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Pharmaceutical Executive - Leadership, Strategy & Market Access

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Latest Executive Roundtables

Asembia 2025 

Topic

Sales and Marketing

1rem

Pharma can embrace product iteration over one-time launches—and enhance agility and responsiveness through effective roadmaps, feedback integration, and communication strategies.

How to Get Product Iteration Right in Healthcare

Strategies for biopharma in integrating agentic AI—to achieve incremental gains in efficiency, while delivering meaningful progress in how data insights inform commercial decision-making.

Approaching Agentic AI Strategically: Life Sciences Data Utilization

Despite steady innovation and solid new drug approvals, the first half of 2025 was marked by a break from historical norms in financing, stock performance, and M&A for the pharma and biotech sectors.

Navigating Divergent Currents: Biopharma Review and Outlook

Challenging six misconceptions that have characterized product strategies in Central and Eastern European markets.

Rethinking Market Access in CEE: Time to Bust the Myths

Health plans face challenges in risk arrangements for orphan drugs, but increasing competition may open doors for innovative pricing strategies.

Risk Contracting When Orphan Disease Space is Crowded

Who Benefits from Direct-to-Consumer Drug Sales

One of the biggest issues Americans face is the high cost of healthcare in general. Drug prices are a particular pain point, with many medications costing Americans more than they can afford. Multiple administrations have attempted to address this issue, but it remains a major problem. The current administration is attempting multiple ways of reducing drug costs, with the promotion of direct-to-consumer drug sales being one of the proposed solutions.

Michael Grosberg, vice president of product management, spoke with 

 about direct-to-consumer sales and what impact they’ll likely have on drug prices.

Pharmaceutical Executive: How might direct-to-consumer drug models impact pricing?

I think we can all agree that access to life-saving medication is a basic human necessity. From every conversation I’ve ever had with a pharmaceutical manufacturer, they want nothing more than to get their drugs to the patients that desperately need them.

We talk a lot about lowering drug prices, but we’re not talking about lowering them at the right point. Where it matters is at the pharmacy counter. Direct-to-consumer sales can be helpful in an area where patients are uninsured or heavily under-insured. The reality, however, is that the majority of Americans are insured, either by a government plan or through a commercial plan from their employer. It’s very unlikely that insurance plans will pay for medication that we buy directly from a pharmaceutical manufacturer.

The fact that this channel exists would in no way help us obtain those medications. In the areas of drugs that are not covered or individuals with high deductibles, this might be a way to save money on medication. It will likely impact very few therapeutic areas and very few patients.

PE: Who benefits from direct-to-consumer drug sales?

 If we think generally about therapeutic areas or classes of medicine that are unlikely to be covered by insurance, some of the novel drugs may not be covered by insurance for people using them for certain indications. This could be GLP-1s, which may be covered for diabetes but not weight-loss. That could be an area where patients benefits. A lot of dermatological drugs may not covered, so patients might be able to afford those.

If you think about novel or specialty medicines that aren’t covered by insurance, those medicines carry very high price tags. Whether it’s in the US or elsewhere in the world, they’re very expensive. With-or-without insurance, patients who need them won’t be able to afford them, whether we align ourselves to other countries or not. They’re still unaffordable.

PE: What are effective ways of reducing drug prices?

 We must look at the overall gross-to-net bubble and the incentives placed throughout the distribution chain. The PBM rebates that drive formulary placement for branded medication created a tremendous amount of upward pressure on consumer prices at the pharmacy counter. The insurance and PBM and business model for generic medication creates a situation where copays for generic medicine might be more than the medicine without insurance. That copay is used to subsidize a reduction of my policy premium.

If we are serious about reducing the cost of medicine to patients, we must look at the way that the entire channel is structured.

Videos

With insured patients less likely to benefit, who actually does benefit from D2C?

How is the Obesity Medication Marketing Landscape Evolving?

Derrick Gastineau, head of marketing at Currax Pharmaceuticals, spoke with 

 about the marketing landscape for weight loss medications and how it’s a therapeutic area where its vastly important to reach patients with the best information possible.

Pharmaceutical Executive: How is the obesity medication marketing landscape evolving?


 Evolving rapidly is the short answer. I came into this space about four years ago and if I’m being honest, I don’t think I knew what a wild ride I was signing up for. In the past two years, we’ve seen such an evolution with the major pharma players joining this space with the GLP-1s and the attention that’s brought to the disease of obesity. It’s just a massively positive thing.

It also comes with challenges. For a smaller company like us, we’re trying to navigate and figure out where we can bring the most value to patients who are out there seeking solutions living with obesity and the HCPs treating the disease. We’re really just trying to make sure that people understand that these drugs have been a massive advancement in our ability to treat this disease, it’s not a one-size-fits-all solution. We want to ensure that HCPs and patients have the education, knowledge, and resources that they need to make the most informed decisions.

What roles do patient-centered strategies play in the obesity medication marketing strategies?


 Obesity as a disease state, more so than a lot of other therapeutic areas, really presents that shared decision making opportunity for HCPs and their patients. It’s more of a consumer-driven disease state. That impacts our strategy about where we bring forth information about our product by figuring out how to bring forward the benefits, safety information, and a holistic picture of the drug and what it offers.

Along the way, we’re trying to craft that message to help patients understand the risk-profile of the drug but also allows them to see how it fits into their particular life. We’re meeting them where they are to help them understand the product and how it may fit into their specific situation.

PE: Do patients respond well to story-driven campaigns?


 Across the board, humans value authenticity. With our recent campaign, we set out to focus on real patient stories. We found people who had been on the product who were willing and courageous enough to bring forward and share their story. When you do that, with the actual lived experience of the individual who lived that journey, that resonates with people. We’ve tried to be intentional with bringing forward multiple stories because the truth with obesity is that there’s a lot of heterogeneity with the disease, not only from patient to patient but also within a singular patient.

Bringing forward those multiple scenarios and stories helped connect across the spectrum of different patients and the challenges that they are facing.

PE: How can marketing teams combat misinformation in the obesity medication space?


 It’s not my job to police the information, I’ll leave that to the regulatory bodies and the elected officials. What we can do is ensure that we’re counterbalancing that with accurate information that is presented in a fair and informed way. This ensures that patients have access to fair and balanced information alongside that misinformation that they’re going to run into that can help them make the best decision.

Making sure we understand the avenues that they’re seeking information

Making sure we have a presence on those platforms

Derrick Gastineau discusses how the focus on weight loss medications has shifted in recent years.

What Impact will Direct-to-Consumer Sales Have on Drug Prices

Michael Grosberg discusses how people with insurance will be impacted by D2C drug sales.

Using AI and RWD to Drive Creative Decision-Making

Pharmaceutical Executive: How do agencies use RWD to drive creative decision making?

A lot of RWD consists of quantitative information. Our database of claims has about 60 million claims in it. If you talk about those as individual data elements, you can get into the trillions. That’s impressive, but it’s meaningless unless someone understands what it is.

Where AI and brand translation comes in is the ability of AI to translate across disciplines. Administrative overhead increases on the amount of resources it takes to run any sort of organization. You must manage huge amounts of information coming in that must be interpreted differently across elements of the business.

A writer that I like compared the invention of AI to the invention of the filing cabinet, which doesn’t sound super exciting. The filing cabinet is not magical, but it enables making the same information standardized and accessible across an entire enterprise. That’s where I think an agency’s ability to translate comes in, and certainly AI will be an empowering factor to this.

I have an example from inside the lab. One of my peers took our full documentation database, everything that we use to educate clients on how to use the reports on our platform and our APIs, and he put a LLM on top of it. He essentially created a search and summarization feature for any question you could think of about how the platform works. That was just a beta test, so we’re not rolling something like that out anytime soon, but it is an example of an agency’s ability to turn analyst reports into a coherent strategy and a set of tactics that will form the creative development and media deployments.

Ted Sweetser discusses turning information into usable datasets and pulling insights from them.

Kimberley Chiang, vice president of biopharma commercial solutions at CoverMyMeds, explores practical steps pharmaceutical executives can take to foster better collaboration within their organizations, as well as with external partners like providers and pharmacies.

Practical Steps for Better Cross-Functional Collaboration

 video interview, Kimberley Chiang, vice president of biopharma commercial solutions at CoverMyMeds, discusses "The 2025 Medication Access Report." She highlights gaps in data-sharing and cross-functional collaboration as major bottlenecks that cause delays, rework, and increased patient burden. Chiang shares that only 3% of patients utilize support programs due to a lack of awareness. A large majority of the report's respondents plan to expand funding for patient support programs within the next 5 years due to large number of new therapies expected to come to market.

Pharmaceutical Executive: The report emphasizes the need for cross-functional collaboration. What practical steps can pharmaceutical executives take to foster better collaboration between different departments within their organizations, as well as with external partners like providers and pharmacies?


 Within pharma, we don’t have standardized data protocols. That makes it difficult to talk the same language amongst our groups. Programs, physicians & healthcare records, and pharmacies all have different data standards. The ability for us to communicate effectively is inhibited by the nature of interoperability. Providers and pharmacists have a knowledge gap about what’s available and whether they should invest in interoperability solutions.

There are solutions out there, with more coming to market with more sophistication that would more broadly solve the problems we’re facing today. Because there’s not a broad awareness of this, however, there’s still prevailing confusion and unwillingness to spend money towards interoperability.

Everybody understands the potential benefit down the road, especially for the patient. If we could link these solutions together, we would logically see the benefit. But, how do pharma companies make decisions about investing?

When we asked pharmacists and providers if they would be willing to invest in interoperability, 46% of pharmacists and 52% of providers said that they were not aware of what’s out to make that decision for investment. The knowledge gap seems to be creating a delay in adoption for some of these systems even though we all agree that if we could get together and bring interoperability across the ecosystem, everyone benefits. The provider spends less time working through or searching for things. The pharmacy also benefits at the point of sale because they can treat the patient and dispense with all of the information right at their fingertips. Frankly, the patient benefits because they get on their medications faster and have better health outcomes.

The benefit for the industry is being able to link the data and be able to make better and faster decisions proactively. We can use predictive analytics, bringing all of the data across the ecosystem, to make better plans, programs, and funding-and-asset resource decisions. This is at the heart of answering where someone in pharma who has $5 billion is going to spend it.

Where are the gaps most likely to occur in a particular therapeutic area or group of patients? If we look more broadly into the patients, what dimensions of social determinants of health could we also consider along the patient journey? If we could integrate all of that, imagine what we could do faster and more efficiently, which would take costs out of the system and bring patients the medications they much faster.

Ian Baer, Founder & CEO of Sooth, speaks about how distrust and uncertainty surrounding social media and is impacting the pharmaceutical industry. 

The Impact of Social Media Distrust on Pharmaceutical Marketing

In this Pharmaceutical Executive video interview, Ian Baer, Founder & CEO of Sooth, explores the growing distrust and uncertainty surrounding social media and its impact on the pharmaceutical industry. Key contributors to this distrust include the spread of misinformation, the rise of AI-generated content, and the politicization of social media platforms. The conversation highlights the challenges faced by pharma companies in building trust with patients in this environment, including the need to combat misinformation and navigate the complexities of social media platforms. 

He emphasizes the importance of building partnerships with trusted voices, such as medical influencers and patient communities, to effectively communicate with patients. It also underscores the need for transparency and authenticity in pharma's social media presence, including acknowledging and addressing patient concerns and responding to negative feedback.

The conversation concludes with a discussion on the evolving role of social media in healthcare and the potential for private communities and personalized sharing to play a greater role in the future.

What are the consequences of public distrust of social media? How will that impact pharma marketing and the industry's presence on the various social platforms?

Especially in the healthcare category, which in the US is going through so much in terms of public debate, political debate, the whole economic model being called into question, people having questions about their health insurance and what it covers. They're paying more for that insurance and often are paying more out of pocket for drugs. Now you've got companies out there purporting

, ‘Oh, I'll save you all that you don't need a doctor and you don't need a pharmacist and you don't need health insurance, just take this, this magic bottle of pills’

, and if it comes recommended by somebody I trust, who again, may be getting spiffed for making that recommendation, say, 

‘My God, I've never felt so good. I've never felt so young.’

 It's, it's potentially very damaging, and it's a debate that needs to be brought to the forefront much more. Again, I'm as big a fan of alternative medicine as anybody. I have been seeing a naturopath for 20 years. I'm a believer in that stuff, but it has to be regulated and, you know, I have to know that there's some standardization around what I'm getting and some science behind it. But you know, even science itself is now much more open to questions somehow than it's ever been, because even science often is seen as having its own biases, you know, as evidenced by the fact that the number of Flat Earthers is growing in this country.

In this Pharmaceutical Executive video interview, Ian Baer, Founder & CEO of Sooth, speaks about how distrust and uncertainty surrounding social media is impacting the pharmaceutical industry. 

Angela Tenuta, President, Full Service Agencies, at EVERSANA INTOUCH, elaborates on the challenges and strategies for fostering collaboration between different industry groups and pharma companies for the Direct-to-Patient model.

How Can We Foster Collaboration Across the Healthcare Ecosystem to Optimize DTP?

In this Pharmaceutical Executive video interview, Angela Tenuta, President, Full Service Agencies, at EVERSANA INTOUCH, explores the findings of their study 

What Matters Most: The Trends That Will Shape Pharma Marketing In 2025

. Tenuta emphasizes the importance of embracing AI as an innovation and highlights specific examples of how AI is being used to improve efficiency and effectiveness in marketing campaigns. The discussion also discusses the ethical considerations associated with AI, particularly regarding patient privacy and data security. The conversation also touches on the growing importance of direct-to-patient (DTP) models and the challenges and opportunities associated with globalization in healthcare, emphasizing the need for cultural sensitivity and adaptability in global marketing campaigns to effectively reach diverse audiences.

An importance of integrating various healthcare professionals for the Direct-to-Patient model to succeed is highlighted in your study. Can you elaborate on some of the challenges and strategies for fostering collaboration between different industry groups and pharma companies?

The beauty of the whole industry is we are not marketing Coca Cola. We are marketing medications that help the world be more healthy, and live safer, healthier lives. So, all of our intentions are to get patients to drug faster and to connect the dots, and that's amazing. Some brands jump in more than others, like I said, But the challenge really is to look carefully at every product and every batch of the rules under each pharma company house and determine whether it's a fit for something like this. It's not for every condition you if you compare an industry like banking, where 10 years ago, the percentage of people using online banking is nowhere near it is today, Pharma is really in a similar space.

So, we have this opportunity to go figure out the places you're not going to do DTP for oncology. You're not going to do DTP for a disease that impacts juveniles’ populations. You're going to do it in places to start where it can be your more empowered patients taking the steps they need to put the power in their own hands. And also, it does have a huge link over to health equity, because there are a lot of patient groups that don't have necessarily the access, but they are empowered about their health, and they do want to get on treatment and stay on treatment. So, to me, it's just a matter of finding the right zone and then using all of the tools of transformation and collaboration and top-down mandates to get the work done.

In this part of her Pharmaceutical Executive video interview, Angela Tenuta, President, Full Service Agencies, at EVERSANA INTOUCH, elaborates on the challenges and strategies for fostering collaboration between different industry groups and pharma companies for the Direct-to-Patient model.

Amanda Powers-Han, Chief Marketing Officer, Greater Than One and Pharmaceutical Executive Advisory Board Member discusses how CMOs effectively measure the return on investment (ROI) of their marketing efforts in the pharmaceutical industry, particularly in light of the long-term nature of drug development and approval processes.

Measuring the ROI of Marketing Efforts

 Amanda Powers-Han, Chief Marketing Officer, Greater Than One and Pharmaceutical Executive Advisory Board Member discussed the importance of patient engagement in pharma marketing. She emphasized the need for personalized marketing strategies that build trust and ensure data privacy. The use of AI and advanced analytics tools was highlighted as crucial for extracting meaningful insights from healthcare data. Powers-Han also addressed the evolving regulatory landscape and the importance of ethical marketing practices in the digital age. Additionally, conversation was had surrounding the challenges of measuring ROI in the pharmaceutical industry and the potential of personalized audio and video content in future marketing efforts.

How can CMOs effectively measure the return on investment (ROI) of their marketing efforts in the pharmaceutical industry, particularly in light of the long-term nature of drug development and approval processes?

That's the Holy Grail, isn't it? If in how we connect all of the marketing and the investment to the true business outcomes on the back end, there's a number of ways that we can get at that. Of course, when it comes to the leading indicators of advertising and content, we look very careful. At KPIs that we in the client together agree are the most representative of the behaviors that then will lead to those longer term outcomes in terms of brand choice and RX, we also are pushing in the context of HCP marketing to connect all of the campaigns and media to NPI level data. So, as you know, every healthcare professional has an NPI number. All of the NPP programs that we're running, we have the ability to get the NPI level data back, so we see what physicians have been exposed and what physicians have actually engaged with that content. And we have a product that we've developed greater score that creates a weighted scoring system with that NPI level data, so that we can use that data to further optimize our NPP programs. We're feeding that data back into the CRM programs with our clients, and that data is being deployed to the sales team, so that the sales team and NPP are very closely connected and synchronized. 

So, the conversation that we're having create the halo effect and the connectivity ultimately that will drive those HCPs to make RX decisions that hopefully support our brands and businesses. And then, of course, there's the actual RX data. When we have the HCP level NPI data, we can, in fact, connect it to the claims data and the writing behavior. And using our own methodologies, collaborating with clients, we're able to now connect the dots between NPP program, exposure, and engagement to what is being driven in terms of script behavior at the physician level, and with confidence, define and prove the role that NPP has in terms of driving those prescribers to prescribe more the patient, caregiver side is harder. So of course, there's, you know, all of the third party studies, and we work with many of the leading third parties to be able to look at Audience Quality analyzes and then media mix modeling. And ultimately, in many cases, we can get very close to right, what is the business impact that those programs have had, but just in terms of that one to one connection that I teed up on the HCP side of the business, of course, that's not possible in terms of privacy when it comes to caregivers and patients,

In this part of her video interview, Amanda Powers-Han, Chief Marketing Officer, Greater Than One and Pharmaceutical Executive Advisory Board Member discusses how CMOs effectively measure the return on investment (ROI) of their marketing efforts in the pharmaceutical industry, particularly in light of the long-term nature of drug development and approval processes.

Amanda Powers-Han, Chief Marketing Officer, Greater Than One and Pharmaceutical Executive Advisory Board Member discusses how CMOs can leverage artificial intelligence and other advanced analytics tools to extract meaningful insights and optimize marketing strategies.

Using AI and Advanced Analytics Tools to Optimize Marketing Strategies

As the volume and complexity of healthcare data continue to grow, how can CMOs leverage artificial intelligence and other advanced analytics tools to extract meaningful insights and optimize marketing strategies?

I don't believe I've had a client conversation over the last few months that didn't include AI in some way, shape or form. It is just, it is at the heart of our business, and has just exploded with generative AI and just all of the opportunities that that's opened up, some of the ways that we're leveraging AI is back to the idea of precision targeting. We're also internally building AI into many of our own workflows, which is driving efficiencies. And we're seeing a lot of really exciting innovations when it comes to AI driven content development, though we would say that in those cases, we are being very careful and cautious to make sure that it's the humans and those of us working with AI technologies and more of a kind of copilot relationship versus letting AI Drive content decisions. 

What's interesting is, outside of the individual AI platforms, we're seeing that AI capabilities are being built into so many of the tools that we already use, which is wonderful for us, because it creates a really seamless way for us to be able to leverage the technology within and back to the idea of Audience Insights, one of the tools that we use allows us to build segments of rare disease patient populations, and then from that segment be able to tease out what are the media consumption behaviors of those specific populations. And it has an AI capability which helps summarize the insights, and it saves us a tremendous amount of time. And then the other area that we're exploring, that we believe there's a lot of potential, is building our own proprietary products with the help of AI. So, a couple of those are forecasting the right level of investment so that brand marketers know how much they're going to need to spend in order to achieve their business goals, and also connecting the dots so that we can actually look at how the investment is driving business outcomes versus just digital metrics.

In this part of her video interview, Amanda Powers-Han, Chief Marketing Officer, Greater Than One and Pharmaceutical Executive Advisory Board Member discusses how CMOs can leverage artificial intelligence and other advanced analytics tools to extract meaningful insights and optimize marketing strategies.

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