Video: Fierce Pharma interview with Matthew Walsh, GM of Biopharma, ixlayer

Fierce Pharma publisher Rebecca Willumson caught up with ixlayer’s General Manager of Biopharma, Matthew Walsh, at Digital Pharma East 2024 for a quick interview about the current and future state of pharma marketing.

Rebecca Willumson: Hi there. My name is Rebecca Willumson. I’m the publisher of Fierce Pharma, and I’m here today with Matthew Walsh, General Manager of Biopharma at ixlayer. Matthew, thank you for joining me today.

Matthew Walsh: Thanks for having me.

Rebecca: So Matthew, tell me, what do you believe is the most prevalent myth about pharma marketing within the industry?

Matthew: So I think, what I still hear a lot is that healthcare is for older audiences, and therefore technology solutions don’t work for healthcare because older people are not technologically savvy. My parents are in their 70s, so prime healthcare target, and they’re shopping on Amazon constantly. And I think, you know, Amazon is a really good, intuitive user experience. So I think if we can keep technology to be very simple and user friendly, then elderly people can use it just as well as young people. And actually, one other myth, if I can say two, the other one that I hear a lot, is people are skeptical of pharma. They don’t want to have health care services from pharma. I think that if pharma can make healthcare simpler and easier for patients, then patients will be more than happy to try services from pharma.

Rebecca: That’s big. So tell me, what are your predictions for the most significant changes or innovations that we’ll be discussing in the next five years?

Matthew: So, they’re talking about a lot at this conference. We surveyed a group of pharmaceutical marketing executives, and over 50% plan to do a direct-to-patient platform, a la LillyDirect and PfizerForAll. So I think that over the next five years we’re going to see a proliferation of these and I think we’re going to see them not just for these more straightforward retail type conditions like obesity, which is what we’ve seen so far, but I think we’ll start seeing them for some more complex specialty categories as well.

Rebecca: Now switching gears a little bit, everyone’s talking about direct-to-patient initiatives. Can you quickly set the stage to define DTP?

Matthew: Absolutely. So, I think healthcare is undeniably extremely complex, and there aren’t really that many players that are incentivized to simplify it. I think DTP is pharma’s attempt to offer services directly to patients, things like doctor consultation and dispensing of medication to simplify the patient journey, to disintermediate certain middlemen who are making the process expensive and complicated, and offer these services directly to patients to make their lives easier.

Rebecca: Tell me why do you think pharma is so excited about the DTP offerings like ixlayer?

Matthew: A couple of things. I think that COVID got patients more comfortable with using technology and remote services like remote testing and telehealth. And I think you also saw a lot of companies like ixlayer go through COVID and build technologies that really benefited patients. For example, ixlayer worked with a payer who closed 10% of gaps in care, and accelerated test result response time to under two days, and drove a three to one ROI. So I think it’s the combination of patients being more ready for the technology and companies being able to show that they can provide the financial return that pharma is going to need to see to run these programs and sustain them for the long term.

Rebecca: So my final question for you, and I’ve got a two part question—so one, what is so unique about what you’re building for biopharma? And then what should pharma partners be considering when they select a partner for their DTP efforts?

Matthew: So I think one of the things that we’ve seen through the two programs that have launched so far, PfizerForAll and LillyDirect, there’s not a whole lot of consistency. It’s kind of like reinventing the wheel every time. They’re using different partners, different technologies. And I think that’s not really a great use of pharma’s time, although pharma sometimes likes to kind of do things differently. I think there’s an ability for them to use a common platform. So ixlayer has run, over our history, over 4 million patient journeys. So we have a lot of experience doing this, and I think we can help pharma do this in a consistent fashion, get them stood up very quickly. And we can also help facilitate some of these more complex journeys by offering more complex things like diagnostic testing, access to specialists via telehealth, support with prior authorization, and even specialty RX dispensing,

Rebecca: That is a perfect place to close. Thank you so much for joining me today. I appreciate the conversation.

Matthew: Thank you.