GP Carlo

Good Friday, I left Allergan and embarked on my first contract as a consultant.

I wanted to test my agility and had been advised that this could be a fruitful path to explore. Sure I had gone into many new teams and excelled quickly but most of those moves had been within GSK. Naively, perhaps, I hadn’t appreciated the other learning opportunities that you gain as a consultant as I signed my first contract (more later).

So, Good Friday I left Allergan and Easter Monday, I joined Alexion Pharmaceuticals.

The world of Orphan Drugs A new culture New management And a very new role – a transformation project Jane Griffiths (global head for Actelion said it really well in her article on LinkedIn)

“Rare diseases are different. I’ve seen for myself that the challenges that exist in a rare disease like PH go well beyond the need for identifying new therapies or finding a cure. There are particular challenges in finding patients to join clinical trials, and there is even more pressure to collect, report and publish real world data to help meet the evidence needs of payers, regulators, health technology assessment bodies (HTAs), and healthcare providers. With so few centres of excellence, and inevitably relatively small numbers of patients, it’s also tricky to enable knowledge sharing and collaboration between HCPs across a country, never mind at a global scale. All that plus patients often feel isolated, crippled by the financial burden of their illness and worried that, because their numbers are small, their voices matter less.” Jane says it very eloquently. I would add:

The dynamics of thinking patients in low 'n' numbers creates a very different way of working Understanding the patient journey becomes ever more critical Typical marketing discipline may not work and needs to be adapted Diagnosis and educating potential patient touch points could be fertile ground or a distraction I am a marketing purist and I wonder if orphan and rare disease companies may be not optimising one of their advantages.

Traditional pharma companies work hard to build a brand identity, essence, personality and attempt to create more than a rational connection to their brand. This works sometimes but is challenged by the price pressures post patent and, simply, how little time they have to embed those more intangible properties of the brand. Some of the biggest brands, on the high street, can claim up to 50% of their equity in the brand-image-essence-logo etc, but pharma rarely gets even a fraction of that. I wonder, have these rare/orphan drug companies missed a trick?

I remember back to my earlier days in GSK when I was Marketing Excellence Director: the thinking then was that one of the challenges that pharmaceuticals had was their life span was relatively short so it was difficult to build that brand equity. Rare/ Orphan drugs may never face competition (or it may take many more years than mainstream pharma) – I wonder if this gives companies an opportunity to build a stronger brand (or removes the need to do so)?

Leadership

And back to Alexion… I saw just how much can be accomplished with a transparent and inspirational leader. I have been impressed with the CEO, CCO but most by the EMEAC President, Camilla- her vision, energy and drive is contagious.

I had the pleasure of leading a number of transformation teams across a variety of topics and saw how much can be accomplished when you have the pleasure of working with great individuals who want to make a difference.

I encountered working styles that I hadn’t (surprisingly) encountered before and learned.

In Alexion, they use “5 voices” to reflect personality types - another of many, I hear you say, but I have found this one particularly helpful, especially as the organisation frequently thinks about their people interactions based on it... it makes me wonder if 5

voices is particularly insightful for our business or if it was just the discipline of use that differs across organisations.

This 8 months has been one great learning experience.

Transformation – sure Commercial / Marketing discipline – of course Orphan drugs, management styles - the hidden gem of a surprise Onto the next (learning) assignment.

GP Carlo

London Area, United Kingdom 8K followers 500+ connections

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Business Consulting, Healthcare Consulting, Management Consulting, Marketing Consulting, Marketing Strategy, and Strategic Planning

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Queen's University Belfast

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