Health Economics and Market Access CPIA Report
The latest CPIA report features analysis and UK and EU vacancy data in the “Health Economics and Market Access” sector.
Clinical Professionals Group CEO, Yvette Cleland comments:
Development of a nation is crucially connected with the condition of the health of its population. Health is now accepted as an important indication of the developing economy of a nation. Only a nation with a healthy labour force have the ability and the capability to undertake expediting the growth and development of its economy. According to Development Economists, the condition of people’s health is also one of the important ends of a nation’s developmental efforts. Impressive achievements in the health sector has paved the way for an excellent track record not only in the level of economic development as revealed by most nations, but also within human development as well.
Against a background of increasing demands on limited resources, health economics is exerting a strong influence on decision making at all levels of health care. It is now widely accepted that health economists seek to facilitate decision making by offering an explicit evaluation framework based on the principle of efficiency. Assessment and appraisal of new medical technologies require a balance between the interests of different stakeholders, and the final decision should consider the societal value of new therapies. So, we find ourselves in a position where every day, the continued development of health economics and its skilled workforce becomes of larger significance as Biopharma continues to demonstrate to consumers the value of the medicines they produce.
Where we have seen quite depressed levels of activity with Health Economists (2018) we have seen a 61% spike in the requirement for Epidemiologist roles (YOY). We are also seeing an emerging pattern and increase in more senior roles (27%) versus activity in 2018. When talking more broadly about health economic vacancies across the EU in 2017 and 2018 for the EU 27 and the UK, activity overall was generally flat. In 2018 the UK accounted for 34% of HE vacancies, so far in 2019 we are seeing this fall to 30%. On current forecasts therefore we see the EU 27 holding now closer to 70% of all HE roles and the biggest increase in overall countries was Italy, up by 100% since 2018. Sweden has also seen a significant uplift in vacancy growth with an uplift of 71%. However, the front runner for growth in overall vacancy increase within HE is the Netherlands with recruiting activity since 2018 exploding with over 200% growth in requirements for professionals within the HE field to date. However, context is very important and in 2017 there was a 61% drop in vacancies in the Netherlands. Belgium and Germany have seen decreases in activity since 2018, London still leads HEMA vacancies in Europe currently with also another UK city, now housing more significant pharma companies, Reading has seen a 53% increase in health economic and market access (HEMA) vacancies since 2018.
If we were to isolate vacancy activity by company, Novartis remains the largest in terms of vacancies and we anticipate that Novo Nordisk will have the greatest YOY expansion with predictions of over 300% growth in vacancies within HEMA. So, whilst there are many different trends emerging in different countries, ultimately the pattern is a significant rise in vacancies. Although understanding why we are seeing this rise is difficult to isolate.
So why are we seeing the market start to really push forward again and roles increase? We are going through a period of fundamental change and disruption as an industry in general. Alongside this we are seeing continued accelerated growth in Rare Disease R&D/trials. For instance, the differences between cell and gene therapies versus other types of therapies mean that developing robust pricing and reimbursement strategies demand additional considerations to those of conventional pharmaceuticals. These considerations also need to be addressed earlier in development given the higher commercial risk cell and gene therapies present. The development of your health-economic arguments and models, your value story and pricing and reimbursement strategy to accelerate and maximise your therapy’s uptake and revenue potential needs to be optimised. So having the right internal expertise to ensure your product design, and target product profile are bullet proof and will assist your therapy to become a commercial success whilst keeping in mind that your evidence generation absolutely meets the requirements of key market access stakeholders.
In Europe about 30 million people (1 in 17) suffer from a debilitating rare disease. Rare diseases imply great clinical and economic burden but also a significant challenge for health systems because of the risk of not responding to patients’ needs and of not guaranteeing equal access to treatment. We have seen as one small example that innovation and R&D in rare ocular diseases that between 2016 and 2019 the number of gene therapy clinical trials rise by over 200% and with the priority around funding for research in Rare Disease by the EU, the trend is only going in one direction, up. In fact, since 2015 when the EU set the orphan drug designation which established rules to offer incentives for companies to research and develop medicines for rare diseases that otherwise would not be developed, an impact in terms of increasing development and reimbursement of ODs in the EU has still not been fully demonstrated. So let’s assume the new uplift in vacancies coming through within HEMAR looks set to continue erasing. The most interesting thing will be seeing if London and Reading (UK) continue to have highly concentrated opportunity or if some of those roles began to migrate elsewhere.
The Clinical Professionals group aim to be aware of the latest industry events and news whilst also aspiring to be at the forefront of the latest analytics and reporting. This enables our consultants to provide a concise and quality service for both clients and candidates, whilst helping the industry to evolve as a whole.
Consequently, the Clinical Professionals group has collaborated with Vacancysoft to create monthly reports that provide an in-depth analysis of vacancies across various sectors, countries and companies.
If you would like to view the full report and other industry analytics reports we have available please click here
If you are looking for a position in Health Economics or Market Access, or candidates who work in that sector, feel free to get in touch by emailing apply@clinicalprofessionals.co.uk or call us on 0118 959 4990