Overcoming Non-Price Barriers to Market Access

Life science companies have long offered programs that help patients with financial challenges gain and maintain access to their medicines. Yet, pricing is not the only barrier between patients and the treatments they need. Increasingly, companies are challenged to help their patients overcome various non-price barriers.

A key obstacle for many patients is transportation. Julian Ritchey, Sanofi's Head of US Vaccine Public Affairs and Patient Advocacy, reminded the audience that vaccination campaigns would fail unless you can deliver a person to the syringe or the syringe to a person. Imran Cronk, CEO of healthcare transport solution Ride Health, concurred and added that transport is a challenge from the clinical trial stage, as vaccine developers realized during Operation Warp Speed and the COVID-19 pandemic.

Jittrakul Prinnapat, VP of Global Market Access & Analytics at Johnson & Johnson (J&J), highlighted her company’s investment in drone technology to deliver medicines in Uganda, where ground transport can be unreliable. J&J ensured that patients with HIV and other chronic diseases could retain access to their medicines even when delivery by road was impossible.

Other non-price barriers such as vaccine disinformation or limited knowledge of available healthcare options could be tackled by reaching out to hyper-local influencers, including leaders in churches, synagogues, and mosques. The panelists encouraged life science companies to invest in listening to patients, patient advocacy organizations, and local influencers that can help identify non-price barriers and creative strategies to overcome them.