Given today’s health care market complexities, how do you position your company and your new product to win at launch? In December 2019 we conducted a pre-launch survey to help biotech and pharmaceutical executives answer this question and identify how and when to invest in their product launch.
We analyzed a sample of 16 recent product launches according to two criteria: the product’s perceived level of differentiation from existing treatments and the impact of the product’s value story at launch. Our analysis revealed that just 25 percent of upcoming launches in the sample showed significant differentiation while more than 50 percent showed moderate or no differentiation and will need to find a positioning edge to drive both willingness to prescribe and willingness to pay. .
Boulder Biotech Launch Specialists Pre-Launch Survey, n = 16 (Dec-19)
We are all standing in quicksand – the world is literally changing under our feet and unless the biopharma industry adapts and evolves outside the comfort zone of legacy launch models, we are headed to missed opportunities and more poorly executed product launches going forward. Over the next four years, it is expected that biopharma companies will launch 54 new products per year. R&D investment continues to focus on areas of high unmet need in rare disease, orphan and oncology products, with nearly two thirds of launches expected to be from specialty drugs. New modalities, like cell and gene therapies, are expected to drive a significant number of new launches over the next decade and FDA has shown a willingness to work with industry to shorten development times underscoring the need to begin launch preparations as early as Phase 1.
Capturing full value from every product launch is critical. But with only about a third of launches meeting or exceeding analysts’ sales expectations, the challenge is considerable, and only getting more difficult as the old model of reach, frequency, and scale no longer apply. Physician, payer, and pharmacy decision makers are changing the rules of the game, increasing hurdles to access, raising the bar on value definition and demonstration of real-world clinical application via Real World Evidence (RWE) development.
At the same time, launches are becoming smaller, more targeted in well-defined patient populations, and more competitive (many therapeutic options, many generic). In a world of mounting pressure on margins, growing market complexity, and more targeted launches, companies face the questions: (1) How can we deliver on sales expectations at launch? and (2) How can we ensure that patients have access to potentially curative new medicines?
Download the full survey results and post your comments and feedback below.