Market access

Market access refers to the process of ensuring that treatments (e.g. medicines, medical devices) that have been granted marketing authorisation from regulatory authorities are available (reimbursed, funded) to all patients who may benefit. A clinician is, in practice, able to recommend and administer the treatment to a patient. A first step is reimbursement, frequently informed by health technology assessment (HTA). However, successful reimbursement does not mean that all eligible patients will receive the new treatment, nor will they necessarily have ‘access’ to it. Market access addresses this problem by assessing barriers to uptake and proposing and implementing strategies to overcome these barriers. These may include the collection and communication of evidence relevant to different decision makers, implementing pricing strategies (discounts, payment by results), providing tools (e.g. apps), or hiring staff to provide expert advice to health system administrators. In pharmaceutical and other life science companies, market access and health economics / outcomes research professionals will generally work collaboratively to develop and execute plans for generating and communicating evidence of the value of new interventions to healthcare reimbursers and payers.