Regions
MAIN/REGIONS
regions/
Regions
  1. Americas
  2. Asia & Oceania
  3. Europe
  4. Middle East & Africa
  1. Solutions
  2. Insights
  3. Contact Us
MAIN/search
MAIN/Solutions
Solutions/
SOLUTIONS
  • NHS Solutions
  • Life Sciences Industry
  • Advancing UK Healthcare
  • Pharmacy Communications
NHS Solutions

Utilising the extensive range of data assets exclusively available to IQVIA, combined with our market leading expertise, we are able to support the NHS meet the challenge of delivering high quality, efficient and cost effective healthcare by identifying actionable insight and realising the value in data.

Learn More
NHS Solutions
Life Sciences Industry

We believe in the UK’s potential to become a global leader in the life sciences sector, and our investments announced in the 2018 Second Life Sciences Sector Deal further support the UK Government and the industry’s aim to make that potential a reality.

Learn More
Life Sciences Industry Solutions
Advancing UK Healthcare

We are committed to providing solutions that inform and enable all stakeholders across UK healthcare, to innovate with confidence, maximise opportunities, and, ultimately, drive human health outcomes forward.

Learn More
Advancing UK Healthcare Solutions
Pharmacy Communications

IQVIA’s Pharmacy Communications offers pharma companies a simple and cost-effective channel to communicate product changes, updates and patient advice directly to patients via pharmacists.

Learn More
MAIN/Insights
Insights/
BLOGS, WHITEPAPERS & CASE STUDIES

Explore our library of resources spanning the healthcare & life science ecosystem on the latest topics, trends, and market developments that matter to you.

Learn More
NEWSROOM

Stay up to date on the latest news and press releases from IQVIA UK & Ireland.

Learn More

Report

"Our commitment to sustainability.

Learn More
MAIN/Contact Us
Contact Us/
Blog
What is Market Access?
Neil Bunker, Consultant
Sep 02, 2021

Market Access. It’s a tricky thing. Attempting to define it, to ‘pin it down’, is a little like pinning down a cloud. The ‘life’ of the subject casually drifts away leaving the blog post writer with only a bland statement representing words on a page that capture little of the essence of the subject.

Published definitions typically cite vague, open ended, objectives such as: ‘creating a positive environment to influence uptake’, ‘demonstrating value to the right stakeholder in the right way’ or ‘packaging data to support the strategic brand story’.

Even among the initiated these definitions raise more questions than they provide answers. What counts as a positive environment? How is value measured? Which stakeholders influence uptake and how? What data? Is the ‘right stakeholder’ for the data the same stakeholder that influences uptake?

The answers to these questions depend upon who you ask and, collectively, reveal that Market Access is more an art than a science.

Speak to a Strategic Market Access consultant and you’ll learn that Market Access is navigating the shifting sands of the healthcare landscape; understanding who to speak to, when and about what? Providing answers to questions such as: ‘At what point should Industry speak to the Commercial Medicines Unit rather than NICE?’ or ‘Do ICSs or the PCNs have greater influence over prescribing in primary care?’

Value and Pricing are two halves of the same access coin. Demonstrating benefit to the health system in terms, not only of product cost, but in a broader Health Economy sense. Can an innovative technology be both profitable and affordable? What needs to be done to ensure the former for Industry and the latter for the NHS?

Innovative access schemes for Orphan Medicines, Innovation and Technology Payments for Devices and lifestyle management pilot schemes for Consumer Health products blur the lines between Market Access and External Affairs, influencing the highest levels of Government Healthcare policy to ensure a better deal for patients.

Meanwhile, the Infield Market Access team will tell you that Market Access is taking the understanding, the value messaging, into hospitals and commissioners within Integrated Care Systems to ensure that available products are used by clinical services.

The Business Intelligence team may say that all of this is made possible with data. Market Access without relevant, high quality data in support is guesswork. Intelligence-led market access requires the ability to take an understanding of the healthcare system and apply it to data to generate true insight. Insights that can then be used to help identify unmet need and the prioritisation of access in those areas.

Market Access is all the above and more. The access umbrella spans the full product journey from submitting a dossier for Regulatory approval to supporting product uptake via a joint working project with local NHS services. In truth, Market Access is doing everything necessary to ensure medicines and medical health technologies are available to clinicians when the patient needs them.

And that last point is key …

Because, ultimately, Market Access is facilitating an improvement in patients’ lives.

To get more information on how the IQVIA Market Access team can help you, get in touch.

Contact Us