Asembia AXS25: Strategic Partnerships Driving Pharmaceutical Innovation

In an interview with Pharmacy Times®, Natalie Bedford, senior vice president of US Pharmaceutical Distribution Services at McKesson, discussed how specialty distributors provide strategic advantages to pharmaceutical manufacturers by offering tailored solutions that bridge production and patient access. She highlighted her presentation, “Beyond Logistics: The Strategic Edge of Specialty Distributors,” which she shared at Asembia's AXS25 Summit.

Bedford emphasized the importance of navigating complex regulatory environments and leveraging advanced technological capabilities to help manufacturers focus on their core competencies. She highlighted the critical role of specialty distributors in enhancing efficiencies, scaling operations, and creating financial value for pharmaceutical partners. Bedford also underscored McKesson's mission to improve patient care by continuously innovating and developing value-added services across the health care ecosystem.

Pharmacy Times: What are the key strategic advantages for drug companies in partnering with specialty distributors to achieve long-term brand success in today's healthcare landscape?

Natalie Bedford: Specialty distributors bring a strategic advantage to the partners by building tailored solutions that meet the unique needs of each of the partners, the products that they bring to market, and ultimately, the patients that they serve. Their ability to navigate complex supply chains, coupled with advanced technological capabilities, allows and enables the manufacturer partners to focus on their core competencies, which is bringing fantastic, new, and emerging medicines to market, while they can rely on their distributor partners to really bridge that gap between manufacturer production and patient access. They do that by leveraging their distribution channels and also making sure that they're customized to make sure they meet the needs of every single customer segment and patient that they serve.

To help bring this to life a little bit more, think of a few ways that we can prove that it's through enhanced efficiencies. That is established by the different ways in which we look at enhancing our processes and our complex systems to make sure that there's value to both sides. It's also through our ability to scale our operations to meet market fluctuations and the growing demand of different customers, as well as ultimately, patients. Then the third, I would say, is really about how it values our partners from a financial perspective. It really helps them look for cost efficiencies, and ultimately, it increases their profitability and then their operation margin.

Pharmacy Times: Beyond logistics, how can specialty distributors help drug companies navigate regulatory complexities and foster innovation to improve patient access and compliance?

Bedford: First and foremost, patients are at the center of everything we do, especially distributors, especially here at McKesson. Whether we're thinking about core distribution operations or how to navigate regulatory compliance or bring innovation to our pharma partners, we still put patients at the center. Let's first start with regulatory; given this increasingly highly regulated health care ecosystem, every stakeholder in the landscape needs to have a significant investment and focus on compliance. By having ourselves as distributor and having in depth knowledge of and experience in the regulatory environments, it allows us to be able to help our pharma partners avoid legal pitfalls while also figuring out what the new capabilities and/or strategies are that we need to help them bring to market to adhere to all new legislation.

I think another thing that we do is that we also make sure that we invest in both complex systems and processes so that we can monitor, we can track, and then we can as well as audit to make sure we identify where we may have any compliance issues and solve that in the best interest of our pharma partners. When it comes to innovation, as I shift and think about that area for a moment, innovation is at the center and core for strategic advancement in the health care environment. Without it, the pharmaceutical landscape would not be where it is today. From a specialty distributor lens, we look at the many different facets that we can be a thought partner to our manufacturer partners on, whether it's on the distribution channels that they need to bring new products to market again, on how to navigate the regulatory landscape, or how to think about the growing customer base and how we could partner with them, and we could go on and on and on. We believe it's our accountability to our partners to be thinking ahead in the future so we can be that partner for them that always brings innovation to them so they can advance their business strategies and patient value proposition.

Pharmacy Times: Considering the end-to-end solutions offered by specialty distributors, what are the most critical value-added services that benefit pharmaceutical manufacturers, providers, payers, and ultimately patients?

Bedford: The beginning and the end of the patient journey are very simple and very clear. It starts with the manufacturer and ultimately ends with the patient gaining access. But because of the growing complexity of this health care ecosystem, there are multiple stakeholders along the way that can intentionally or unintentionally impact or influence the time in which or how a patient gets access to the product. Ultimately, what we want is for them to have access at the right time and where they need it. Specialty distributors can play a critical role in ensuring that they can help better influence that patient journey to help meet that ultimate goal that we all have.

In addition to core distribution, especially distributors like McKesson, strategically invest in other capabilities to advance the patient journey. Let me share a few of those with you, if I may. Think about our enterprise assets. To give a few examples, 3PL, our biologics organization, our GPO, and now our new transformational capabilities inspire gene. They're all ways that we're thinking about how we can continue to support the patient journey holistically for our pharma partners. Second is that we have developed and invested in what we believe are differentiated services for both our oncology and biopharma businesses. Third, we've built what we believe are state-of-the-art and forward-looking capabilities to help navigate the payer landscape, whether it's those prior authorizations or how to make sure that you get, ultimately, approval so that patients can have access to medicines. Fourth, I would say we've got another segment of our business that meets a different need in the health care ecosystem, which is our medical supplies business that helps all of our customer base provide the care and serve the patients they need. Fifth, I would say it's just how we continue to play that role and understand how the patient journey changes and how we can insert ourselves to be that partner of choice to help them meet those needs.

We at McKesson are passionate about our mission to improve patient care in every setting, and we will continue to be. But we're also incredibly excited about the future opportunities we have to seize other ways that we can continue to contribute and introduce benefit to the health care ecosystem and also a broader marketplace.