Month: November 2023

Nuvera is thrilled to announce the addition of Kristine Lemke to our leadership team. Kristine’s 25+ years of experience in the healthcare industry promises to enrich the strength of Nuvera even further.

A highly sought-after professional, Kristine brings a portfolio that includes working in and through the matrix of the pharmaceutical industry. The highlights are inclusive of the elements that constitute success across product commercialization. Kristine has served as leader of brand launches, has broad channel & distribution expertise, and she is passionate about delivering first-class patient services.

Kristine’s versatility has been informed by the breath of industry roles. Prior to joining Nuvera, Kristine was Senior Principal at Blue Fin Group, Vice President at Xcenda, an AmerisourceBergen company, and enjoyed a successful, fifteen-year tenure with Eli Lilly and Company.

Kristine earned her bachelor’s degree from the University of Rochester, an MBA from the William E. Simon Graduate School of Business Administration, and is a Six Sigma black belt. Outside of work, Kristine enjoys exploring places near and far enjoying art, food and music and the people of her travels. At home she enjoys cooking, fitness and being outdoors and is committed to mindful service through national and local board service.

Motivation for Joining Nuvera

“I have always been impressed with the depth and breadth of Nuvera’s team and their commercialization work – identifying key issues / opportunities to provide the optimal patient and provider experience. I am excited to join the team and leverage our combined experiences in new, innovative service offerings.”

Nuvera would like to congratulate our team on their engaging and informative presentations at the Patient Support Services Congress last week. It is always exciting to see a fully captive audience when presenting.

Ed Gajewski facilitated a panel discussion with key thought leaders from the manufacturing side to share their insights on how they continue to evolve their approach to support services to enhance the patient experience.  The three panelist, Natasha Ammenheuser from Boehringer Ingelheim, Chad Bower from DSI, and Jeff Park from Cytokinetics, have worked across all aspects of the product life cycle and shared their thoughts on how patient support should go beyond the typical patient support program. Key themes that they all highlighted were the need to invest in an early treatment blueprint or customer experience. This is critical for two reasons; one, it allows the organization to truly look under the hood to understand how things are working and two, it brings the organization together and aligns on a north star. The second common theme was cross functional collaboration and giving those partners a seat at the table. Not only does this foster a greater understating of the product for everyone, but it also ensures alignment and adoption at an early stage.

Derek Cothran and Jens Kulstad took the stage next to highlight trends uncovered in the PURE Report and share the winners of the 2023 Best-in-class Annual PURE Awards in oncology, neurology, and immunology. The PURE Report in an independent industry benchmark of patient and HCP satisfaction, utilization, and evolving needs across patient support programs and the overall treatment experience. They announced the Annual Best-in-class Pharma Support Program award winners and the newly released Spotlight winners. The 2023 winners for Best-in-class Pharma Support Program are Bristol Myers Squibb in Oncology, Genentech in Neurology, and Abbvie in Immunology. The Spotlight award was created to highlight the small to mid-size biotech companies. The 2023 Spotlight winners are Daichi-Sankyo in oncology, Neurocrine in neurology, and Incyte in immunology.

Finally, Farris Ibrahim co-presented with Kim Spalter and Lori DeLorenzo from Bayer to share the importance of strategically planning patient support ramp up and deactivation. Their discussion emphasized three main considerations. First, when building a patient support program an organization should map the holistic experience and set support experience goals. Second, understand the need to modify your program as it evolves but reducing the impact of service deactivation is key.  There will be discomfort with change, but it is important to be patient. Finally, establishing behaviors and communication are essential to reduce the impact of change for both internal cross-functional teams and external stakeholders.

It was a great conference and opportunity to catch up with so many colleagues across the industry.

Nuvera is excited to welcome Jeff Chen to the team!

Jeff comes to Nuvera with several years of experience in the life sciences industry within regulatory compliance, regulatory M&A, quality assurance, operations quality, and R&D. His experience spans a diverse range of companies from dynamic startups to global industry leaders, across various stages of the product lifecycle. Most recently, Jeff worked at KPMG, where he supported global life sciences companies in addressing their most pressing quality, regulatory, and process optimization efforts across the value chain. Jeff holds an MS in Biotechnology from Johns Hopkins University and BS in Biological Sciences from University of Maryland.

Outside of his professional life, Jeff enjoys traveling, cooking, exercising, and rooting for Philly sports teams.

Motivation for Joining Nuvera

“I was eager to continue my journey in life sciences consulting, and after engaging with members of the Nuvera team, it became evident that they invest significantly in the success of their employees and clients. Nuvera strategically implements impactful and practical solutions with a patient-centric focus. Their unwavering commitment to elevating healthcare standards and positively impacting the lives of patients spoke volumes about their dedication to excellence.”

Bristol Myers Squibb and Genentech won their respective therapeutic areas for this year’s annual award.

Nuvera Life Science Consulting is pleased to announce its third annual awards for the pharmaceutical companies designated as “best-in-class” in patient support and access by physicians and support staff surveyed for the company’s 2023 PURE Reports: Bristol Myers Squibb in oncology and Genentech in neurology.

Pharmaceutical companies achieve best-in-class status in patient support and access based on the results gained from a research methodology using unaided and aided responses across seven indices in each of the therapeutic categories. This year a total of 625 physicians and 1,326 support staff participated in the national survey including the therapeutic categories of oncology and neurology.

In the field of oncology, Bristol Myers Squibb was recognized as the overall best company for its portfolio of drugs in both its hematology and solid tumor offerings. Technology is one of the areas both franchises excelled and received top scores due to their ability to leverage technology to enhance the customer experience. Technology features can also create a perception of ease of use which is an attribute that drives program utilization.

Genentech achieved best-in-class status in neurology for 2023. Genentech received top scores in every rated category from both the neurologists and their support staff. They were perceived as offering a broader set of services, where they go above and beyond the industry standard to provide superior services, ensuring that patients can make it to the treatment location and afford the therapy.

Jens Kulstad, Head of PURE Report noted: “We started this ‘Best-in-Class’ award as a way to highlight those companies viewed as the gold standard in patient support and access by the physicians and the support staff, so that other companies can see how to improve their services, eventually lifting up those in the entire therapeutic category to deliver better support.”

Nuvera publishes its PURE (Patient services Utilization, Recognition and Experience) Reports annually to serve as independent, industry benchmarks of patient and HCP satisfaction, utilization, and evolving needs across patient support programs to enable pharma and biotech companies to deliver an enhanced patient and HCP experience. The PURE reports are the only independent studies co-created with HCPs to measure HCP satisfaction. Over 6,200 providers and 1,700 patients have been surveyed since the therapeutic area and patient-focused PURE Reports were first published in 2019 resulting in scoring and ranking of approximately 25 pharmaceutical companies per therapeutic area.

To learn more about the PURE Report, visit https://thepurereport.com/ or Jens Kulstad at jens.kulstad@nuveracg.com.