The Impact of Technology on Commercialization: Q&A with Claus Zieler

Claus Zieler
Chief commercial officer
Astellas Pharma

The growth of digital technology and the increase of global and local connectivity has drastically impacted commercialization trends in the pharma industry. Claus Zieler, chief commercial officer at Astellas, spoke with Pharmaceutical Executive about the overall trends in commercialization across the industry.

Pharmaceutical Executive: What are the broad trends for commercialization in the life sciences industry this year?
Claus Zieler: One of the major trends is the rise of the "expert patient" – patients who are better informed than ever about their own health and the health options available to them. Patients have always been at the center of our go-to-market strategies, even while our primary customer remains the healthcare professional who treats them. But with ubiquitous access to health information about diseases, symptoms, and treatment options through digital channels such as websites, social media and health apps, this patient empowerment is demanding a new level of engagement between patients and healthcare professionals. And, in turn, it is demanding that we provide more accessible, personalized education materials in a way that are relevant for the patient.

When I was a sales representative, many years ago, we dropped patient education leaflets at the doctor’s office so that patients could read up on a disease state in the waiting room. That isn’t good enough today! Patient education will always be a key aspect of our work and as patients play a more active role in their care, it is time for us to adapt our approaches to ensure that our educational efforts are meaningful for patients.

PE: How has the growth of digital technology impacted commercialization in recent years?
Zieler: Digital technologies are having a profound effect on our industry. These technologies have been explored for many years on the research side – using artificial intelligence to improve the success rate of drug development or enabling the collection and analysis of real-time data in trials. What is becoming clearer now is the potential of new technologies to improve the broader healthcare ecosystem.

Health professionals, like any other consumer, are seeking information and enhancing their knowledge using multiple channels, including webinars, emails, and virtual congresses. At the heart of this is the evolution of our traditional customer engagement model to meet the needs of digital citizens.

We must deliver a customer-centric, omnichannel approach that allows for more personalized and responsive engagement, ensuring that healthcare professionals receive the information they need through the channels they prefer. This isn’t easy, adding a complexity to our interactions. We need to focus on “Right customer…right message…right time…” and now, right channel mix. It’s the fourth dimension. Of course, it is challenging but the availability of new data analytics is helping us. During my early career, when I was in the salesforce, we were very much paper-based, manually tracking our interactions with healthcare professionals. Then the shift to digital CRM tools changed our customer engagement, allowing us to better manage our customer relationships. And now, we are investing in data analytics to better understand customers’ preferences. Having data analysts within the Medical Affairs and Commercial organizations isn’t something I had really imagined, but it is the new reality!

Another thing we must also be clear about is that digital channels are complementary to face to face channels, not a substitute. We know from research that human interactions, augmented with digital approaches, are more successful than digital alone.

PE: How has increased global/local connectivity impacted commercialization?
Zieler: Launching numerous innovative products in parallel, as we are currently doing at Astellas, perfectly illustrates the need for absolute connectivity between the global center and our local affiliates, as well as between the two main customer-engaging functions, Medical Affairs and Commercial. The scale of this opportunity and achieving the full potential of these products for patients, demands that we excel in our execution and avoid any disconnects between the different parts of our organization.

My team and I continually ask the question, ‘how can we do the best for patients?’ – that is our purpose, our clear North Star. It is a question that ensures that we define the best approach to engage with customers, and we are doing that at Astellas today with global and local connectivity, and with integrated plans across functions. I always say that strategy accounts for around 30 per cent of value creation, but that 70 per cent comes from execution. Successful execution requires excellence, driven locally across multiple functions, and in lock step with global strategies and launch frameworks.

Our local teams have a deep understanding of our customers, and they are best placed to ensure that our strategies are tailored to the healthcare systems they operate in. This local approach also fosters better relationships with local experts and patient advocacy groups, allowing for a more nuanced understanding of patient needs. It gives us the best chance to deliver faster, customised and impactful outcomes for our customers and, ultimately, for patients. I dream of an organization where everyone, whether at a global or local level, feels empowered, accountable, and is able to move at pace, That is the way we can achieve the full potential of our products – and the best outcomes for patients.

PE: What is the impact that personalized medicine is having on commercialization?
Zieler: Our industry is on the verge of a revolution with personalized, tailor-made therapies for individual patients. This opportunity to move from chronic disease management to potential one-off and even curative treatments, tackling the areas of greatest unmet need, is really quite extraordinary. But it presents one of the biggest challenges our healthcare system has faced – not only whether we can develop new cutting-edge treatments and cures, but whether healthcare systems are going to be able to afford and patients able to access them. That requires partnership and collaboration to ensure that patients have access to new medicines in the future. Ultimately, sustainable access to innovative medicines – including these personalized medicines – means properly funding the innovation cycle. If we break the innovation cycle, the impact on patients and healthcare systems will have a far greater cost than the short-term savings on medicines.

What is clear is that some of these innovative therapies will require a new model. Funding a one-time infusion, rather than paying for a pack of tablets each month, is a very different payment stream for a government or private insurer. This forces us to determine the value of the treatment, not monthly or over, let’s say, 20 years, but in one moment. This will be one of the big questions of the next decade, and it will be quite a challenge. We all have a role to play – our industry, governments and healthcare systems around the world – but I am confident that we can address this challenge, because ultimately we are all working towards the same goal, which is to ensure better outcomes for patients.