Ogilvy picks Carsten Edwards to lead new market access business
pharmafile | May 6, 2011 | News story | Medical Communications, Sales and Marketing | Ogilvy, Ogilvy Healthworld Market Access, medical communications
Ogilvy Healthworld has appointed Carsten Edwards to head its new market access business.
Edwards will be managing partner of market access services and moves to Ogilvy at the end of June from Chandler Chicco Companies, where he was managing director for Brandtectonics Access.
Before that he was customer marketing manager at Bristol-Myers Squibb, working across oncology, immunology, virology, cardiovascular disease and diabetes.
Ogilvy is, in effect, mirroring the pharma industry by creating a core specialist team – the London-based Ogilvy Healthworld Market Access – which is currently Neil McGregor-Paterson, as interim managing partner of access operations, plus Edwards when he arrives.
“One of the most important commercial priorities for the pharmaceutical industry is to obtain full reimbursement, at an optimal price for their products,” explained McGregor-Paterson.
Pharma has “recognised that it needs to place market access at the heart of its commercial structures, a process that more often than not involves significant internal re-alignment”, he added.
Edwards and McGregor-Paterson will in turn co-ordinate the activities of ten existing Ogilvy Healthworld staff from disciplines such as PR and medical education, with experience of market access programmes, who will form an extended team.
“So we have still got each of the comms disciplines, with an added specialist market access service,” said McGregor-Paterson. “Before you’d have different teams, very often working in silos.”
“Market access today can, and should include all the key commercial disciplines, from pricing, health economics and outcomes research to government affairs, stakeholder relations, communications and payer marketing,” he concluded.
More staff will be recruited to the core London market access team in the future, although the business, which started a month ago, has no specific clients of its own yet.
Ogilvy already has an established ‘payer marketing’ service in the US, with Ogilvy Healthworld Market Access becoming the European hub for such business.
Edwards, who will be responsible for working with the US team, has also been director of strategic marketing at EURO RSCG Life as well as working for Shire, Biogen, Serono and Janssen Cilag.
Adam Hill
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