Health

At the heart of our Global Strategy Team lies a relentless pursuit. It’s our unwavering commitment to connect the world of science to real-life impact.

Working closely with our pharma and biotech clients, and with our VML Health colleagues around the globe, we navigate the intricate terrain of today’s healthcare landscape, to seamlessly merge the value of scientific innovation with the lives of those who need it most.

We’re bolder when we’re borderless.

By breaking silos, we unearth the true essence of health. Within the Global Strategy Team, we unite strategic disciplines that were once isolated. Here, brand experts, omnichannel specialists, and medical strategists converge with strategic consultants, market access experts and patient advocates to address challenges that permeate the health ecosystem.

Together, we craft the roadmap and solutions that guide success across the entire product lifecycle: from early commercialization and disease leadership to brand building and launch planning - into life-cycle management and the integration of new technologies into global healthcare systems.

Market access that bridges the gap between R&D, brands, patients, and providers

Market access is not an add-on service. Anything but. In an increasingly cost-constrained environment, market access is an integral discipline that bridges the gap between R&D, brands, patients, and providers to help them:

• Building a commercially viable product that satisfies an unmet need.
• Identifying eligible patients and providing equitable, rapid, and sustained access to treatment.
• Generating and communicating data for the stakeholders involved in the adoption of the drug, helping them align care pathways, build capacity, train, and prepare.
• Collating evidence of the drug’s value for the stakeholders whose task it is to make sure products and services are fairly priced and reimbursed.

For a brand to be truly connected to the patient and physician experience, it must be accessible.

We bring together health economic analyses, clinical expertise, and communications excellence to create truly meaningful, evidence-based value narratives that meet market demands. Our approach goes beyond a traditional agency model – bringing multi-functional thinking to drive a value transformation strategy and optimize market access and coverage.

We bring an immersive approach to understanding the mindset of key customers, and then create a customized plan for disseminating evidence-based value across the spectrum of stakeholders.

We know that these large, sophisticated, fragmented, and complex provider and payer systems have increasingly broad influence on healthcare decision-making, so our team includes strategic subject matter experts with insights into PBMs, IDNs, payers, and all forms of organized customers, coupled with creative and account management experts.

Globally, Health Technology Assessment (HTA) collaborations are increasing, changing the payer sphere of influence. Cross border procurement collaborations are growing, broadening the buying power of individual markets, and providing transparency on price, which creates its own challenges. As payers try to reduce uncertainty in their decision-making, robust real-world evidence is becoming more and more essential, requiring our clients to invest in extensive Phase IV and registry work. Innovative contracting is also on the rise (particularly for ATMPs) with markets increasingly willing to consider alternative forms of risk share. All this requires complex implementation for both manufacturers and HCPs.

What makes our team special is our unique collaboration of strategic consultation with executional creativity. We have built our team very intentionally: our market access experts paired with our network’s strength in creativity and technology is a powerful combination, poised to innovate. Alongside our clients, we challenge the norms with novel strategies and tactics delivered through insight-driven omnichannel approaches—creating payer value strategies that maximize the impact of every key stakeholder connection.

Our medical communications teams are leading clients to transform patients’ lives through meaningful connection with the health community.

We call it The Power of Peers.

We believe that science makes brands meaningful.

And medical communications is a critical driver.

HCPs have a responsibility to patients that at times must seem overwhelming.

Understanding how to incorporate new brands into practice requires a level of attentiveness and thoughtfulness that is often at odds with the time needed to see and treat patients.

While branded campaigns are often compelling, many HCPs feel that information from pharma companies is not always directly related to the patient challenges they face daily. In such cases, HCPs turn to the source they know they can trust.... their peers.

Connecting HCPs to thought leaders imbues your educational content with an authority, a credibility and a relevance that branded activities in isolation often lack. Providing a scientific perspective on the unmet need and the clinical evidence for a molecule makes a branded call to action so much more meaningful.

In today’s environment, HCPs are bombarded with promotional and educational messages
and activities in a multitude of channels and media – so it’s important that we meet them where they are, with the information they need. And it’s equally important that we deliver the clinical evidence in an impactful and engaging way.

Science drives the message, and the science of engagement drives the impact.

VML Health accomplishes this through our unique formula for modern medical communications: Transformative Stories + Meaningful Connection.

We bring together science, strategy, and creativity to ensure that we transform complex science into compelling messaging. And then we leverage technology to spread that messaging through engaging experiences across an omnichannel ecosystem.

Our human-centered CX approach inspires organic connection among HCPs, enabling thought leaders to effectively educate and inspire their colleagues.

When done well, modern medical communications will inspire HCPs to become advocates and spread the word among their peers. Helping our clients to cut through the noise, create connections, and accelerate understanding and uptake.

Medical Education

Our medical education business, IMsci, brings together a blend of scientific, marketing and creative experts. These groups turn complex scientific data into simple, relevant content—enabling clients to educate HCPs around science and clinical outcomes in a digestible way.

Our Patient Partnership Program helps our teams to work alongside advocacy groups, putting patients at the heart of everything we do.

Patient groups really matter. Patients are people. People with lives, and lags, needs, and values - just like all of us. All made harder by living with a health condition. Improving their lives in a meaningful way. This is what drives us. It’s the motivation behind everything we do.

In those crucial moments when time stands still as a health challenge throws us off course, advocacy groups and patients with real world experience of a disease can convey complex science in plain language that people understand.

Patients bring so much insight and an authenticity – helping us have health conversations that inspire, inform and influence. They are fundamental to our world and our work. By learning from patients, our work is better: more authentic, more (radically) empathetic, more meaningful.

Thanks to this program, we’ve built lasting, mutually beneficial relationships with our patient group partners around the world. They share their experiences with us, providing invaluable insights.

Our Patient Partnership Program allows us to understand the patient journey at a granular and tangible level. Helping us understand. So, we can radically empathise - and deliver campaigns that really make a difference.

Specialists in key opinion formers, strategy and support

The KOL Insights team helps our clients to identify & map key opinion formers (KOLs), analyse their influence, track KOL sentiment, pinpoint digital opinion leaders, discover rising stars, and uncover key stakeholders.

To help our clients identify and understand the most important people and organisations that underpin the success of their brand.

Find out how we can help you by visiting our specialist website or email kate.noonan@vml.com.