Pharma Commercialization—Thought Leader Interview Series With Doug Fulling, Precision AQ
In this Q&A with Doug Fulling (President of Precision AQ), we discuss the company’s rebrand, the critical role value and access plays in the pharma commercialization lifecycle, and other factors that are transforming the industry.
Thank you for sitting down with us today, Doug! Precision AQ has further expanded its differentiation and leadership impact within the commercialization segment in recent years. From our perspective, a large part of this stems from your early decision to bring a unique focus on value, access, and the importance of data across each milestone in the commercialization continuum. Could you elaborate on the drivers of your success and differentiation?
Thanks, Mark. It’s great for us to get a chance to discuss the business and how we’ve really differentiated ourselves in the market.
Our success is deeply rooted in our people and their passionate commitment to enabling access to life-changing medicines for all. Over the past several months, we’ve brought our teams together, breaking down silos and creating a more comprehensive and holistic approach to addressing market needs.
In 2024, we embarked on a journey to redefine what “access” truly means in our industry. While we’re proud of our standing as a dominant player in market access, we believe in the need to expand the scope beyond payors—encompassing access to capital, providers, and, most importantly, patients. By integrating our expertise and diverse solutions, we’re creating a total access blueprint unlike any other in the marketplace.
But our mission goes far beyond incremental improvements; it’s about reshaping the access landscape—dismantling barriers along the commercialization journey to ensure every patient has an equal chance. This vision fuels our ongoing investment in our people, who bring both expertise and empathy to understanding the stakeholders’ perspective intimately.
Together with our wealth of data and insights, we delve deep into the intricate networks of decision-makers, understanding their impact on access. This understanding informs our every action, empowering us to be more precise and impactful in our medical communications, marketing, and advertising engagements. Ultimately, it means getting therapies into the hands of those who need them faster than ever before.
This collective drive to redefine access isn’t just a business strategy; it’s woven into the fabric of who we are. As we stand on the brink of bringing our comprehensive solution to market, our passion and determination have never been stronger.
Pricing, evidence, and access capabilities, specifically, have become more critical to pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and medical device clients over time as complexities in the payor environment have continued to evolve. How has Precision AQ utilized its expertise to compete for new business with life sciences manufacturers?
I’ll focus on the keyword here—expertise. When I first joined the organization, I made it a point to really connect with our team and meet individual leaders. Their passion and dedication to tackling industry challenges left a lasting impression on me and continue to be an inspiration. It became clear that by leveraging our collective expertise and diverse backgrounds, we could play a significant role in helping our clients overcome major hurdles across the commercialization spectrum—from shaping effective strategies to demonstrating value, especially in specific therapeutic areas. Our vision is to bring the collective knowledge and expertise of our team to the forefront of how we solve access, which is the number one problem we see pharmaceutical companies have when they go to launch a drug.
A common theme we hear from our clients is their appreciation for our deep domain knowledge. However, there’s often a perception that focuses solely on a particular offering rather than our broader value proposition. Our extensive experience in oncology and rare diseases, where precision and nuanced understanding are essential, sets us apart. With the imminent surge of launches in oncology, cardio-renal-metabolic, and neurology expected in the next three to five years, our expertise positions us as the ideal partner to navigate and support these launches, both domestically and internationally.
Commercialization investors have placed a significant premium on value, evidence, and access capabilities in recent years. This is due in part to the need for increased precision/specialization earlier in a molecule’s lifecycle. How do you anticipate the industry landscape will continue to evolve over the next few years in terms of the importance of surgical precision in the pricing/value paradigm and the pressure pharma companies will face to monetize early, with maximum efficiency?
Having spent the majority of my career in clinical development, I’ve seen numerous missed opportunities to create an evidence value proposition earlier in the clinical development process. We see this as a matter of taking what we do in the commercial process and moving it earlier in the pharmaceutical development lifecycle, sitting down with the pharmaceutical companies that are developing these amazing, life-changing drugs and helping them understand (i) what payors are looking for in a clinical development program, (ii) how much we need to educate HCPs on these new mechanisms of action, and (iii) what information is critical to the patient education process.
Why do we feel it is important to develop answers to these questions earlier? Because many drug launches falter due to a lack of a comprehensive access strategy. While some companies focus heavily on one aspect without considering the comprehensive needs of payors, providers, and patients, they risk falling short. And at the end of the day, there’s a patient waiting for a therapy on the other side of these access challenges. The stakes are high.
That’s why early planning is paramount.
At Precision AQ, we’re well-equipped to help with this. We understand what all three groups require from manufacturers and the vital components of success. As the landscape becomes more complex, these factors only grow in importance. Our deep expertise in value demonstration, evidence generation, and access realization positions us to support manufacturers both now and in the future.
The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) alters several aspects of the drug manufacturing and commercialization process, specifically with the Medicare Drug Price Negotiating Program. We are continuing to see the ramifications of this program play out, but can you share your views on the longer-term impact of the policy? Are you changing anything within your current business to address the policy change?
Given the current landscape, IRA is a hot topic, and we’re getting a lot of questions. While we’re not making any changes within our current business, we’re enhancing our use of data to assist clients in prioritizing assets, particularly with the increasing focus on pipeline and portfolio optimization in the next three to five years. Our clients are faced with pressing questions, such as:
- What does the current marketplace look like, and how might biosimilars affect it?
- Which secondary endpoints can impact pricing and access?
- How does payor mix and coverage affect HCP adoption and subsequent forecasts?
- How do environmental, political, and social factors impact the cost-effectiveness of an asset?
Our team is assessing and guiding clients through these complexities and ensuring they’re equipped to navigate these ever-evolving dynamics. It’s great working at a company where we are able to answer these questions and provide the consulting and analytics to support those answers.
Precision AQ provides services across the entirety of the drug lifecycle with specialties across medical communications, data innovation, omnichannel HCP engagement, learning and development solutions, and numerous others. In your view, what are the biggest challenges and pain points facing the drug commercialization process today, and how is Precision AQ addressing them?
The largest challenge we see today is leveraging the immense amounts of data into effective and impactful access strategies. The solution may seem straightforward, but its implementation is intricate. Much like how a GPS operates—gathering data and insights across the entire access spectrum and synthesizing that into effective strategies that benefit key stakeholders is critical. Just as GPS relies on integrating and analyzing data from various sources to navigate individual routes, healthcare requires interconnected data across payors, providers, and patients to optimize individual patient journeys.
As data and information flow in at an unprecedented pace, we’re leveraging this information to streamline success for all stakeholders, aligning with our shared goal of delivering therapies to those in need. The more data we have access to, the more we can examine practice patterns and effectiveness of therapies among patient populations, and ultimately, the more effective our mapping of individual patient journeys becomes.
Our commitment to innovation in data integration and insight generation, combined with our experience with payors, providers, and patients, enables us to create a clearer picture of the healthcare landscape. This empowers us to design and deploy better tools, support programs, education, and value demonstration initiatives for our clients.
Precision AQ has notably adopted technology and experimented with automation at a faster rate than most of its peers, and the ability for AI to transform business operations is top-of-mind across the pharma commercialization sector. In your mind, what are the most immediately addressable areas where you see technology and data playing in that evolution? How is Precision AQ utilizing artificial intelligence to support its biopharma client base?
We see so much potential with artificial intelligence and the quickly transforming market. We see the greatest near-term impact within pharmaceutical manufacturers and their ability to get closer to the point of sale. There is a vacuum of meaningful solutions to manage the idiosyncratic Rx experience, and AI has the potential to fill those gaps. The other area, as we alluded to earlier, is assisting with the overwhelming amount of data available to stakeholders today. Synthesizing the massive amount of healthcare data to create more targeted, impactful access strategies can improve overall patient outcomes.
Recognizing the rapid pace of change, we are forging alliances and embarking on proof-of-concept programs with industry leaders to tailor solutions for specific client needs. Exciting partnerships are underway, with promising outcomes already evident, particularly in optimizing the point-of-sale experience to ensure a seamless Rx experience.
Our innovative solutions help facilitate direct engagement between patients, providers, and manufacturers at the point of sale, leveraging AI to enhance prior authorizations, cost and coverage determinations, and drug adherence. By harnessing the power of GenAI, we aim to democratize access to vast information troves, empowering patients and providers with contextually relevant insights at crucial points in their treatment journey. This not only enhances education and visibility but also instills confidence in treatment decisions.
Thank you again for taking the time! Is there anything else you would like to tell us about the importance and vision of your new rebrand, Precision AQ, and how it better aligns you with customers and stakeholders?
We’re excited about the rebranding of Precision Value & Health to Precision AQ. We believe this brings our complete value proposition together in the marketplace and for our employees. Over the past 15 months, we have been extremely focused on becoming one organization both from an internal operational perspective and an external market point of view.
The brand came to fruition by taking its history as a market leader within value and access and recognizing the opportunity to expand that story to talk about what access means from provider, patient, payor, and investor perspectives. AQ symbolizes a concept of an “access quotient,” asking clients to think about how a therapy is going to be received by every stakeholder, not just one specific audience at a time.
We also think that AQ sits at the intersection of IQ and EQ, showcasing that, while healthcare is a complex field that requires science, data, and analytics (IQ), the most important factor we are dealing with is patient lives, which requires a level of emotional intelligence and empathy (EQ). Marrying the data, science, and empathy creates AQ, enabling all of the important facets of access to come together and ultimately improve patient outcomes.
I really appreciate the opportunity to speak with you today, and we are excited to share more updates soon!
Statements and opinions expressed herein are solely those of the author/interviewee and may not coincide with those of Houlihan Lokey. They are not intended to provide information upon which to base an investment decision and should not be construed as such.
