaborative.” This takes time and leaders should allow those who will be using the tool to become accustomed to using it.

Gaurav Sanganee, Customer Excellence Manager from Boehringer Ingelheim, recommends small proof of concept tests for learning and progressing larger digital transformation projects. “An agile learning mindset is important to drive success.

Learning through small test and learn scenarios is the way forward in driving a digital transformation mindset, as small wins start to add up and drive momentum.

While having something as tangible as a clear and concise ‘lessons learned’ log post, project implementation can also help to share collective experiences with the wider group and is something worth adopting from industries such as aviation and the armed forces.”

In pharma, successful digital transformation projects are less about technology and more about cultural shift and transforming staff mindsets. When we emerge out of the COVID-19 pandemic, it will be leadership’s primary role to foster the right culture to extract the full benefit of successful digital transformation.

David Reilly is Managing Director of Let’s Learn Digital, educating and inspiring business in digital and emerging technologies. Go to www.letslearndigital.com/ corporate-innovation Source: McKinsey & Company, Closing the digital gap in pharma https://tinyurl.com/yasfxy55 Tinkara Pavlovcic Kapitanovic’s comment is given as her personal opinion and does not necessarily reflect the views of her employer.

As we emerge out of the COVID-19 pandemic, it will be the primary role of pharma leadership to foster the right culture for individuals and teams to extract the full benefit of successful digital transformation in the future

Top 5 takeaways 1 Start with defining and understanding the traditional roadblocks of digital transformation in your organisation and include medical affairs in the process at the right stage.

2 Assemble the right leadership team to define your cultural imperatives.

3 Communicate your cultural imperatives frequently and clearly.

4 Focus on people, agility and changing the mindsets of your staff across all departments.

5 Embed training to support the process and use it to support an ‘always-belearning’ mindset.

M AG A ZI N E | J U N E 2020 | 2 9

COMPLEX AND CHALLENGING:

UNLOCKING MOTOR NEURONE DISEASE

3 0 | P H A R M A FI EL D.CO.U K

THERAPY

KEY MND STATS

MND IS MOST COMMON IN THE OVER

50s SIX PEOPLE

Motor neurone disease is a complex condition making the search for treatments a challenge, but work is ongoing to improve people’s lives.

otor neurone disease (MND) refers to a collection of neurodegenerative conditions affecting the nerves (motor neurones) in the brain and spinal cord which control muscles and movement. By interrupting the nerves’ signals, muscles can weaken, become stiff or begin to degenerate.

This can affect the way people move, eat, drink, breathe and behave. MND can also cause a cognitive change when it affects the areas of the brain involved in thinking, language, behaviour and personality.

MND is a life-limiting condition and unfortunately, there is no cure. Each person who lives with MND is likely to experience different symptoms at different times, and the condition can progress at different rates.

As the diseases progresses, there are ways to manage and alleviate symptoms to maintain the best possible quality of life.

MND AFFECTS

5000 UK ADULTS AT ANY ONE TIME.

WORDS BY Emma Morriss

M

ARE DIAGNOSED EVERY DAY.

A number of treatments are now in Phase 3 clinical trials and interim results of these treatments appear very promising

CLASSIFYING MND

The most common form of MND is amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).

ALS causes weakness and wasting in the limbs, muscle stiffness and cramps.

Bulbar onset MND or Progressive bulbar palsy (PBP) affects fewer people than ALS and predominantly affects the muscles of the face, throat and tongue.

Progressive muscular atrophy (PMA) is a rare form of MND. It commonly starts in the arms or legs and may cause twitching, muscle weakness or wasting.

It may affect only one area of the body for some time before progressing.

Primary lateral sclerosis (PLS) is another rare form of MND, mainly causing weakness in the lower limbs, although some people may experience clumsiness in the hands or speech problems.

1/3 OF PEOPLE DIE WITHIN ONE YEAR OF DIAGNOSIS. MORE THAN HALF DIE WITHIN

TWO YEARS OF DIAGNOSIS.

1:300 THERE’S A

RISK OF GETTING MND IN A LIFETIME.

Source: Motor Neurone Disease Association

M AG A ZI N E | J U N E 2020 | 31

THERAPY

TESTING FOR MND

There is currently no diagnostic test for MND. It is generally diagnosed by ruling out other similar diseases. MND Association is working towards the identification of biomarkers that are important for earlier diagnosis and measuring the progression of MND in clinical trials. Several potential candidates have been identified and work is ongoing to confirm their specificity.

MANAGING SYMPTOMS

According to the MND Association, Riluzole is currently the only drug licensed for treating MND in the UK. It is recommended by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) for the treatment of individuals with ALS. According to the NICE guideline on MND [NG42], the first-line pharmacological treatment for muscle cramps is quinine.

Where this is not effective, not tolerated or is contraindicated, baclofen can be considered as second‑line treatment, followed by tizanidine, dantrolene or gabapentin. NICE also suggests baclofen, tizanidine, dantrolene or gabapentin for muscle stiffness, spasticity or increased tone in people with MND. NICE guidance also recommends exercise to maintain joint range of movement; prevent contractures; reduce stiffness and discomfort, and optimise function and quality of life. This should be tailored to the individual’s needs, preferences, ability and level of function.

MND RESEARCH

MND research is at the forefront of neurology research. As of 31 December 2019, the MND Association of England, Wales and Northern Ireland funds around £14m of research across 83 grants involving about 170 researchers.

Research is currently focused on improving the standards of care, understanding the biology of the disease, seeking treatments and ultimately a cure.

MND Association’s care research projects have, and continue to, not only increase the life expectancy of people with MND but also increase the quality of life for people with MND, their families and carers. The Association also actively campaigns for the voices of people with and affected by MND to be heard by policymakers to raise awareness of people’s needs and enable access to services.

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MND Association says that the key to defeating MND lies in fostering strong collaboration between leading researchers around the world and sharing new understanding of the disease as rapidly as possible.

TREATING MND

There is no effective treatment for MND due to the complex biology of the nervous system and its very specialised cells.

It is necessary to understand why motor neurones die in disease and researchers are only just beginning to discover the way in which cells and their processes are co-ordinated in healthy individuals.

Until very recently, it has been incredibly difficult to visualise in real time the biology occurring in cells within the brain and spinal cord. However, new highly technical, cutting edge research techniques now enable MND research scientists to see what happens in the body of a person with MND. The complexity of the disease and difficulty of targeting the cells affected in MND has made finding treatments a challenge. However, the rate of discovery is accelerating, and several potential treatments are in development.

MND CLINICAL TRIALS

A number of treatments are now in Phase 3 clinical trials and interim results of these treatments appear very promising. Although some of these won’t offer a cure, they may stop or slow progression in some people with MND. Genetic therapies are also emerging that may be useful for subsets of patients with particular identified genetic forms of MND. There is a growing path from genetic discoveries to the development of gene focused therapies, so research is moving forward in this field.

In January 2020, MND-SMART, a new generation of clinical trial in which multiple treatments are evaluated simultaneously, was launched. Although currently paused due to COVID-19, MND-SMART is led by a team of researchers based in Edinburgh and will test potential new treatments for MND as well as looking at whether existing treatments for other conditions could have some benefit. MND-SMART will allow more than one treatment to be tested against a shared placebo group so that patients have a higher likelihood of receiving an active treatment.

GENEROSITY, SUPPORT & ASSISTANCE FOR ANDY

A

ndy Laird, 64, was diagnosed with MND in July 2019. Andy lives in Warwick with his wife, Ann, and was a Methodist Minister before retiring in September 2018.

“Shortly after retiring, I started seeing some weakness in my left hand and I visited my GP to find out what was causing it. I started having various tests and it was suggested all along my problem was caused by vertebrae in my neck pressing on my spinal column.

My diagnosis of MND came out of the blue.

My wife and I sat in a consultant’s office expecting to hear about imminent surgery to cure my weakness, and he instead asked us what we knew about MND. We realised we knew only that Stephen Hawking had died from it.

One year on from my diagnosis, I have problems with both hands in that I can no longer pinch between thumb and forefinger so I can’t do buttons or zips easily or open a packet of biscuits. I can still grip the steering wheel tight though. I’m also finding it more and more difficult to walk but have no breathing, swallowing or speaking problems yet.

I recently attempted my own version of a triathlon to fundraise for the MND Association who have given me fantastic support. On April Fool’s Day (when else?!) I walked 500 steps in my garden, cycled 1km on my exercise bike and the swim consisted of a shower at the end! It was really tough for me and I couldn’t have done it without the support of my family and friends.

Their incredible generosity has meant I’ve raised more than £16,000 for the MND Association so far. My life would be harder without their support and practical help.

The Association has also helped me bank my voice for when my MND progresses and I am no longer able to speak. This is a tremendous gift from the Association so that I’ll still sound like me when I speak through a tablet – again which the Association will supply.”

For more information about MND and the MND Association go to www.mndassociation.org

Sources: Motor Neurone Disease Association www.mndassociation.org | Guidance on the use of Riluzole (Rilutek) for the treatment of Motor Neurone Disease. Technology appraisal guidance [TA20] https://tinyurl.com/y7x4lcpr Motor neurone disease: assessment and management – NICE guideline [NG42] https://tinyurl.com/ycvvt83e MND-SMART, Clinical Trials for MND www.mnd-smart.org

Ashfield

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Movers &Shakers WHO’S GOING WHERE AND WHY THEY’RE GOING THERE. WORDS BY

Hannah Alderton

AGENCY

Danny Walsh

AGENCY

Dr Kim Champion

PHARMA

AGENCY

Anders Gaarsdal Holst & Birgitte Vestbjerg

Dr Victoria Marsh

Acesion Pharma has recruited Anders Gaarsdal Holst as its Chief Medical Officer to succeed Nils Edvardsson. Birgitte Vestbjerg joins the company as Director Clinical Operations. Birgitte has led and run international clinical studies and operations for both small and large companies for over 20 years.

Pharmaceutical and biotech product development consultancy Boyds has appointed Dr Victoria Marsh as Director of Regulatory Affairs.

3 4 | P H A R M A FI EL D.CO.U K

Dr Kim Champion has also joined the Regulatory Affairs team at Boyds. Kim is the consultancy’s new Regulatory Affairs Manager.

Danny Walsh has started with CHASE as Executive Solutions Lead. He will lead their Executive and Marketing recruitment division. After successfully running his own pharma logistics/supply chain business, Danny has worked in the pharmaceutical recruitment and CSO sector since 2007 so brings with him a wealth of experience and knowledge.

PHARMA

Aviv Regev Aviv Regev joins Roche as Head of Genentech Research and Early Development (gRED) as well as a member of the enlarged Corporate Executive Committee. Aviv is also a member of the Executive Leadership Team of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Professor of Biology at MIT and Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

MOVERS & SHAKERS

PHARMA

Roland Wandeler MorphoSys has appointed Roland Wandeler, PhD, as Chief Commercial Officer. Roland will be responsible for all commercialisation activities worldwide. He has more than 15 years’ commercial leadership and general management experience in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industry holding positions at Amgen, Inc, including General Manager Germany and General Manager Spain & Portugal.

PHARMA

Dr David Leppert GeNeuro has appointed Dr David Leppert, MD and Professor of Neurology, as Chief Medical Officer. David is an expert in the PHARMA worldwide neurology community, working Jonathan for over 20 years in Freve clinical development, Galecto has announced successfully leading the appointment of the development Jonathan Freve, of treatments for CPA, as its Chief multiple sclerosis at Financial Officer.

Roche, and leading Jon joins Galecto the development of from Spring Bank all neurology clinical Pharmaceuticals. trials at Novartis.

PHARMA

Doina Ionescu Doina Ionescu has been appointed as Managing Director and General Manager for the Merck Healthcare business in the UK and ROI. The internal move comes as former General Manager, Liz Henderson takes on a new role as Merck’s Regional Vice President of APAC region.

M AG A ZI N E | J U N E 2020 | 35

CAREERS

JOB SEEKING DURING COVID-19 Pf asked industry leading recruiters for their top tips for job seeking during COVID-19. WORDS BY Emma Morriss

W

hatever your reason for job seeking, it’s useful to know whether pharma is recruiting during COVID-19. “Many recruitment processes are being placed on hold, or even stopped altogether,” explained Andy Boyd, Recruitment Consultant at Evolve.

“However, other organisations are being proactive and innovative to maintain ongoing recruitment needs.”

This is echoed by Huw Nicholas, Recruitment Lead at CHASE. They’ve experienced a mixed response at this difficult time: “This is an incredibly challenging time for clients and candidates as both try to navigate their way through the unique challenges that COVID-19 has created.

“Whilst many of our clients have decided to pause recruitment, others have taken into account that business will continue and have embraced the concept of making offers after a completely virtual process.”

And like the rest of us, recruiters are embracing the world of remote working and also championing virtual interviewing.

Marie Entwistle, Business Unit Manager: Pharmaceuticals at Star said: “Working days remain the same in the sense that we’re here to support our candidates and clients, but we are having to adapt and encourage others to adapt with us – namely with online interviews.”

VIRTUAL INTERVIEWING

Virtual interviewing has become an integral part of the recruitment process but not all organisations embraced it before now.

Marie explained: “This is something that several of our clients are already very used to, while for others more traditional interview methods have been historically preferred.”

3 6 | P H A R M A FI EL D.CO.U K

However, in the current climate it enables companies to move quickly to fill key vacancies according to Huw: “It’s given confidence to organisations who want to stay ‘ahead of the curve’ when it comes to attracting staff. It also allows them to take advantage of the relative lack of competition for candidates who are actively seeking roles whilst providing huge benefits in terms of reduced time to hire.”

ADVICE FOR CANDIDATES

Job seeking may feel different to the norm, but Andy suggests making the most of the time to build on skills and implement them.

“Looking for new jobs can feel daunting but use this time to your advantage and tailor your job searching skills. Do the things you were unable to make time for in the past, such as re-writing/updating your CV, practising competency-based interview questions and updating yourself on the changes within the NHS, and be patient. When the job market hopefully returns to normal, you’ll be in a better position to secure your ideal new job.”

Marie added: “Stick with it. There are some fantastic positions out there and companies are still hiring, so spend some time on getting your CV right, do your research and go for it.”

And don’t let things get you down, Huw advocates the importance of staying positive and embracing the ‘new normal’ of virtual recruiting.

What’s clear is that pharma recruiters are on hand to guide you through job seeking during COVID-19 and will support you to perform your best in virtual interviews to land that next dream job. Go to www.chasepeople.com, www.evolvecouk.com, www.starmedical.co.uk

Tips for virtual interviewing 1 Consider what you wear – look professional.

2 Pick the best location, what’s your background?

3 Check the camera angle.

4 Make sure you won’t be interrupted.

5 Sit up straight.

6 Power up and check your internet connection at least 10 minutes in advance.

7 Don’t interrupt or talk over the interviewer.

8 Be confident, concise and professional.

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