The COVID-19 coronavirus and pharma and biotech continuity planning

Overview

Pharmaceutical and biotech companies around the globe are working with Governments to address the COVID-19 outbreak, from supporting the development of vaccines to planning for medicines supply chain challenges.

Healthcare systems are being put under significant pressure, at a time when many are already over-stretched, medical congresses are being cancelled, and bans on non-essential travel and enforced home working are emerging. Meanwhile, at local country level, Italy has gone into a country-wide lockdown and in China measures to prevent the virus’ spread have seen API manufacturing plants go offline.

This pharmaphorum webinar, held in association with IQVIA, took place on Wednesday 18th March from 12:30-13:30 GMT with expert speakers outlining potential scenarios, considerations and decisions that pharma and biotech would wish to plan for.

Focus

This COVID-19 continuity planning webinar looked at:

• COVID-19's potential impact on global pharmaceutical market dynamics
• Ways to support supply chain management
• Maintaining open lines of communication with healthcare professionals
• The application of artificial intelligence to potentially predict COVID-19 spread and patient infection
• Learning from China

To view the webinar on demand, please click here or on the button above or below.

Our Panel

Sarah Rickwood, Vice President, European Marketing and Thought Leadership, IQVIA

Sarah Rickwood has 28 years’ experience as a consultant to the pharmaceutical industry, having worked in Accenture’s pharmaceutical strategy practice prior to joining IQVIA. She has an extremely wide experience of international pharmaceutical industry issues, having worked for most of the world’s leading pharmaceutical companies on issues in the US, Europe, Japan, and leading emerging markets. She is now Vice President, European Marketing and Thought Leadership in IQVIA, a team she has run for 10 years.

Sarah presents to hundreds of pharmaceutical industry clients every year on a wide range of global pharmaceutical industry issues, and has published white papers on many topics, including:

• Uptake and impact of innovative medicines, and challenges for Launch Excellence
• The relative strength and prognosis for the developed and the emerging pharmaceutical markets
• The global uptake and impact of multichannel marketing
• Biosimilars market opportunity and the drivers of market establishment
• Orphan drugs launch challenges
• Cell and gene therapies commercialisation challenges and opportunity
• The evolution of the global biologics market
• Africa pharmaceutical market opportunity and challenges

Sarah holds a degree in biochemistry from Oxford University.

Benjamin Hughes, Senior Vice President, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Real-World Data (RWD), IQVIA

Dr. Ben Hughes is responsible for the company’s global strategy and implementation across the use of real world data, technology analytics, and artificial intelligence – encompassing Life-Sciences, Payor, Provider and Government customers.

Ben’s team curates the world's largest collection of real-world data and builds various world leading SaaS & AI software platforms to protect and analyse patient level data (e.g., privacy, NLP, Genomics, AutoML or clinical decision support). Ben leads IQVIA’s Artificial Intelligence Council, and actively contributes to various industry initiatives such as the EU AI Alliance, AiMed ambassadors, or various open source initiatives on data such as OHDSI.

Prior to IQVIA, Ben was an associate partner at McKinsey & Company, where he co-led their health informatics practice in Europe. A widely published author on health informatics, Ben holds a PhD in Medical Informatics from ESADE Barcelona, an MBA from HEC Paris, a MRes from ESADE Barcelona, and Masters & Bachelors in Physics from UCL, London.

Rob Heathcote, Director, UK&I Product Development, IQVIA

After starting out in the pharmaceutical industry as a medical sales representative, Rob has spent the next 20 years in business intelligence and market research roles with two leading pharmaceutical companies working across broad range of areas from sub-national sales analytics for big primary care field forces, through to bespoke investigative market research in speciality care, strategic planning, forecasting, and Information Strategy.

Rob joined IQVIA 4 years ago to head up the Product Management team, developing and evolving the company’s core data offerings; utilising new technology platforms to improve the delivery of data to clients.

Rob is an elected member of the board of the British Healthcare Business Intelligence Association (BHBIA) promoting the excellence and integrity of Business Intelligence within the Healthcare Industry.

Rob has a BSc dual honours degree in Pharmacology and Chemistry from the University of Sheffield.

Richard Gray, Director, UK&I Technology Solutions, IQVIA

Richard heads up IQVIA Technologies UKI, with a focus on delivering customer value across the fully connected eco-system of commercial technology solutions, from molecule to market.  With a career focused in Life Science, he is driven to use his experience in customer engagement and multi-channel management to deliver business impact and to leverage data intelligence to improve customer experience.

Richard started his career as a Data Analyst in 1994 and has always worked in client facing roles, gaining extensive knowledge of data, technology, services and consulting, both from a strategic HO level right down to tactical field implementation.

Howard Chen, Management Consulting Senior Principal, IQVIA

Howard is a Management Consulting Senior Principal based in Shanghai, China.

With more than 15 years of management consulting, investment and banking experiences in the healthcare industry across the US, the APAC region and China, Howard has significant expertise in corporate strategy, portfolio strategy, brand strategy, new product launch, market access strategy, and financial advisory and investment strategy for pharmaceutical and medical technology/device players. He has supported numerous cross-border M&A deals and fundraising for various healthcare players.

Howard holds an MBA from Nangyang Technological University, Singapore.

Moderated by Paul Tunnah, CEO, pharmaphorum

Paul Tunnah is CEO and Founder of pharmaphorum media, which facilitates productive engagement for pharma, bringing healthcare together to drive medical innovation. It combines industry-leading content and social media engagement services with the globally recognised news, information and insight portal pharmaphorum.com, working with pharmaceutical companies, service providers and broader healthcare organisations to help communicate their thought leadership and connect them with relevant stakeholders.