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We know you value your agency partners for their ability to bring your brand to life, creatively speaking. But did you know that CPC’s understanding of the challenges you face goes much deeper?
We understand that your brand obstacles often go over and above marketing and often fall under the market access, regulatory, and/or medical realm. An effective and experienced agency partner has a solid understanding of these broader perspectives and can help you navigate bigger picture hurdles beyond marketing.
For this article, let’s talk about market access especially if you are in the pre-launch and launch phase of your brand. Specifically, let’s dive into how you can optimize your CDA (Canada’s Drug Agency, formerly known as CADTH) submission. As you already know, these recommendations are very influential as they inform downstream negotiations for individual provincial formularies and ultimately impact whether patients can access the drugs they need, when they need them.
Importance of robust clinician input
Years ago, I helped organize an oncology national consultancy meeting with top tier Canadian key opinion leaders (KOLs) from cancer centres across the country. When we had our workshop about the status of a current funding application, many clinicians were frustrated about the long process from Health Canada approval to provincial funding. However, when asked about their experience on providing clinician input to CDA (CADTH), to my surprise…almost all had no idea how to submit their clinician input. There was one vocal and highly experienced oncologist that I was most surprised about. How could someone that was so influential not know? Thankfully, by uncovering this insight we were able to teach her the process and ensure that her voice would be heard for both the current submission and future submissions to come.
The key takeaway here is never assume. Ensure all your advocates understand the CDA (CADTH) clinician input and feedback process. Help them familiarize the steps for providing clinician input and share reminders of the due dates for Open Calls for Input and Feedback.
Support your patient/caregiver advocacy groups
Did you know that patients/caregivers or advocacy groups can also submit their input? CDA (CADTH) has specifically prepared Guidance for Providing Patient Input that outlines how patients/caregivers contribute. This is very important as the patient/caregiver perspective support the unmet needs within their specific patient population.
It is also important to foster a good relationship with many advocacy groups as they can help organize large patient surveys that collect impactful and practical evidence. Often these advocacy groups are lean on resources and welcome support to organize these initiatives. In the past, we have worked with our clients to identify these groups and collaborate with them to create online surveys, live meetings, or other programs to identify key unmet needs.
Would you like to hear more above and beyond marketing insights?
We would be more than happy to connect. Share with us your questions/comments.
Stay-tuned for future articles about regulatory and medical-related challenges.