The Syneos Health Podcast

Patients with rare diseases and their caregivers face many unique challenges along the road to diagnosis, treatment and—ultimately—optimized quality of life. With all of the complex information and systems out there, the landscape can be difficult to navigate. Where can they go for guidance? Ray Huml , Vice President, Medical & Scientific Strategy and Head of the Rare Disease Consortium at Syn...

The COVID-19 pandemic had had a considerable impact on biotech and pharma services outsourcing, as companies struggled to overcome supply chain issues in production, manufacturing and talent. This held true not only from an R&D perspective, but throughout the product lifecycle as biopharma continued to bring therapies to an evolving market. Michael Jimmink, Vice President, FSP 360 and Jim Reid...

COVID-19 has accelerated adoption of virtual engagement across pharma – but many of these strategies have already been proven over and over again long before the pandemic. The key difference is, what started as a complement to traditional commercialization tactics is now an established best practice and has been core to an inevitable transformation in the pharmaceutical industry. Out of this, the...

What if you had 30 years of longitudinal data, from thousands of HCPs across 30 specialties, on how and why health care practitioners prescribe therapies, and where and how they prefer to receive information on those therapies – or even how a major event, like a pandemic, impacted those behaviors? You would have powerful insights that point the way to new opportunities to engage customers, seize w...

This week, the US Food and Drug administration approved the first COVID-19 vaccine. But will this help accelerate the vaccination effort? The US Surgeon General gave a public warning recently: "Health misinformation is an urgent threat to public health. It can cause confusion, sow mistrust, and undermine public health efforts, including our ongoing work to end the COVID-19 pandemic.” Also thi...

In this episode of the Syneos Health Podcast: 2021 Health Trends Edition, we welcome Dr. George Li , Vice President, and General Manager in clinical solutions for mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. Together with podcast host and Managing Director, Omnichannel Strategy, Leigh Householder , he discusses the rapid and dramatic growth occurring in the Chinese pharmaceutical and biotech market.   If...

In this episode of the Syneos Health Podcast: 2021 Health Trends Edition, we discuss how to empower and amplify critical field teams as access and engagement evolve and change with the ‘new normal’ of a post-pandemic world.  Listen and learn as Ryan Maglione , SVP, Global Commercial Talent at Syneos Health shares his latest thinking with trends expert, podcast host and Managing Director, Omnichann...

In this episode of the Syneos Health Podcast: 2021 Health Trends Edition, we share the latest thinking on the potential for our industry to make healthcare interactions and communications more personal and useful.  Many life sciences organizations are quickly moving into that world of right person, right message, right moment messaging and scaling internal expertise and external partnership to mov...

A great story creates a connection, elicits feelings of compassion and empathy and can ultimately influence behavior. The rise of digital platforms have enabled richer, deeper storytelling, driving a greater desire for sharing and connection. How can biopharma companies better leverage their own stories to build trust and engagement with their audiences? John Reid , Executive Creative Director and...

When the pandemic took hold, practices and research sites limited physical access to protect people while health systems and industry partners moved to rapidly scale digital and voice channels to maximize patient connectivity. Regulators and payers joined the cause to reduce friction and fuel reimbursement.  As that immediacy and urgency fade, there are changed expectations among healthcare provid...

At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic and in direct response to government advisories limiting nonessential travel, healthcare practitioners (HCPs) were quick to adopt digital platforms for engaging with pharma sales reps.  And interestingly, it appears that these virtual engagements are actually increasing the amount of time HCPs spend with these reps. Now, as we move past this transformative...

Right now, millions of patients are being dosed with vaccines for COVID-19, which have had accelerated development timelines in order to provide emergency use. This is a first in our industry, and it presents safety monitoring challenges for pharmaceutical companies managing an unprecedented volume of data to ensure that the benefits to patients outweigh the risks. How can they keep up – now, and...

It is a common misconception in the biopharmaceutical industry that lifecycle management is really meant for the end of a product’s life, generally at the point where exclusivity is lost and generic competition erodes sales and, ultimately, the value of the brand.  According to Tim Arendt , Managing Director in the Commercial Advisory Group of Syneos Health Consulting, if done right, a lifecycle m...

Source Document Review and Source Data Verification have been the gold standard for ensuring data quality and patient safety for more than 30 years.  This review and verification process covers a wide range of material related to study subjects including anything from consent forms and medical histories to lab results and personal diary entries and beyond, consuming a significant amount of time an...

Being prepared for what you know is going to happen is hard enough, but how can you get ready for the unexpected? The answer: learning agility. Learning agility is a set of skills, competencies and mindsets that support an organization’s ability to respond in unforeseen situations. In fact, higher levels of learning agility could help to “future proof” organizations against challenges of turbulent...

Getting a drug product into the hands of patients is not a simple task. What was once a straightforward “back office” operation has, with the advent of oncology, rare disease and other kinds of specialty therapeutics, risen to a level of complexity that requires greater strategy, planning and logistics acumen than ever before.  Tony Lanzone , Managing Director, Value, Access and HEOR at Syneos Hea...

Investing with confidence, and with a conscience – yes, it is possible to do both. In our second interview with scientist-turned-investor Peter Kolchinsky , co-founder and Managing Partner at RA Capital Management, LP and author of The Great American Drug Deal: A New Prescription for Innovative and Affordable Medicines, we discuss his transition into biotech portfolio management, the art of uneart...

 Biopharmaceutical innovation requires a hefty investment: A recent study published in The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) reported an average cost of $1.3 billion to bring a new drug to market , from drug discovery through clinical trials to approval. And it is often the biopharma company that comes under fire when cost burden to patients is in question.  But affordability of t...

How rare is a rare disease? On their own they can be quite scarce, but did you know that one in ten people in the U.S. is afflicted with a rare disease? That’s over 30 million people. And that’s a big problem. But how do you study treatments when it’s so difficult to find patients for each rare disease? That’s when it is time to leave the lab and take a look at the real world.  In this episode, we...

It may sound obvious that pharmaceutical companies operate according to the unique set of regulations, healthcare environments, market conditions, and cultures of the regions in which they operate, but what do such differences reveal about the industry as a whole?  In this episode, Sabine Dettwiler , Managing Director, Commercial Advisory Group at Syneos Health Consulting, shares some learnings fr...

In the past decade, Japan’s biotech and pharmaceutical industries have expanded into global markets, and continue to evolve in light of recent regulatory changes and challenges. Stephane Gouteux , Vice President and General Manager of Japan Clinical Solutions at Syneos Health, discusses overall healthcare trends and pharmaceutical trends in Japan, and also explores the opportunities available for...

The COVID-19 pandemic has forced companies to adapt in unprecedented ways. More than ever, learning agility – the desire, capability, and skillset that allow people to navigate change and uncertainty – has become critical to organizational success and can lead to new opportunities.  In this episode, Syneos Health® experts, Karen White , Vice President of Human Resources and Kiely Flanigan , Direct...

Within the last two years, the regulatory environment has evolved dramatically in China, allowing clinical trials to get off the ground faster and providing greater opportunity for drug development in the region.   Syneos Health® experts Patrick Nealon , Executive Vice President and Head of the Oncology Business Unit, and Nick Kenny , Chief Scientific Officer, discuss the extraordinary pace of inv...

In an industry where time is money, rapid startup in early phase clinical trials – where patients receive a drug for the first time – is critical.  But what does rapid mean, exactly, and why is it so important? David Wyatt , MD, Vice President, Medical Affairs at Syneos Health discusses rapid early phase startup, explaining the advantages and complications that can arise, as well as the requiremen...

The entirety of the US healthcare system was reformed with the advent of Obamacare in 2009 – and we’re still feeling the aftershocks over a decade later. So says Keith Kelly , Senior Managing Director, Value, Access and HEOR at Syneos Health Consulting, who returns to the Syneos Health Podcast to continue the discussion on the trajectory of payer influence in the healthcare marketplace.   Listen t...