	The pull and tug over biosimilar prescribing and marketing continues to be contentious and raise tricky regulatory issues. Biosimilar makers are concerned about developments they see as undermining public confidence in licensed follow-ons and welcome promised stepped-up scrutiny from FDA. At the same time,

 marketers of these competitive therapies are upset over FDA’s recent decision to drop an earlier proposal for adding suffixes retroactively to existing biotech therapies so that they carry the same extra identifiers as biosimilars. The result is that innovator products and biosimilars will have different names, a situation that follow-on marketers fear will discourage prescribing and switching to new, competitive therapies. 

	This revised “naming convention” for biosimilars and reference products, as 

 last month by outgoing commissioner Scott Gottlieb, pulls back from an earlier proposed shift to a new naming system for both biosimilars and their reference products. Now FDA finds that its January 2017 draft guidance would be costly and confusing to implement, while maintaining different identifiers would facilitate accurate post-approval safety monitoring and reporting. Consequently, FDA now proposes that new biosimilars will have names with added suffixes, which will make them different from approved originator products. This situation may lead prescribers and patients to question whether new follow-on products are really the same as innovator therapies.

	Going forward, though, FDA will require a distinct suffix for both biosimilars and for new biological products, eventually leading to similar names and suffixes for the two categories. Meanwhile, the current approach, as outlined in updated 

, appears to favor innovators. Competitors maintain that names should be the same to emphasize that innovator and biosimilar products provide the same benefits 

and risks, and that patients can be switched from one to the other without harm. 

	Gottlieb also looked ahead to important regulatory changes in March 2020, when the biosimilar pathway will apply to certain biotech products currently regulated as drugs, such as insulin. That transition will open the door to biosimilar versions of these therapies, an important development in the continuing debate over the affordability of insulin and other long-standing therapies. 

	In his statement on the revised biologic naming policy, Gottlieb maintained that the new naming convention should not create a barrier to biosimilar use. But neither should the drive for competition, he said, limit FDA’s ability to track adverse events to a specific biological product to better ensure patient safety. 

	At the same time, FDA says it will encourage biosimilar prescribing by challenging false and misleading statements by innovators that imply differences in the safety and efficacy of biosimilars compared to reference products. Last August, Pfizer filed a petition with FDA calling for agency guidance to clarify how certain innovator communications about reference products and biosimilars may be unlawful. FDA seeks to “stop any false or misleading promotion about biosimilars,” said FDA chief of staff Lauren Silvis at the DIA Advertising and Promotion conference in February. Silvis 

 that agency leaders have “serious concerns” about statements from brands that compare biological reference products and biosimilars in ways designed to “undermine public confidence” in licensed biosimilars and, therefore, “deter competition.” 

	The agency will take action, Silvis said, to ensure that healthcare providers and patients receive “useful information” about these products that offer safe, effective, and more affordable treatment options. 

	Charges about misleading innovator statements also surfaced at recent Congressional hearings on drug pricing and marketing. Legislators generally support biosimilar development and approval as a way to increase competition to reduce treatment costs to patients and share concerns about misleading information and “patent thickets” designed to delay marketing of follow-on products. At a hearing before the Senate Finance Committee in February, Merck & Co. and Pfizer CEOs expressed frustration over difficulties in penetrating the market for inflammatory disease therapy Remicade (infliximab), blaming their limited sales on incentives offered to health plans and pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) by Remicade maker Johnson & Johnson’s Janssen unit to favor the originator product on formularies and to encourage Medicare Part B reimbursement.

	Pfizer’s petition cites brands for suggesting differences between biosimilars and reference products and claiming that even “highly similar” treatments may elicit different reactions in patients. Of particular concern to biosimilar marketers is use of the term “non-medical switching” by innovators to imply that prescribing a biosimilar may not be safe or justified by clinical evidence, even for interchangeables. The Association for Accessible Medicines (AAM) and its Biosimilars Council agree that FDA should clarify that such misleading language is inappropriate, and that patients should not have to “fail first” on a reference product in order to switch to a biosimilar. 

	A related request is that FDA allow biosimilar marketers to disseminate clinical and other data not included in the approved label, but that is “consistent with” approved labeling, a policy presented in recently finalized FDA guidance. Such an approach fits FDA efforts to be more flexible in how marketers provide information to medical professionals, as seen in recently finalized guidance on manufacturer communication of healthcare economic information to payers and healthcare organizations.

	Other recent guidances offer advice on presenting quantitative efficacy and risk information in direct-to-consumer advertising and on labeling new therapies approved under accelerated approval pathways. 

’s Washington Correspondent. She can be reached at 

Articles

Columns

Follow-on product naming, messaging challenge FDA, industry.

Biosimilars Name Game Remains Thorny Issue

A Force for Change: What perhaps began as a “great accident,” Sharon Callahan has built a career in healthcare marketing that was seemingly destined-defined by an entrepreneurial drive to advance medical communications, and a commitment to breaking down barriers in the workplace and beyond

	From an early age, healthcare was not a career option that Sharon Callahan wanted much to do with. She was exposed to enough of it in her personal life, she felt. While, professionally, her mother was a nurse and her father had a sales background in the pharma industry, her mother was also diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis 

when Callahan was young-and was forced to give up her nursing career. Callahan watched as her mother could no longer function physically as she did before-and be the person she wanted to be-leaving the family to deal with the illness as well. Amid those dueling traumas, Callahan found herself with more responsibilities than a 13-year-old kid should have, helping her father take care of her mother and younger brother.

	Yet, when Callahan later started her professional journey, she landed in medical publishing first-despite wanting to work in advertising (she graduated from Wheaton College in Norton, MA, with a BA in English). “It was almost like a great accident,” Callahan recalls of her first job, a position with SCP Communications. 

	But was it really? From the very beginning of working in healthcare marketing, Callahan found that she and the healthcare and medical communications field fit like two puzzle pieces. “Within days of being there, it just felt like breathing. It felt like something that I knew and that meant something to me,” says the Connecticut native, chosen as the 2019 Woman of the Year by the Healthcare Businesswomen’s Association (HBA).

	Callahan stayed at SCP for 14 years, working as a jack of all trades-on the editorial side of medical publishing, in sales, and in marketing. After the company opened a special project division (Med Ed), Callahan became the unit’s general manager. This put her at the forefront of the then-budding digital healthcare arena, and in 1999, Callahan joined Medsite.com to hone her skills further.

	Medsite.com was like the Amazon.com for doctors, says Callahan. It was an online resource that provided everything from medical reference books to tongue depressors. When the internet bubble burst in 2001, Callahan decided to take the plunge and start her own business, founding The Summit Group.

	She and her partner licensed a technology called Hyper CD. The technology consisted of a computer CD that connected a user to the internet but played video locally. CDs were made up of medical education programs, including series on oncology and Alzheimer’s disease, for example, where users could access live accredited key opinion leaders (KOLs) and experts. The CDs were distributed with medical journals covering specific therapeutic areas. 

	While the technology was a great idea at the time, the emergence of broadband in the early 2000s dented its appeal. “I think who I am personally is somebody who pushes through [challenges],” says Callahan. Despite a continued procession of small failures in trying to stay ahead of technology, Callahan never gave up. She had been a pioneer in creating digital business models that worked; and although they would become outdated amid the natural growth of innovation, she was determined to find ways to anticipate digital needs before they occur-and find sustainable solutions. Her philosophy then and now: “Every breakdown is an opportunity for a breakthrough.” 

	Callahan has faced challenges in her personal life as well. “I am gay. And during my career, even dating back 30 years, I’ve always been very open about it,” she says. “That’s presented some challenges at times.” Additionally, Callahan has two sons, raising them in a climate when that wasn’t very easy to do. She did manage to find a work-life balance, but the “life” part with her family was becoming increasingly more important, and in the late 2000s, Callahan came to a real turning point. 

	In 2008, five years after she sold her company to Grey Healthcare Group, where she then became chief digital strategist and president of interactive agency Summit Grey, Omnicom came calling. The organization, which today includes more than 4,500 healthcare communications specialists, hired Callahan to help agencies and communications companies within Omnicom’s network upgrade what they were doing digitally. She was selected to manage some large pharmaceutical and healthcare client relationships, which required extensive traveling internationally. Finding herself home only four or five days every other week, Callahan stopped and thought hard about her priorities.

	“I realized something had to change, because I always had done the expected in my career and worked really hard,” she says. “But, at this point, I knew there was something really more important than my career-which was my children.”

	Callahan asked her manager if she could work more locally, thinking he would come to an agreement a few months down the road. But, within days, he made Callahan CEO of LLNS (Lyons Lavey Nickel Swift, Inc.), an Omnicom healthcare advertising agency. It was struggling at the time, and the ensuing experience taught Callahan a lot of difficult business lessons. “Everything I thought I knew turned out to probably not be true or right, and I went through a lot of ups and downs with that agency,” she acknowledges.

	Those same lessons, however, proved valuable when Omnicom, in 2016, decided to merge LLNS with Corbett, another one of its agencies, under the TBWA\WorldHealth brand, where Callahan was named CEO. A month earlier, she was named chief client officer of the newly formed Omnicom Health Group, which aligned the portfolio of healthcare communications agencies under a single management structure. She continues in those capacities today. “I think it might be the hardest and best work I’ve done in my entire career,” Callahan told 

	For example, she launched WILDTYPE, a TBWA\WorldHealth company and bespoke agency supporting one of the top immuno-oncology drugs in the world. The product, which Callahan chose not to name, treats various types of cancer with many different lines of therapy. The drug is being studied in clinical trials in combination with other cancer agents, including chemotherapy. “There hasn’t been this kind of complexity in our business before,” says Callahan. 

	The drug is consistently being launched in new indications, with potentially more than 30, she says, thus, “You really need a different kind of agency; it’s not just about creating advertising, it’s much more specialized.” 

	A less product-focused project Callahan is currently directing is around fostering agile working environments-collaborating with her leadership team on ways to manage growth without having to rent more space, move spaces often, or change things too much. NY-based TBWA\WorldHealth has 14 offices in eight countries, including seven in the US, which allows the company to recruit talent strategically, Callahan says. She believes talent and skills should always trump location factors when hiring. “Talent is very scarce right now,” contends Callahan. “We have not, in our industry, manufactured enough talent to deal with all of the very high-science, highly complex drugs.” 

	To that end, in her role at Omnicom, Callahan works with a fellowship program. She is also involved in advancing the concept of staff “returnships,” where TBWA\WorldHealth has instituted a formal program to better enable returning employees to pick up right where they left off.

	Drawing from more than three decades in healthcare marketing, serving in management roles of increasing responsibility and scope, Callahan sums up her leadership philosophy in two words: standards and devotion. She holds colleagues to very high standards, and, in turn, is shamelessly devoted to them. Callahan says the best leaders approach employees with generosity, respect, integrity, and truthfulness. 

	“I’ve worked with many people who I just love and adore, but at some point, if they don’t meet the standards that we need to be excellent, and because I care about them so much, I am very truthful to them,” she says. Callahan believes it is critical to give  people the freedom to either up their game or decide the role isn’t a right fit for them anymore.

	“When you approach people with that kind of understanding of them, they trust you,” she says. “You don’t lose the relationship, even though they may lose or change their job.”

	Whether colleagues, clients, or those in the outside world, Callahan says it is important to remember that we are all human beings first-and not just patients, or mothers, or executives. Those principles have transferred well to her work with the boards she sits on. Driven by the experiences with her own parents (Callahan’s father was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease when she was in her thirties), the executive is involved with Women Against Alzheimer’s and the Arthritis Foundation. Callahan, who remembers as a child struggling to find sources of support or guidance with her mother’s condition, hopes “to help families understand the resources that are available to help them get through it.”

	She says her biggest passion is “giving a voice to people that maybe haven’t had a voice or can’t have a voice.” Callahan currently serves as vice chair (she will be the chair in 2020) for the LGBTQ Victory Fund, the nation’s largest LGBT super political action committee (PAC), which helps LGBTQ candidates get elected at every level of government. For her personally, marriage, Callahan says, never seemed like a possibility, and she felt out of place in society. But that changed last October, when Callahan and her partner, Taryn, were married. 

	Callahan says she was fortunate  to work in digital healthcare marketing during its infancy, and has enjoyed a front-row view of its evolution since. Overall, her predictions for the future of healthcare marketing are rooted in learning how to better anticipate what people will need next. “I hate calling patients ‘patients’ because nobody’s a patient, right? We’re actually human beings, not consumers,” she says.

	Callahan believes, in brand messaging, that the interests of doctors and patients have traditionally been considered separately-and that approach needs to change. When targeting a doctor, we understand a lot about that person, but often don’t look closely at his or her patient population, she explains. 

	“You could have two physicians that are the same age, with the same socioeconomic status, went to the same college, and so on, but they might have vastly different populations of people that they treat; and we 

haven’t really considered that before [for marketing],” says Callahan.

	Conversely, when targeting a patient, brand teams don’t necessarily tap into the importance  of who their doctor is. Understanding that relationship, Callahan says, is critical to creating more effective targeted outreach and “to maximize the impact of what we’re trying to message.” 

	For example, Callahan shares a hypothetical situation, where a lung cancer patient could be on immunotherapy and he or she is willing to try any possible treatment; however, the patient’s doctor may not be forward-thinking or is hesitant to prescribe new lines of treatment-causing what she calls a mismatch. “I think it’s about understanding both sides,” Callahan says, and applying the right custom messages. 

	A future with more marketing customization will be key as treatment advances. For example, Callahan notes that gene and cellular therapy, as well as emerging technologies such as gene editing, require a real need to understand who the patient is and who the doctor is-along with the various impacting factors involved. Those can include patients having to go to specialized hospitals for drug administration, life and job changes, and treatment cost and reimbursement issues.  

	“It’s understanding all of that and making sure everyone has the information they need to make the best decision for that particular patient,” says Callahan. “A cookie-cutter advertisement or message will fall flat.”

’s Associate Editor. She can be reached at 

Managing Editor Michael Christel contributed to this report 

Features

Sharon Callahan, this year’s Healthcare Businesswomen’s Association Woman of the Year, has built a career defined by an entrepreneurial drive to advance medical communications-and a commitment to breaking down barriers in the workplace and beyond.


HBA's Woman of the Year 2019

is our interviews. From long to short, to in-depth on one topic to insights on multiple topics, industry executives regularly share their stories with our contributors and staff

 editors. We do so many, in fact, I sometimes wonder if they get lost in the content cycle that is modern life. In this month’s letter, I highlight some interviews from the past year. If you want to easily access our interview page, please visit 

	Our interview with Merck & Co.’s Chief Patient Officer Dr. Julie Gerberding, who won last year’s HBA Woman of the Year award, touches on her advice to students. As a successful business leader, Gerberding is always getting questions about how to achieve professional success. A lot of these questions come from talking with college students who are plotting out their careers and are faced with what, at the time, may seem like life-altering decisions, such as, “should I take this fellowship?” or “should I get a medical degree?” Gerberding told 

that she always replies to these inquires with the same answer: “Put more tools in your tool box because you never know when they will come in handy. Typically, the people with the best and most relevant tools are the ones who are in demand.” 

	In this April 2018 interview, Dr. Helen Torley, president and CEO of multi-product oncology biotech Halozyme, discusses its 50:50 gender balance overall and at the senior director and C-suite level. “We have seen very clearly that diversity begets diversity. Diversity is a business imperative; multiple studies have shown that diverse teams are more innovative and deliver better corporate performance. Halozyme is a great example of this in action. Our workforce has doubled in size over the last two years, but, as an example, remains almost evenly split among females and males. In addition, 42% of senior director and above levels, as well as executive team roles, are filled by women.”

	Marcus Gemuend, the head of the sub-Saharan African region for Roche, talks about the barriers the company has faced and the progress it’s made in that region. “Being based locally has been critical. The more time we spend with our stakeholders-really understanding their issues and their perspectives-the more trust is built up and the more successful the partnerships. 

	Although I am not from Africa, most of my team and country leadership are, and with their support we have been able to build that trust. Most important is to always have the patient at the center of everything we do, and address the challenges together with our stakeholder from the patient’s perspective.”

	Salarius Pharmaceuticals CEO David Arthur discusses the company’s pathway toward going public-a reverse merger with Flex Pharma. “We envision a very smooth transition through this merger. Being a NASDAQ-listed company will provide a robust platform for Salarius to showcase our potential with institutional investors and ultimately help drive company success. The current Salarius management team is expected to remain in place following the transaction, and I plan to stay as CEO of the combined company. Upon completion of the deal, the Salarius clinical pipeline becomes the lead asset of the combined company. Also, Bill McVicar, the current CEO of Flex, will join the combined company board of directors.” 

	Dr. Lingshi Tan, a director at the Drug Information Association (DIA), and chairman and CEO of dMed Company Limited, a Shanghai-based contract research organization, recently shared his insights on the impact of regulatory reform in China. “The US FDA has long played an important role in China’s regulatory evolution. The FDA opened its first office in Beijing in 2008, mainly focused on ensuring the safety and quality of goods, including food, medicines, and medical devices manufactured in China for export to the US. Even earlier, however, US pharmaceutical companies, industry associations, and government agencies, including the FDA, all contributed to an extensive ongoing dialogue with China.”

From the Editor

The lifeblood of our coverage are the many interviews we conduct with industry executives-and the unique stories and insights they provide. Here, I highlight excerpts from a selection of wide-ranging conversations from the past year.   

Sharing Your Voice

Europe slow to action on emerging technologies, but the complex issues clouding EHRs and gene editing, for example, offer pause 

	Intheir perpetual game of catch-up with technology, European Union regulators recently trumpeted their plan to speed up the exchange of patients’ health data through a standard format for electronic health records (EHRs). This is the latest step in Europe’s slow journey toward making better use of digital technology in the health field-a journey which has so far generated more rhetoric than results. There was certainly no holding back on the visionary language about this data exchange plan: the scheme will support “the digital transformation of health and care in the EU by seeking to unlock the flow of health data across borders.” 

	The triumphant note may be a little exaggerated.

	For a start, all the EU can really do in this field is to shout encouragement from the wings. The real players in any European health game, the national authorities, continue to amble around the stage in more the less direction they choose and at whatever speed they will. And so far, like in a mediocre theatrical improvisation, unity of purpose among the member states-and still less unity of action-is conspicuously absent.

	The limits of Europe’s progress are easily demonstrated. A skeletal digital infrastructure design carried the first exchanges of patient summaries and e-prescriptions only in January of this year-and only between Estonia and Finland. The best hope at present is that 22 countries may be able to join in the exchange by 2021.

	However, from another perspective, the EU’s slow progress may be more of a virtue than a vice. The scale of the challenges in shifting to EHRs is emerging with increasing clarity in countries beyond the EU that have moved faster on putting this type of data exchange into practice. There are particularly dismaying suggestions in a recent 

 from the US, the paragon of progress often held up in Europe as a model in digital adoption. Ten years on from the US boom in EHR adoption, the evident drawbacks are conditioning the heady optimism about their surefire capacity for making simultaneous improvements in economics, efficiencies, and quality. 

	In terms of sheer numbers, EHRs have been a huge success in the US, with adoption by more than nine out of every 10 hospitals. But growing US experience is revealing that physicians don’t like them. EHRs are complicated and often time-consuming to use. And they are unforgiving, because they demand 100% accuracy in manipulation. As the study puts it: “The average ER doctor will make 4,000 mouse clicks over the course of a shift, and that the odds of doing anything 4,000 times without an error is small.” This is fueling concerns about doctor burnout, itself branded an incipient public health crisis.

	In addition, the distinct systems don’t interact well, so even when data is comprehensive and totally accurate, data transfer is often incomplete or inaccurate. The report details cases of fatalities and serious injuries ascribed 

to faulty data transmission between distinct agencies and providers. The complexity of the systems can generate complex liability litigation: was the doctor or the software company to blame for a data error? And it highlights the absence of built-in corrective mechanisms in the systems. The report cites the practice of doctors opting for manual workarounds to their EHRs-such as writing essential data on a paper towel and leaving it on their colleagues’ computer keyboards. EHRs didn’t take away paperwork; the systems just moved it online, one is quoted as saying. 

	Even the promise that EHRs can put all of a patient’s records in one place can be a two-edged sword, because with so much data continually added, vital elements can easily be concealed in an almost endless series of menus and lists. The software has also been used, contends the report, to falsify health insurance and reimbursement claims.

	But despite years of evidence of malfunctions-accidental or deliberate-there is no central database to study these incidents to improve safety, and, suggests the report, a conspiracy of silence among providers is concealing the true extent of the failings. It depicts “a $3.7 trillion healthcare system idling at the crossroads of progress” amid “a slew of unintended consequences.”

	Against that background, the cautious EU steps may seem more understandable. Focusing-even if painfully slowly-on getting agreement on a standard for the crucial data exchange system suddenly seems not so misplaced.

	The technology challenges become all the more acute when ethics rather than practicalities are at stake-and the debate over human genome editing provides a perfect example. In mid-March, the World Health Organization (WHO) held the first meeting of its expert panel to develop global standards for governance and oversight of human genome editing.

	The panel was set up last December “to examine the scientific, ethical, social, and legal challenges associated with human genome editing (both somatic and germ cell).” The committee is tasked with providing advice “on appropriate oversight and governance mechanisms, both at the national and global level.” That seems a reasonable approach to such a contentious issue.

	But some striking nuances on how to handle such challenges emerged just days before the meeting, notably in an energetic correspondence on the subject in 

, including a preemptive call for a worldwide moratorium on heritable genome editing from scientists from the US, China, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, and New Zealand. There should be “a fixed period during which no clinical uses of germline editing whatsoever are allowed,” they wrote. “This period would provide time to establish an international framework…as well as allowing for discussions about the technical, scientific, medical, societal, ethical, and moral issues that must be considered before germline editing is permitted.” 

	They argued that it “is essential to include those representing perspectives outside science and medicine-including people with disabilities; patients and their families; economically disadvantaged communities; historically marginalized groups; religious groups; and civil society at large.”

	Steve Bates, CEO of the UK-based biotech industry lobby, the BIA, has taken issue with this approach, not out of any reluctance about wide-ranging debate, but because, he argues, exactly such a wide-ranging debate has already taken place in the UK, and has built “a British ethical framework and consensus around this emerging area of science.” In other words, it may make sense to put a temporary ban in place where no such discussions have been held. But it doesn’t need to be worldwide. 

	Bates has marshaled support for his view from some of the UK’s authorities on the subject, who coincide in questioning the merits of a worldwide moratorium. “A moratorium on the clinical use of germline genome editing is neither necessary nor useful,” said an innovation guru. A lawyer added: “It is understandable that a moratorium is attractive to those working in countries that lack coherent regulation. In the UK, however, the law very clearly allows the use of genome editing in embryos for research, but equally clearly prohibits its clinical use in embryos. As such, a moratorium is unnecessary in the UK and may risk causing confusion about where the boundaries lie.” And the president of the Academy of Medical Sciences, Sir Robert Lechle, said: “Using the term ‘moratorium’ is unhelpful and any timeframe for a fixed term ban would be largely arbitrary.”

	Bates’ conclusion provides an interesting perspective on the relevance of international collaboration in such sensitive areas: “The UK is fortunate to benefit from a democratically controlled, expert and scientifically informed, peer-reviewed regulatory environment, with a free press, that can navigate the risk/benefit profile of this and other emerging technologies.”

	Perhaps a two-edged sword in some parts of the world needs to be safely sheathed-but in others it can be safely brandished. 

Reflector is Pharmaceutical Executive’s correspondent in Brussels

Europe slow to action on emerging technologies, but the complex issues clouding EHRs and gene editing, for example, offer pause. 

Health Technology’s Double-Edged Sword

How one small but fast-growing drugmaker is recruiting and managing talent through emulating the “grit” of its patients

	Founded in 2008 as a startup with only a handful of employees and no office space, Horizon Pharma now has over 1,000 employees and 11 medicines that treat rare and rheumatic conditions. The Dublin-based company is striving to keep its startup mindset, however, and maintains that “our culture is no different today than it was when we started.” One aspect of this is in its approach to talent recruitment and development. 

down with Horizon’s executive vice president, chief human resources officer, Irina Konstantinovsky, who works out of the company’s US headquarters near Chicago, to discuss how the drugmaker is striving to build and empower agile and innovative teams that work together with speed, and to create a work environment that reflects the diversity of its patients.

How is Horizon Pharma distinctive from other companies in the way it develops and manages talent?

I think managing talent is truly core to what we do and core to our business strategy. Many CEOs write in their opening letters to employees that employees are their greatest asset, but this idea of an asset is quite confusing to me. Employees can leave; we don’t own them. What we need to do is invest in talent heavily; we truly believe in the idea that talent is our greatest investment. When we invest in talent-recruiting the best people, providing great development opportunities, ensuring competitive pay, fostering a great workplace-everything seems to fall into place. You create a virtuous cycle where people want to be engaged. They want to do and be their best to the company.

At the center of almost everything we do are three values: transparency, accountability, and growth. The behaviors that really bring those values to life form the architecture of our talent acquisition strategy. Something that our employees have to bring is “grit.” We used the theme of grit for one of our large meetings recently, when we brought a lot of employees together and talked about it being a very important part of who we are. Our patients deal with rare and difficult disease that can make it difficult to deal with everyday life, and they have to have grit. Similarly, we like our employees to have that same determination and motivation.

What are the challenges around recruiting and developing new talent today?

It’s a tough labor market, so good talent has a lot of choices. There’s a sea of very established pharmaceutical companies around us. A lot of the biotech talent is in Boston and in California. So sometimes, between the location and the established companies around us, we have to fight hard to find the right talent. I wouldn’t say we’re particularly challenged, but we definitely have to compete for that good talent.

	One of the most challenging areas we have is marketing. Marketing is a difficult skill in the pharma industry in general. Most people with strong marketing backgrounds like to work for consumer products or in other areas, so we are constantly looking to upgrade talent and create internal development to make sure we have the pipeline of talent that we need to continue to grow and evolve as a company.

How does mentorship fit into your talent-management strategy?

Mentorship is one of the foundational elements you need, but I don’t think it’s a winning strategy 

. Having the right people in the organization to coach, counsel, and provide the right advice to our employees is incredibly important. But I’m more interested in the concept of sponsorship. Mentors are those people who sit down with you and offer advice and give you guidance on your career. But I see a sponsor as someone who would advocate for you in the right places. 

	Usually a sponsor is someone pretty senior in the organization, who is part of the discussions about where talent can go, what opportunities are there, what projects might be available. A sponsor is the person who says, “Well, I believe Kerry, who’s on the phone right now with me, should have that next opportunity.” 

	I’m also interested in the sponsorship concept from a diversity and inclusiveness perspective because, as we know, there are many more men than women in those discussions just by virtue of being the senior people in the room. So, if we can create a real system in the organization where we identify who our top women are, and we ensure that we connect them with mentors who eventually can become their sponsors, helping them to advance and grow in the organization, I think we’re onto something much more powerful than traditional mentorship. We need men as our allies to get to the top, and while most men would advocate for women, they maybe don’t have the systems to do that in an intentional way at the right time, and that’s what I want to create.

How do you foster that commitment to diversity and inclusiveness across the organization? 

We have a very strong commitment to having a diverse and inclusive workforce. Diversity means having a mix of employees that can bring different backgrounds, different perspectives, and create the right innovation in the organization. About 15 months ago we started a very purposeful strategy around this. As a growing company that went from zero to a thousand employees at a very fast pace, things were just starting to happen at Horizon then, but now we have a real strategy that understands that inclusiveness at Horizon is personal and it starts with a commitment from the top. There is a diversity of people facing the health conditions that we’re trying to treat-disease does not discriminate-and we have to have that kind of mix in our workforce in order to bring the best solutions for our patients.

You worked at larger companies before. How different is managing talent at Horizon?

Horizon is a very different challenge. It is a much newer company, 10 years old, and it’s growing at an incredible pace. It’s very fast moving. So, you have to look at Horizon through a different lens. What the size of the organization really allows us to do is to take bigger bets on individuals. We can offer bigger roles and offer a much faster career path. We compete with very well-established organizations when we compete for talent, but our engagement philosophy and competitive element is to offer growth, both as an individual and as a member of the organization. We can offer, I think, a wider set of experiences that can be much more rewarding, if you’re looking and willing to be part of something that is ever-changing.

	I also think that we touch our employees differently from a brand perspective. We take our mission personally; we’re not just employees, many of us know the patients. In a larger pharma company that’s much harder to say. Either we know our patients, we are a patient, or we’re impacted by our patients’ stories in a very personal way.

How will you sustain your culture of talent management as the company grows?

I think digitalization is key to that. We’re rolling out a new intranet, and a key part of that is to create communities where employees are able to come together and ask questions. New employees, for example, can access a community where they can really interact with each other, no matter where they are, and help each other be successful. 

	But one of my personal biggest challenges, or what keeps me awake at night, is how we maintain our culture of entrepreneurship, and of grit as we grow. For that, it’s essential to follow the feedback from our workforce and continue to invest in talent.

s European and Online Editor. He can be reached at 

One company’s approach to recruiting and managing talent in an increasingly competitive marketplace.


True Grit: Talent Management  from the Ground Up

With US unemployment rates at their lowest in decades, thinning talent pools, combined with evolving industry trends and job-seeker motivations, are testing traditional pharma hiring methods-where targeting new skills and capabilities must become the new norm

	The quest for talent in the pharmaceutical industry demands innovative and energetic approaches to attracting and retaining people with the passion to lead into the next decade. With the US experiencing some of the lowest rates of unemployment in 50 years, the industry is vying for new skills and capabilities that reflect the changing life sciences landscape.

	Pharma companies are acutely aware of the competition for talent as they evolve their business models to reflect the influence and challenges of biotechnology, innovative research, development and manufacturing operations, populations with increasing life expectancies, shifts in global economic and health prospects, and the continuing discovery of new disease areas with unmet needs.

	Leading life sciences companies have enjoyed being “employers of choice” for many years, offering attractive opportunities and benefits, challenging and rewarding work, and long-term (if not lifetime) employment stability. Today, traditional pathways to development and promotion are being tested as job seekers and current employees explore opportunities to move across sectors and geographies, and assess the transferability of their skills to new entrants to the industry.

 rose 24% between 2001 and 2018, and biotech research jobs alone have surged 26% since 2013. Global economic and population growth introduce new prospects for business growth and employment opportunities.

	To compete in the global market, employers are constantly looking at the costs and benefits of employee mobility; they must weigh the risk of not being present in some countries, and the challenges of hiring employees with the skills, acumen, and knowledge to operate in new markets.  

	Employment in a pharma company was considered a reliable lifelong career, and if internal mobility was limited, employees could move comfortably and seamlessly to another industry employer. The convergence of technologies, adoption of new capabilities like artificial intelligence and digital health tools, and the impact of the gig economy on traditional career pathways have all contributed to a changed landscape for industry employment.

The power to attract and retain the best in the labor market is no longer a given for life sciences employers. Talent acquisition and people management practices must be complemented by efficient and high-quality employment services and support; a delay in onboarding a new hire or a failure to effectively transfer knowledge lead to critical losses in time and productivity.

	While income and benefits remain significant factors in employment decisions, candidates are also considering a company’s record and reputation for diversity and inclusion, community, societal and educational engagement, organizational culture, work-life balance strategies, and development opportunities. It truly is a buyer’s market. 

	Life sciences remains attractive to an increasingly diverse, talented, and mobile professional workforce. Changing requirements of the industry-including expansion to biopharmaceuticals, increased application of analytics in conjunction with traditional scientific methods for discovery and development-continue to make it an appealing and rewarding sector.

	Organic growth, mergers and acquisitions, outsourcing, and strategic partnerships offer new, attractive, and challenging experiences. This dynamic environment makes it incumbent on employers to track their talent, be open to new capabilities and innovative ways of working, and offer flexible employment options.  

	Recognize that life sciences talent may be as interested in real-world solutions as laboratory benches, in finding new ways to run clinical trials, including applying adaptive clinical trial tools and analytics, understanding biometrics as well as biologics, and breaking down the traditional linear boundaries of discovery, development, and commercialization to operate instead with fully integrated end-to-end disease area strategies.

	Attracting, retaining, and developing talent include strategies to successfully compete for the best and brightest at all stages of professionals’ careers, understanding and managing the impacts of globalization, and recognizing the appeal and limitations of talent mobility.

	Be clear and deliberate about defining the right kind of talent for the dynamic, global pharmaceutical industry. Recognizing the bargaining power of talent and understanding the drivers for potential employees’ decisions will enable life sciences employers to quickly adjust and adapt to changing needs.

	Appreciate and understand the importance of attracting and developing talent: life scientists have transferrable skills and knowledge that are often untapped, leading to frustration and lost opportunities. The focus on STEM in education presents the life sciences industry with new and non-traditional sources of talent, with many of these potential resources introducing access to fresh markets for skills, new therapeutic areas, and previously inaccessible patient contact. 

	Be ready to balance the contingent-to-permanent workforce as your company grows and changes. Equip your company to leverage the gig economy in ways that benefit the organization and individuals, and use this new employment paradigm to manage the variable demands and capabilities at different stages of the drug development lifecycle.

	There are many technological platforms and data sources that provide insight to the labor market. This is true for both the talent base and potential employers. Transparency of candidate and company information, well-managed executive search and graduate recruitment, innovative talent acquisition and retention strategies, and evolving business operating models all contribute to the success of life sciences coming of age as a dynamic, innovative, and satisfying employment environment.

is principal and national life sciences sector leader. 

is operations transformation director; both with Grant Thornton LLP.

Thinning talent pools, combined with evolving industry trends and job-seeker motivations, are testing traditional pharma hiring methods, where targeting new skills and capabilities must become the new norm.

Reinventing Pharma’s Talent Search

Nine ways pharmas can position their CDOs for success in driving innovation

	Hiring a chief diversity officer (CDO) is one of the most visible ways a company can communicate its commitment to a diverse and inclusive workplace. By that measure, the pharmaceutical industry is doing well. Of the 25 largest publicly-traded pharma companies in the US and Europe, 80% have CDOs (or equivalent roles), compared to 47% of S&P 500 companies, according to an analysis by Russell Reynolds Associates. In addition to CDOs being prevalent in the pharma industry, they are also more experienced. Forty-five percent of the pharma CDOs have held CDO positions previously, compared to only 26% of those in S&P 500 companies. 

	Investing in diversity and inclusion (D&I) makes sense for drug manufacturers. A growing body of research supports the notion that the combination of inclusive leadership and diverse teams produce higher levels of innovation. According to our 2018 D&I Pulse survey of over 1,800 global executives, more than 80% say working for leaders who are highly committed to D&I brings out their most innovative ideas. Johnson & Johnson is a highly visible example of a company linking D&I with innovation in its corporate strategy. The $81.6 billion pharma giant publishes a detailed D&I strategy on its website, which includes the explicit missions to “advance our culture of innovation and inclusion” and “enhance business results and reputation.”

	Innovation is the fuel for growth. To bring new therapies to market, forward-looking organizations are effectively incorporating and implementing fresh approaches such as artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning capabilities, or advanced manufacturing and supply chain logistics to gain a competitive advantage. Being on the leading edge of innovation hinges on assembling the strongest and best minds around the table. This may include breaking the mold and bringing in diverse talent from outside the industry, a practice that remains uncommon in what can be an insular field. Pharma companies spend billions each year on R&D, and the return on that investment is directly affected by how successfully leaders maximize the full potential of a diverse set of talent.

	Beyond appointing a CDO, drugmakers need to be intentional and mindful about how best to maximize a CDO’s potential value and impact on innovation. Our 2018 D&I Pulse study found that only 42% of the pharma/biotech executives surveyed see their organizations emphasizing D&I as part of business strategy and that only slightly over half (59%) of them feel their organizations bring out their most innovative ideas. Our conclusion is that there is an opportunity to reinforce and bolster the CDO’s effort in driving D&I as a strategic priority and an innovation mandate.

	First, the organization must acknowledge how and why D&I propels innovative thinking. Secondly, the company must establish the direct link between D&I and innovation strategy. Lastly, the leadership team must embed D&I in everything it does and embrace the CDO as a business partner and agent for change.

	More specifically, here are nine ways organizations can set their CDOs up for success:

Align the D&I mandate with the innovation mandate

	Crystallize a clear linkage between D&I investments and innovation goals. Quantify this link by creating innovation metrics that become part of the CDO’s mandate to hold the organization accountable. Innovation is a continuous journey. Make an enduring commitment to identify new opportunities for changes that the CDO can implement to bolster innovation goals. 

	Ensure the executive leadership team stands behind the importance of the CDO role and its responsibilities as a business partner in driving better business outcomes, including innovation targets. Align and rally behind the commitment to D&I as an amplification for innovation. Operating with anything less than a full leadership commitment to D&I, a CDO faces a lonely and uphill climb on the organization’s D&I journey.

	Making progress with D&I requires moving away from established norms and entrenched ways of doing business. This challenge is particularly acute in the pharma industry, where past successes and failures often define the framework for future initiatives. By definition, innovation is about entering uncharted territories. In preparing for a CDO to catalyze change, make an honest assessment of which parts of the organization will be most receptive or resistant to change. With early adopters, build a proof of concept and socialize success stories to gain momentum for enterprise-level adoption. 

Consider the full range of CDO profiles and experiences

	CDOs can come from a variety of career paths. Currently, about half of pharma CDOs spent significant time in HR before taking the role, 40% were in D&I-specific roles, 25% held a marketing or communications role, and 15% came from a business leadership role unrelated to D&I. The “right” profile for an organization depends on the specific needs of the business.

	The pharma industry is largely populated by leaders with highly technical training that reinforces structured and disciplined ways of processing information and decision-making. The best CDOs are challengers and boundary-spanners. Their role is to prime the organization to embrace new ways of doing business. Strong executive influencing skills are foundational for the CDO to be a successful business partner to the executive leaders. The most effective CDOs connect diverse sets of stakeholders toward a common goal and strike the

 right balance between leading from the front and leading by influence. 

	Nearly every organization starts off requiring a seasoned CDO with industry expertise and experience. Be balanced. Consider the importance of industry-specific knowledge, track record, as well as the candidate’s potential and trajectory as a match to your company’s culture and needs. Our data shows that 25% of current pharma CDOs spent significant time outside the industry before taking their current role. Cross-pollinating experiences and perspectives from other industries may fuel the generation of new and orthogonal ideas.

	There is no “one-size-fits-all” D&I solution. To be effective, the CDO must have a deep understanding of the organization’s history and future needs. Help build the CDO’s exposure to the company’s unique innovation culture and process, along with enablers or hindrances.

	Ensure the CDO has access to the workforce demographic and employee sentiment data as well as the innovation outcomes metrics that define success. Help the CDO define processes and metrics that create accountability around D&I.

	Starting with the CEO and the executive leadership team, commit to D&I as an essential driver of innovation and business success. Empower and encourage the entire organization to participate and contribute. Recognize that CDOs are typically purpose-driven individuals and that retaining them means ensuring they are in a position to hold the entire company accountable for making progress with D&I and create meaningful change. Systemic change will happen with consistent and heartfelt acknowledgment throughout the organization. 

	The pharma industry is at the forefront of appointing chief diversity officers and committing to D&I as a strategic priority for the business. Defining and empowering the CDO’s role in driving innovation as a business mandate is paramount to bringing transformative results. We are optimistic that the pharma industry will stay on the leading edge of cultivating a diverse and inclusive workplace, so that the best and the brightest minds can carry out the industry’s mission of bringing breakthrough therapies to patients. 

 is a senior member of Russell Reynolds Associates’ Leadership & Succession team. 

 leads Russell Reynolds Associates’ Diversity & Inclusion practice and is a senior member of its global Biotech & Pharmaceuticals practice. Both are based in Boston.

Nine ways pharma companies can maximize a CDO’s potential value and impact on driving innovation as a business mandate.

Hiring a Chief Diversity Officer

Despite being the fastest growing influencers in healthcare, advertising campaigns targeted at payers are often an afterthought

	Pharmaceutical companies dedicate billions of dollars to advertising each year. So, here’s the multi-billion-dollar question: are they missing what should be their prime target?

	In many circumstances, the level and quality of insurance coverage-more than any other factor-determine whether or not a drug is prescribed. According to the DRG Digital/Manhattan Research 

survey for 2017, only 16% of physicians always prescribe their first-choice drug, while the other 84% usually or always follow formulary guidelines. And just because a physician writes a prescription doesn’t mean it will be filled. An 

notes that about 11% of prescription claims are rejected at the pharmacy, and, on average, 66% of those require prior authorization.

	Despite this clear shift in influence from physicians to payers, most pharma companies target sophisticated advertising campaigns to the HCP audience while simply repurposing those ads for the payer (as an afterthought) with little or no modification. And, while pharma company finances are proprietary and hard to access, some sources suggest that dollars allocated to access marketing typically represent less than 10% of the total brand budget. It’s a clear case of fighting the last war, when physicians had greater control over their prescribing decisions.

	It’s time for pharma companies to focus more purposefully on payer-targeted advertising campaigns in which the message, tone, and visuals are explicitly directed at payer needs, mindset, and culture-campaigns that address the value story head on.  That story can go beyond clinical content to include messaging regarding unmet need, economic burden, impact on population, and cost of comorbidities, as well as the quality and consistency of available evidence.

	The fact is, depending on the product and category, payer interests can be far removed from those of providers. On the most basic level, physicians manage patients; payers manage populations. So, while HCPs (and the ads targeting them) focus almost entirely on clinical benefits, payers are also deeply concerned with economics and population-related outcomes. It’s true that the increasing influence of quality measures and value-based reimbursement for providers may begin to bridge these mindset gaps. But, in today’s reality, a hyper-relevant sales pitch to HCPs misses the essence of the payer story.

	Of course, basic branding principles mandate consistency across all communications representing a given brand. To maintain brand integrity, payer advertising should incorporate the same approved branding elements (i.e., color palette, fonts, page architecture) featured in the HCP campaign. That way, though the respective campaigns may differ in terms of their headlines and visual concepts, they will still look and feel like companion pieces. 

	All payer marketing efforts must reflect the nuanced and changing dynamics of the payer market. For example, continued payer market consolidation opens the opportunity to design initiatives directed toward specific payer accounts. Bigger, consolidated players have more bargaining power with drug manufacturers as well as extra leverage with providers who have an interest in being included in such powerful networks. Many have also acquired practices and pharmacies, further extending the scope of their influence. All of this means that every win is a bigger win, with the potential to impact a larger member population. One can make the case that the stakes for effective communications to these organizations are higher than any that have come before.

	Then there’s the continuing move toward value-based reimbursement models, which demands messaging, pricing, and contracting that are grounded in health economics and outcomes research and real-world evidence. Economics could range from the financial impact of delayed diagnoses and hospitalizations to that of comorbidities and downstream manifestations of disease. Any advertising that neglects economic implications is inherently lacking from a payer’s perspective.

	And, finally, ad campaigns and other broad communications must be reinforced by optimized in-person engagements-just as in the HCP space. Naturally, personal presentations also offer additional opportunities to reinforce (and amortize) the payer-focused campaign concept.

 is Managing Director at Cyan Health. She can be reached at 

Despite being the fastest growing influencers in healthcare, ad campaigns targeted at payers are often an afterthought.

Are Pharma Marketers Fighting the Last War?

Outlining the key steps for healthcare marketers in effectively applying game mechanics to boost the patient connection-and ultimately drive business  

	Whether we like to admit it or not, many of us know the unique rush that comes from swiping a series of multicolored jelly beans in Candy Crush. We’ve experienced the thrill of landing a triple word score in Words With Friends, and we’ve known the satisfaction that comes from-of all things-successfully harvesting a field of wheat in Farmville. Gaming is a universal pursuit, triggering not only our competitive instincts but also our desires for achievement and recognition. And with the rise of app- and social-media-based games, there are more people playing than ever before; the number of online gamers 

, according to gaming analytics firm NewZoo.

	The widespread popularity of gaming has led marketers to seek out ways to employ game mechanics as a tool to boost consumer engagement. While this concept isn’t new-and some even consider “gamification” a buzzword gone by-the idea is taking hold in healthcare due to recent technological advancements, the continued rise of smartphones and digitization, and the treatment demands of chronic diseases. In fact, the healthcare gamification market reached more than $16 billion in 2016, 

	If done right, applying game mechanics to healthcare marketing efforts has significant potential to ensure that patients are activated, educated, and engaged throughout the duration of their care, which could drive business impact and-most importantly-improve patient outcomes.

	It has long been known that games have the potential to teach and motivate people to behave through carefully constructed game mechanics, the rules and methods designed for interacting with the game and driving gameplay. For healthcare marketers, gamification can help provide motivation for wellness, increase health literacy, drive behavioral change surrounding medication adherence or lifestyle support (such as monitoring diet and exercise), and activate patients who might not otherwise engage with their healthcare. Current examples of innovative healthcare games are numerous; consider Bandit’s Shark Showdown, 

a gamification app designed by the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine

 to treat stroke patients. To play, patients use a robotic arm to safely maneuver the game’s hero-a dolphin named Bandit-through a sea full of sharks. By contracting their arm muscles to move the virtual dolphin, the game’s creators hope that patients can relearn their fine motor skills and encourage tissue repair, especially during the critical three-month time period after a stroke occurs.

	There’s also SnowWorld, which was developed for burn victims. The simulation immerses the patient in a virtual world and has them hurl snowballs in time to music, which distracts them from their pain. It has been shown to not only reduce patients’ reports of pain but also reduce pain signals on MRI scans. The technology, 

produced by the Human Photonics Laboratory at the University of Washington

, has also been applied to help soldiers mitigate the effects of PTSD and pain as they are being treated for their wounds.

	As these types of games become more prolific in healthcare, many pharmaceutical companies have jumped straight into the gamification arena. However, very few of these efforts have led to success. Too often, pharma companies’ gamified efforts fail because they focus more on the desired outcome than on patient goals, and the games themselves don’t excite, engage, and motivate the users. We recently spoke to leading experts in gamification and sought to understand the keys to navigating successful gamification in pharma. As one of our interviewees, Karl Kapp, author of 

, succinctly stated: “[Gamification] is about borrowing elements used in games and applying them in non-game situations.”

	While the prospect of using gamification to drive behavioral change in the pharma space is exciting, it takes a significant amount of skill and investment to design a game that truly captivates patients and keeps them going back. Moreover, pharma marketers often encounter pitfalls when they don’t fully understand how to apply game mechanics within healthcare. One of these pitfalls is rushed implementation, which results in a poor design and a lack of user input and feedback. “Companies shouldn’t think of [gamification] as a fad,” says Kapp. “People rush into it, and they think it’s going to solve every problem: ‘Oh, just gamify it and you’ll have such engaged patients.’ Then, that doesn’t work because it’s implemented poorly and rapidly, and without a vendor who has done this before.”

	Pharma companies are used to researching solutions and designing treatments in isolation, carefully controlling patient involvement. Leveraging customer data, user research, and dynamic and frequent consumer feedback, however, is what can make the platform and overall game experience better. The effects of failing to engage with patients early and often-and not using data to drive decision-making in the development process-is magnified in the healthcare space, where the topics themselves are deeply personal and often accompanied by additional stresses that make engaging patients in any program difficult. Pharma organizations shouldn’t develop a program and randomly implement game mechanics without first conducting research with the target audience and then seeking players’ feedback.

	Many companies also fail because they don’t understand player motivations. For some players, they feel a sense of intrinsic (internal) motivation; they like playing a game because it results in feelings of accomplishment, fulfills a desire for social interaction, etc. This type of motivation typically results in short-term adoption because people generally are drawn to what’s new and exciting. However, to achieve long-term adoption-and truly motivate the patient-pharma marketers need to combine intrinsic rewards with extrinsic (external) awards or incentives. According to Kapp, in some cases, small extrinsic rewards can be effective motivators when tied to tasks that employees know they should be doing. For example, “I’ve seen apps where the reward that you could get is a $10 Starbucks card,” says Kapp. “The amount of effort and time to get that card was disproportionate to the actual $10. It seems the idea of getting money for ‘free’ can be highly motivating when presented in the right context.”

	To achieve success and overcome the many obstacles standing in the way of effective gamification, Kapp recommends that “the fundamentals of the solutions are solid and evidence-based, and you continuously monitor how it’s working after launch.” Moreover, pharma companies should use gamification not as an intervention in isolation but as a piece of a larger, holistic behavior or support program with patients.

	Here are four key steps that drugmakers can take to ensure that game mechanics are applied effectively.

1. Perform design research with patients and leverage a professional game designer. 

It’s not enough for pharma companies to simply design something that looks nice or innovative; what’s created must be easy to understand, learn, and navigate. Furthermore, it must complement the context and scenarios in which patients will use it, so it doesn’t feel like a daily chore or an inconvenience. After performing market research to understand and organize patients’ needs and preferences, companies must define patient segments and then collaborate with design researchers to help ensure that concepts fulfill unmet needs.

	Then, companies should tap an experienced game designer to carefully consider why game mechanics should be used and guide the development based on the data. If using game mechanics will benefit the goals and needs of patients, and the specific motivations of the patients are clear from the research, a game designer should collaborate with the design research team to create and oversee the game concepts, setting, story, and game play. Game designers understand the nuances of the psychology of games and will be able to strategize about what mechanics will motivate specific patient types to foster engagement and adoption. Also, they understand that one type of game mechanic will not engage the entire audience, so multiple mechanisms should be implemented to work separately or in tandem.

	Once the game mechanics have been developed, the design research team can test the concepts quickly and inexpensively so that prototypes can be validated prior to the expense of building or manufacturing. “I’m a big proponent of prototyping in small groups so we get a sense of how to modify it and change it,” says Kapp. “You can launch something and people don’t even know where to go. The users aren’t ‘gamers.’ We learn where they have trouble using the app via pilot programs because everything isn’t always intuitive.”

How gamification can help pharma play to win.

Pharmaceutical Executive-04-01-2019

Biosimilars Name Game Remains Thorny Issue

HBA's Woman of the Year 2019

Sharing Your Voice

Health Technology’s Double-Edged Sword

True Grit: Talent Management from the Ground Up

Reinventing Pharma’s Talent Search

Hiring a Chief Diversity Officer

Are Pharma Marketers Fighting the Last War?

Ready Patient One

Pharmaceutical Executive, April 2019 Issue (PDF)

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