Bridging the Academia-Industry Divide
As we’ve said before, the healthcare ecosystem is complex; it features many players, each of whom have different interests. Pharmaceutical companies, biotechs, medical device makers, data analytics startups, patient advocacy groups, nonprofits, regulators, payers (both public and private), academic medical centers (AMCs), and hospital and healthcare networks are some of the many entities contributing to patient care.
Last week, two executives from consulting firm Vantage Partners’ life sciences group took ASAP members through some principles for making relationships between a few of these players—namely, biopharma entities and AMCs—work effectively in the December ASAP webinar, “Partnering with Health Systems: How to Operationalize and Optimize These Vital Relationships.” The event was intentionally interactive, with several alliance management veterans from pharma and tech weighing in with stories from their own career experiences that helped shed light on best practices for these types of collaborations.
Meaning and Purpose Are Mechanisms That Translate
In the early going, John Barbadoro, senior consultant, Vantage Partners, asked the audience for some value drivers associated with these types of relationships. Funding, innovation, and resources for clinical trials were among the answers that came from listeners. One attendee expanded on why his company often turns to AMCs for knowledge in early-stage clinical trials.
“We would want to work with people who are well versed in a particular type of cancer, for example, or are specialists in mechanisms of action, or have capabilities to do translational research. It is an approach that has deep scientific meaning and purpose for development,” said the attendee.
Mismatched Goals, Changes in Priority Can Leave a Partner Hanging
Later, Barbadoro outlined some common collaboration challenges between these types of organizations. First, research priorities can suddenly change for pharma companies due to a shift in market dynamics, much to the chagrin of AMCs. Second, “it can be difficult to set shared goals and objectives,” said Barbadoro. “What are our goals? What are our milestones? And how can we track them?” Lastly, cultural dynamics can flummox each side when it comes to engaging stakeholders.
“Decision makers in academia and health systems tend to be more dispersed,” said Barbadoro, “whereas they may feel pharma is too hierarchical—it’s hard to get the right people on the phone.”
A Life in Print
Barbadoro’s copresenter Ben Siddall, a partner at Vantage Partners, highlighted another key potential wedge driver: publication strategy.
“It’s one way [AMC] professors are evaluated in life and in their careers,” said Siddall. Where professors are eager to get findings out in the open, industry partners are “sensitive both about what we share and when we share it when we start the clock.”
A gulf in publication goals can have catastrophic consequences.
“We have seen deals that have fallen apart over this question: Do we share early and share broadly, or do we need to run it through a process that is designed to support using the asset in multiple indications and over time?” said Siddall.
Another listener offered advice on how to mitigate this problem: Be prescriptive about publication schedules and guidelines when you are negotiating the contract—and while you’re at it, be just as prescriptive about the templates the teams will use for the data that gets generated over the course of the alliance.
“When we launch the alliance, both sides are very aware of what those publication guidelines are,” he said.
A Decentralized “Nightmare”
Later on, the discussion turned to operating models for these partnerships. Barbadoro ran through four options: 1) a fully decentralized structure, 2) a decentralized structure with a horizontal coordinating body, 3) a center of excellence (COE)–driven operation, and 4) a fully centralized alliance management function. There are “pros and cons [to each one],” he noted. However, some audience members shared bad experiences with decentralized models. One lifelong IT industry alliance manager recalled his former employer’s attempt to institute one as being “an absolute nightmare” due to the lack of consistency in how stakeholders managed partnerships.
Another biopharma alliance professional spoke of how his company tried its hand at a decentralized approach in which partnerships were managed by stakeholders from other divisions, only to scrap it after a few years. He found that alliance management aways came second to their primary duties, whether it be project management, business development, or what have you. His lesson: the rest of the organization won’t understand what alliance management—and alliance managers—are all about “if you convey a message that anyone can do it apart from their jobs.”
Barbadoro countered that smaller organizations might be forced to enter a decentralized model due to a lack of in-house expertise and resources—center-led models require plenty of both.
Six Steps to Operationalizing Industry-AMC Relationships
Siddall closed the session with six steps to making these cross–healthcare ecosystem partnerships work:
- “Is it purposeful?” – “What are we trying to achieve?” he said.
- “Is partnering a good choice?” – Make sure partnering is more efficient than building or buying. (Earlier in the presentation, Siddall mentioned that companies sometimes find after thorough examination that building a capability in-house is a better route than anything a partner could provide.)
- “How do we design and develop [the alliance] collaboratively?” – Each party should be equally invested in the process of developing the joint vision and expected value, as well as surfacing potential issues, in the launch phase; the bigger company should not impose its processes on its smaller partner.
- “How do we actively manage it?” – Active joint oversight should be developed against the collaboration’s objectives, scale, and scope, while roles need to be clearly defined.
- “Are we building the relationship over time?” – He gave two examples illustrating how an alliance might evolve: 1) partners double down on a particular type of clinical initiative and 2) the parties broaden the collaboration into new areas based on the needs of the partnership.
- “Do that active assessment over time” – Does this relationship still make sense given the objectives and the evolution of the market? “Are we meeting the interests of ourselves and our partner, but also the others we touch?” asked Siddall, before naming patients and providers as examples of other audiences affected by partnerships.
