Global pharmaceutical launches: ideal start for market access activities should be at least 18 months ahead of launch

Payer relationship activities are especially important to start early, according to Cutting Edge Information.

The report, Managing Market Access Launch Activities: Benchmarking Product Commercialization and Cross-Functional Coordination, examines how companies are managing products in the launch window and the pre-launch preparations necessary for a successful product launch. On average, market access teams would ideally prefer to start conducting products support activities 18.7 months before launch, compared with 14.1 months currently.

"Getting market access teams involved earlier allows them to begin laying the groundwork for a successful launch," said Jacob Presson, senior analyst at Cutting Edge Information. "Our research has found that allowing more pre-launch time for market access teams to build effective value cases can make the difference in today's price-sensitive pharmaceutical market." Payer relationship management is currently only entering market access teams' purview around 4.4 months before launch, on average. The study's data show that ideally these activities would begin at least 10 months before launch. Health economics and outcomes research (HEOR) is a particularly important area to begin work well before launch.

"For health economics in particular, a longer lead-in period allows a greater flexibility that adding money in the form of higher budgets simply cannot buy," Presson said. "Clinical studies cannot be rushed and so more time before launch allows teams to collect more robust data to support a new product."

Managing Market Access Launch Activities: Benchmarking Product Commercialization and Cross-Functional Coordination analyses market access teams before and during the crucial launch window, including spending, staffing, and internal coordination.