Modernizing Market Access and Patient Support Services: Q&A with Cam Olig

In a survey of Pharmaceutical Executive and Pharmaceutical Commerce readers, respondents were asked a series of questions related to market access and the challenges that pharma and biotech companies are facing. Respondents ranged from large pharma companies (in the global top 20) to mid-size pharma/biotechs.

The survey asked about the following topics:

• Market access pressures
• The drug distribution system’s impact on access and affordability
• Access-related friction points in the patient journey
• Data limitations
• Scaling patient support models for product launches

The evolution of market access and patient support in the coming years

Cam Olig, chief commercial officer at Prescryptive Health, spoke with Pharmaceutical Executive about the survey’s results and how the industry is adapting to face the challenges noted by the respondents.

The results of the survey revealed that the growing direct-to-patient approach is having a significant impact on how companies approach market access decisions. While it provides more control for pharma and biotechs, this model also creates new challenges that must be solved for to provide a positive patient experience.

Pharmaceutical Executive: Managing GTN economics was the top market access pressure in our survey, and nearly 40% of pharma respondents expect to pursue direct-to-patient models in the next 24–36 months. How does Prescryptive see those two trends as connected?
Cam Olig: GTN pressure is exposing the limits of the current system, and the move toward direct models reconnects price, access, and the patient. I think what we’re seeing, and what we hear from pharma here, is a shift from trying to optimize within a complex system to exploring approaches that simplify the path to the patient.

Direct models have the potential to reduce friction in how therapies are accessed while creating more alignment between financial outcomes and patient outcomes.

Pharmaceutical Executive: Coverage and authorization delays topped the list of access friction points, followed by onboarding abandonment driven by administrative and economic barriers. Where does technology have the most immediate impact?
Olig: Technology can move a reactive model to a proactive one, where the patient sees their price, options, pharmacy choice, and more, while they are still at the point of prescribing. That supports timely, informed choice, rather than a process that happens at the pharmacy counter or even after the medication is picked up.

Removing uncertainty at the point of prescribing is our approach, and that offers value downstream.

Pharmaceutical Executive: Respondents cited technology limitations as the top constraint on scaling patient support, and siloed data and lack of real-time visibility as their biggest data challenges. What does end-to-end real-time visibility actually look like in practice, and what decisions does it unlock?
Olig: When we talk about end-to-end, real-time visibility, it’s easy to think about it as just a data problem. It’s also a consumer experience problem.

Today, most patients are navigating access without the basic information they need to act: What will this cost me? Where can I get it? Real-time visibility means that just after the provider writes the prescription, the patient can navigate through their prescription workflow – seeing their actual price and pharmacy options, available support programs and services – and immediately take action. That’s what turns a patient into a healthcare consumer, someone who can make informed decisions in real time.

A benefit of this integrated consumer experience is the availability of data and information for employers and payers and pharma manufacturers to help them understand what drives abandonment and where we lose patients in the journey toward therapy.

Pharmaceutical Executive: Nearly 40% said limited channel transparency is a fundamental structural barrier to improving access and affordability. How does Prescryptive's model address that gap—and how do you see the role of intermediaries evolving?
Olig: Historically, transparency has been difficult because the current system wasn’t designed to provide meaningful information in real time. It was designed around a series of negotiated and sequential processes.

What we’re seeing now is a shift toward models where transparency is embedded in how the system works, not added on through reporting or reconciliation. It’s built in.

At Prescryptive, we think about this in an approach that creates connectivity and alignment through technology and infrastructure. Our model is designed to bring pricing, access, and fulfillment together in a direct access approach that's a system redesign rather than a service layer.

Intermediaries aren't going away, but their role will evolve as part of the market shift we're seeing toward direct access.

Pharmaceutical Executive: Some respondents plan to increase use of specialized HUB partners, while others want to use technology to fundamentally reevaluate the HUB model entirely. Those feel like two different bets. Where does Prescryptive sit in that spectrum?
Olig: We are on the technology side of the spectrum.

Prescryptive’s platform serves as the orchestration layer supporting pharma manufacturer’s direct channel strategies. We believe that the patient experience, from prescription through fulfillment, should provide people with the choices and information to more quickly navigate to better outcomes and therapy.

Through our modular approach we find that pharma can optimize what they are already doing well while helping to quickly get more patients on therapy. And we are just beginning to understand the value for pharma of having an enduring consumer engagement strategy upstream of the PBM and pharmacies.