EUCOPE Member Spotlight: Q&A with EVERSANA

Every month, EUCOPE spotlights a member company and the great work it’s doing to advance the life sciences industry and drive innovation to serve patients better. This September, we spoke with Mike Ryan, Manager, Europe, EVERSANA.

Mike Ryan has worked across the life sciences and pharmaceutical industries for more than 28 years. He has held global leadership positions in both clinical development and life sciences software companies. Given this experience, he understands the use of technology and its impact in simplifying the process of developing and delivering novel therapies to help drive patient accessibility worldwide. He has worked with many biotech and pharmaceutical companies to develop clinical pathways that deliver the ultimate commercial goals required to ensure success for all stakeholders. Mike speaks at global industry events to promote innovation in healthcare and encourage a greater level of partnership between healthcare stakeholders, leading EVERSANA’s growing presence across Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

Tell us about your organisation and its mission and how you drive innovation internally?

EVERSANA came to life in October of 2018 when six premier service providers in the life sciences industry were joined together by Water Street Health Care Partners and JLL Partners to create the industry’s first outsourced commercialisation model.

The company’s premise was simple: The current drug development and commercialisation model was broken and a new perspective was needed. The model for outsourcing services in pharma, especially in drug commercialisation, was very fragmented. It was common to have eight to 10 vendors, each with individual priorities and often competing interests. This made the already difficult role of commercialisation leaders even more challenging.

EVERSANA’s approach is to deliver a fully integrated service portfolio to help life sciences leaders create value for key constituents across the product lifecycle. The company’s integrated solutions address the shift to value-based, patient-centred care and deliver long-term, sustainable value for payers, providers, channel partners and patients.

Our mission was, and continues to be, to create a healthier world for all by working for our customers to help solve their most complex commercialisation challenges and ultimately bring new therapies to market to help patients.

And we’re doing it.

Over nearly six years, we’ve seen dramatic growth and we collaborate with companies of all sizes to bring new treatment options to patients throughout Europe and North America. We are a team deeply rooted in our beliefs, always putting patients first while solving drug pricing, promotion, access, reimbursement, adherence and product delivery challenges in multiple markets.

How do your organisation’s activities help patients now and into the future?

Everything we do is centred on a “Patient First” mindset. No matter where a client may be in their commercialisation journey, we start discussions by focusing on the people who will benefit from the therapy.

Sometimes, we are several layers removed from the patient when you talk pricing structure for a drug or reimbursement models or market access, but we must remember that behind every product we support there is a face, a patient, who relies on it. We never lost that focus and we never will!

In the United States, we offer a very large patient services support model, where we help answer calls from patients, ship drugs from our pharmacy or through our distribution channels, manage medical information centres to connect with doctors and much more.

Here in Europe, we are seeing a growing interest in many of these services, especially our medical information, market access and marketing agency solutions. The rise of digital therapeutics, direct-to-patient models and other emerging trends presents endless opportunities for a life sciences company, with our support, to bring new solutions to market.

But it is hard. It requires experts who understand what it takes to commercialise and who have a proven track record. We offer those experts and a set of tools that make self-commercialisation a reality for all life sciences development companies.

What do you see as the biggest challenge facing the life sciences industry today?

Increasingly complex regulatory hurdles compounded by payer demand impacts the ability for companies to bring therapies to market quickly, and these continue to be the biggest challenges we see. Why is it that in some countries a drug can complete the appropriate approval and reimbursement processes in one year, but it may take five years for that same therapy to be approved in another country in Europe?

It is not right for many reasons, but mostly because a patient is losing time to gain access to a solution that could help them. Market access is a big challenge.

The other challenge we see is financial. Bringing a therapy to market is expensive. While the investment climate in some parts of the world is ticking up, creating ways to bring needed therapies to market with the right level of funding will continue to be a challenge.

What are the major health policy issues and themes that you are most focused on in 2024?

Health policies on a global level are complex, with unique considerations by country and region.

Today, more than ever, it makes more sense for manufacturers to focus more on providing more access to medicines for patients outside of the United States. Often, however, the cost of providing healthcare is under considerable scrutiny, especially the cost of new therapies.

From a European perspective, we believe we can help manufacturers better understand EU legislation regarding the life sciences industry, how it is changing, how they can influence it and what steps they need to take to become more competitive in this extremely important region.

The most important issue we see that we must continue to fight for is access. Patients deserve therapies no matter where they live, and brands must be able to navigate the complexity of market access with a partner that knows what it takes to bring new options to market.

What attracted you to join EUCOPE, and how can we help you achieve your business goals?

EUCOPE is the perfect organisation for EVERASNA to be a part of. Its mission to give a bigger voice to small and midsize, innovative companies working in the biopharmaceutical and medical device technology sectors mirrors what we do. We want to connect and be engaged with companies and associations that share our purpose of making the world better through advancements in health innovation. EUCOPE allows us to do this.

EUCOPE also has a focus on rare diseases, as do we. And finally, EUCOPE mirrors the diversity of our employee and client populations across Europe. We have employees across 15 countries in Europe and clients in more than a dozen. To do this, you must be connected to organisations that embrace the diversity that makes Europe so special. EUCOPE is that type of organization.

We couldn’t be more excited to be a member and look forward to being more involved soon.