We were approached by a major medical device company which had recently established a small health economics and market access team with their Asia-Pacific structure.
Initially, our priority was to develop a compelling, regionally-relevant value proposition for an implantable device of strategic importance to the regional revenue. Once validated, multiple versions of the full value slideset were adapted to target different priority countries across the region, including South East Asia, Australia and Korea. Each slideset was tailored using locally relevant data, including disease burden, clinical and economic evidence identified via pragmatic searches using local languages, including Mandarin and Korean. The slideset was highly visual, including animations to illustrate the disease pathway to non-clinical stakeholders, and videos to educate potential clinical referrers and implanters about the simple nature of the implanting procedure. Once finalised, the slideset was developed as an interactive digital tool which could be rolled out to the sales team’s iPads.
As the sales team had limited experience in selling using health economic evidence, we developed a training video to explain the structure and content of the tool. The training video was accompanied by a survey to seek feedback from end users on the relevance of the value messages for additional markets, and to ensure that each individual developed a customer exposure plan once the tool was launched. We also conducted face-to-face training with the growing China sales and marketing teams, including an entry-level introduction to basic principles of health economics which would be needed for the team to engage with economic stakeholders.
In order to upskill the client’s teams in the region, we designed a more comprehensive training course covering principles of evidence-based medicine, including clinical trial design, scientific publications, statistics, epidemiology and health economics. The training course was developed as an e-Module which could be deployed via the company’s learning management system. The training was learner-orientated, featuring examples from across the client’s therapeutic portfolio to illustrate the learning objectives in a relevant and engaging manner.
The learning e-Modules went on to be adopted beyond the Asia-Pacific region, with global approval to train sales and marketing teams worldwide. The modules were successfully integrated at a country level for existing teams as well as incorporated as part of the onboarding process for new staff. The course allowed all teams to increase their ability to sell in an evidence-based manner using tools such as value slidesets and health economic apps that we had prepared. Overall, the project strengthened the role of the health economics and market access function within the company, contributing to increased investment in market access activities.