The role of market access leaders in driving access to innovative therapies

At Sanofi, every decision we make is driven by our purpose to improve the lives of people diagnosed with disease – whatever their circumstances, ensuring that we remain a driving force for advancing access to transformative therapies.

This ethos is central to my mindset as Head of Specialty Care Account Management, Market Access and the way I approach my job to lead and empower a team that consistently finds new ways of bringing innovation and value to people living with disease.

Market access provides a crucial interface between medicine brand teams, payers, and providers who are the essential delivery partners in ensuring patient access. Therefore, a key priority for us is ensuring that payers are provided with relevant information about our treatment options.

This access interface needs to be viewed as an investment, by the pharmaceutical industry, payers, and policymakers. I liken the function of market access as similar to the architect and builder: constructing the venue that enables engagement and activity to happen on its foundations and within its parameters.

To design the frameworks and facilitate the connections that drive access to the therapies that people need, I prioritize three areas as part of my leadership approach:

Building trust and collaboration

Drawing on my extensive experience in market access, I know that customer trust in the people that represent industry is fundamental to ensuring an efficient working arrangement and limited disruption to medicine access.

First and foremost, I encourage my account teams to understand our customers as people and to gain a deeper understanding of their working styles and motivations. Then we connect this with how our customer service, science, data, and solutions can support them.

I think it is important that those in leadership positions demonstrate their learnings of how to build positive relationships, anticipate client needs, and manage challenges when they arise. At Specialty Care Market Access (SCMA), we share these reflections during team meetings and one-to-one feedback sessions, fostering an open environment for continuous improvement.

Improving our engagement with customers

The Sanofi SCMA team is consistently tasked to review how we can deliver an improved service for payers. One of the ways that we strive to improve our customers’ user experience is through an emphasis on greater digital access to our portfolio and utilizing technology to enhance communication to resolve customer needs faster.

A cornerstone of this ambition is the new Specialty Care Market Access website in development for a payer audience. This new offer will put payer customers in the driving seat by providing - after completing certain registration requirements - improved access to population-based health economic information, and sight of Sanofi’s portfolio and certain information about upcoming pipeline developments.

Sanofi SCMA continually strives to be the partner our managed markets customers want us to be—collaborative, dependable, and transparent – and our new platform will help us to do this by engaging customers in new and unique ways.

Investing in innovative pathways to access and affordability

The market access environment continues to evolve rapidly, as do the expectations of our customers, patients, and policymakers. The pharmaceutical industry needs to ensure that we are staying ahead of the curve, delivering an improved service, and meeting expectations.

Sanofi is committed to collaborating with our partners to find mutual solutions and improved ways of working. Our approach ensures that all our organizations can grow together while prioritizing the best outcomes for patients.

We can proudly demonstrate how we are engaging with payers in a different way – beyond traditional contracting models – to create greater innovative pathways to access and affordability.

These new ways of working include an initiative spearheaded by our respiratory team to identify patients who may have unmet needs in primary care settings. This initiative helps us accomplish the shared goals between Sanofi and the payer community to improve patient outcomes, advance care, and achieve better disease control.

The team I lead looks to bring similar holistic solutions with partners across our specialty care portfolio with the ultimate aim of improving patient outcomes and reducing inefficiencies in the system.

Looking ahead

As we near the end of 2024, I am pleased to reflect on the innovations – meeting significant patient need – that Sanofi has received regulatory approval for. I am even prouder of the way my team designs and builds the access framework with external partners to ensure these technologies are made accessible to people in need. Looking ahead, we have a strong pipeline and will need to re-double our efforts in 2025 with our partners in the health system.

Daye Bexley is Head of Specialty Care Account Management, Market Access at Sanofi.

At Sanofi, we’re committed to advancing scientific innovation to make meaningful breakthroughs and improving the lives of patients in the United States and around the world. Sanofi’s Specialty Care portfolio includes therapies across immunology, neurology, oncology, rare blood disorders, and rare disease.