Multistakeholder Approaches to Optimize Oncology Market Access Strategy

Effective oncology market access strategy has become markedly more complex as geopolitical pressures reshape how innovative cancer therapies reach patients, as made clear in Iroda Jurabekova’s pharma summit presentation. Determining whether a medicine’s value justifies its price now requires coordinated input from every participant in the care pathway rather than isolated judgments by any single stakeholder.

Market access must function as the connective tissue linking prescribers, patients, payers, pharmacists, scientific societies, patient advocacy groups, policymakers, regulators, and health economists. Only through this full alignment can innovative oncology products successfully navigate today’s fractured global systems.

A simple restaurant analogy by Jurabekova illustrates the danger of partial perspectives: one person selects the meal, another consumes it, and a third only receives the bill. No single participant holds enough information to judge whether the experience warranted the cost. The same disconnect applies to oncology treatments.

Why Commercial Strategy Must Merge with Access

A robust oncology market access strategy therefore cannot operate in parallel with commercial, omni-channel, digital transformation, or AI initiatives. These functions must be deliberately integrated so that access considerations strengthen, rather than compete with, broader commercial objectives.

European patients now wait far longer for new medicines. Average delays have stretched from 128 days to as many as 840 days in some member states, with only 46 percent of centrally approved innovations ultimately reaching patients. The lost investment and human cost are unsustainable.

Layered onto these delays are transformative policies: the US Most Favored Nation proposal, the EU Joint Clinical Assessment process, UK reforms, intensified Chinese oversight, and Japan’s pricing system that has yet to reward innovation adequately. In oncology, successive waves of antibody-drug conjugates, bispecifics, trispecifics, and gene therapies are advancing against unclear value frameworks and unresolved questions around launch sequencing, German and Japanese entry strategies, and the shift from list to net international reference pricing.

Building HEOR Models for Net Prices

Health economics and outcomes research must therefore evolve to analyze true net prices after rebates and discounts. These updated frameworks will enable smarter launch sequencing and help companies anticipate how MFN-style disclosure rules could affect confidential agreements and communication channels.

Success demands tighter collaboration between global market access teams and commercial colleagues at local, regional, and headquarters levels. Through deliberate co-creation, organizations can reduce uncertainty, accelerate patient access to transformative oncology therapies, and evolve their oncology market access strategy into a geopolitically calibrated discipline that balances innovation rewards with sustainable reimbursement across diverse healthcare systems.