The world of pharma today seems to demand much more crosstalk than 10 years ago between the commercial and R&D functions, with respect to issues such as:

- Appropriate development pathway to meet market demand
- Planning development around cost-effectiveness rather than pure clinical effectiveness
- Understanding and diagnosing the appropriate patient pool
- Identifying key product benefits / USPs

...and there are many other areas.

I am interested to hear from pharmaphorum readers whether they see better communication across research, development, marketing, market intelligence / analytics and sales today than previously?

If yes - then how and in what areas?
If no - why not and does it negatively influence the company?

Let people know your thoughts please....

Posted 23rd February 2010, 17:56:38

Well they're about as physically removed as it's possible to be within one country - is that bad?

Posted 25th February 2010, 14:03:53

I do see more crosstalk, typically in areas such as market access where increasingly the commercial folks need to liaise with R&D earlier on to ensure both reimbursement and regulatory approval are factored into trials.

However, speaking generally, the two sides do come from quite different mindsets - R&D tend to focus more on producing good drugs that clinically work, whereas commercial are (unsurprisingly) more focussed on the commercial side of it.

When it works the two sides recognise the middle ground of access to good medicines at a fair price, but these issues often need to be addressed upfront to ensure cooperation and to avoid any underlying "mistrust".

Posted 1st March 2010, 22:49:43

If you are leading a therapeutic area on the commercial side, you simply cannot do your job properly if you are not regularly engaging with R&D. However, often this does not happen enough because people have too short term a focus (and incentivisation) because they know they will have moved roles in 2-3 years so anything not in late phase III isn't worth being concerned about.

Longer term planning and liaison with R&D should be factored into performance plans on the commercial side.

Posted 5th March 2010, 14:21:43

gs said
Longer term planning and liaison with R&D should be factored into performance plans on the commercial side.

All well and good in theory but practically how do you do this? What do you measure? How do you incentivise someone against something that can't be measured until they've long since moved on from the role?

Just my (slightly skeptical) 2 cents.

Posted 9th March 2010, 11:37:43

I think it is acknowledged more, but still woefully ignored in practice.

Lots of reasons - a lack of understanding of the R&D function by commercial teams is one of them

One thing I would like to see more is developing fully crossfunctional teams to follow a product through its lifecycle - actual individuals who stay on board for several years. But current management doctrine is contrary to that.....

Posted 18th March 2010, 10:36:40

I think you need to separate the two sides of R&D here. There is no reason why the "R" side should have regular contact with commercial, other than working in areas / molecules that fit in with the grand commercial strategy.

On the "D" side I would say communication is pretty good actually, certainly in later-stage trials. I would say, however, that in my (fairly limited to be honest) experience development and commercial do seem a little better coordinated in Europe than in the US. Not sure why.

Posted 21st May 2010, 12:18:49

While communication is generally improving there remains the central problem that R&D's focus is on registration of the product; all their work is rightly directed at that and so the outputs they produce demonstrate the efficacy and safety of the product. What commercial (and customers) the world over are demanding is cost-efficacy demonstration. Until this becomes part of what R&D are supposed to do the gulf will remain and products will come to market at the mercy of HTA.

Posted 19th June 2010, 05:16:32

I think it's probably best that I don't answer specifically to the question "how are YOUR..." because I'm not a licensed spokesperson for my current employer.

What I can tell you, is that, generally (and I base this on observations across several pharma companies) this is an area that is not well co-ordinated at all. In one organization that I worked for the R&D guys had incentives, i.e. got bonus, purely on registration of a product. They then throw it over the wall for the Commercial guys to catch it and go sell it. Not ideal.

I can also tell you that some "smart" pharma companies have identified this already as being a critical area of need for improvement. If you don't have commercial input, as early as phase II, then your chance of getting not just a registration, but a reimbursable registration is severely damaged. The regulatory environment is extremely tough and regulators are demanding a value proposition in return for reimbursement and registration. You need to put thought into building that value proposition early on in the development process - not post launch when it's too late.

Some other "smart" pharma companies now incentivise their R&D people not on "registration" but only on achievement of "reimbursable registration" or even the commercial success one year post launch. These are encouraging signs.

But the facts are that most companies aren't here yet. They want to keep the scientists and the commercial folk apart. They haven't spotted the glaring need for them to come together, several years, pre-launch.

Posted 23rd June 2010, 20:48:33

Ha ha - nice disclaimer!

On a serious note I'd be interested to know how incentivising R&D folk on commercial success one year post-launch works. This could easily be 4-5 years down the line for phase II drugs - will they really be in the same role?

Posted 7th July 2010, 10:51:59

jdc said
On a serious note I'd be interested to know how incentivising R&D folk on commercial success one year post-launch works. This could easily be 4-5 years down the line for phase II drugs - will they really be in the same role?

Well R&D folk are used to the idea of surrogate endpoints. You're right that they probably won't be in the job 4-5 years later but if you can identify success factors that are indicative of likely approval / market access etc. then this would work.

Posted 16th July 2010, 15:45:51

Not sure what those success factors would be. It would be hard to make them SMART objectives and we all know how we like those....