Author: Eugenia Klein

Nuvera Life Science Consulting is excited to announce a new team member! Alicia Shang has joined the Nuvera team in December 2019.

Alicia holds an MPH degree from Yale School of Public Health, majoring in Epidemiology and minoring in Regulatory Affairs. Prior to Yale, she completed a BSc. degree with Honours in Biomedical Sciences from National University of Singapore. With a genuine passion on life sciences industry, Alicia has worked for several industrial leaders in different practices, including Global Regulatory Affairs at Alcon, APAC Sales Operations at Illumina and Marketing at GE Healthcare. Observing and contributing to how different organizations achieved their successes, she gained experience on working with internal and external stakeholders across brands and product life cycles.

Besides industrial experience, Alicia is interested on clinical research, where she invested both experimental and analytical efforts and co-authored 7 publications to the date. Her major focus was on clinical application of MRI sequences on disease prognosis/diagnosis and tumor stage differentiation. Additionally, she is passionate on women’s health and completed a master’s thesis on using mindfulness-based dietary techniques to prevent gestational weight gain.

Alicia is currently based in our Cedar Knolls, NJ headquarters. She moved to the U.S. less than three years ago, which is the fourth country she has lived in, after China, Singapore and France. Even 12-hour flight away from home, she still proudly introduces Chinese history and culture to whoever is eager to learn. For now, she is trying to find a sport that she can finally be good at, and we shall see how that goes.

Nuvera is excited to welcome a new employee, Jennifer Dallego!

Background: Jennifer is joining Nuvera with a strong technical and analytical background combined with a growing passion for patient services. During the completion of her undergraduate degree in Neuroscience with a Computer Science sequence at Claremont McKenna College, Jennifer’s interest in biotechnology grew as she conducted a three-year research study centered on the investigation of neuroregenerative pathways in Danio rerio zebrafish post-mTBI and its implications on progressive neurodegenerative disease. Jennifer went on to complete a Master’s of Engineering in Biopharmaceutical Processing at Keck Graduate Institute, further indulging her interest in applied life sciences and healthcare industry dynamics. During her time there, Jennifer acted as an Operations Intern in Process Development at Amgen working in Cell Line Development, where she helped model predictive stability paradigms for internal company cell lines.

Jennifer now lives in Morristown, NJ, where most of her free time is filled with her cooking new recipes or baking far too many cookies (though her friends and family are always willing taste testers!)

Motivation for joining Nuvera

“Nuvera is highly specialized in building and optimizing patient support programs that fundamentally drive positive change in some of the most difficult and confusing times in a person’s life. I am more than excited to join a team of brilliant and motivated experts that deliver measurable impact into this critical space.”

CBI hosted their Patient Support Services Conference on June 19-20, 2019 in Philadelphia, PA. Nuvera was proud to be both a sponsor and presenter at this year’s conference. The title of our presentation was “Knowing Where to Invest – Understanding Experience Drivers Impact on HCP Satisfaction.” The presentation highlighted insights learned from the PURE Report – Oncology, a Patient Services customer satisfaction survey conducted in the oncology segment. PURE stands for Patient services Utilization, Recognition and Experience. Key take-aways from the presentation included:

1. How each of the the 7 PURE indices drive HCP satisfaction in dealing with Patient Support Programs (PSPs) – and the importance of on-going satisfaction monitoring
2. The need for a holistic, structured and on-going approach to PSP assessments
3. Where the combination of customer insights and a standardized approach to assessing the strategy & promotion, operations and performance management of your PSP can lead to focused action plans – and ultimately a better customer experience

The presentation also highlighted Nuvera’s Patient Services Capability Maturity Model that reviewed the steps a PSP can step through to lead to innovation, program compliance and operational efficiency.

Along with our presentation CBI focused their agenda in two areas: ensuring compliance and strengthening customized services to drive operational efficiencies. Please reach out to one of us for further details on the following topics:

• Compliance – A number of presentations focused on guidance related to the laws and regulations in providing compliant patient services support, specifically around:
  • Ensuring transparency in contributions to 501(c)(3)
  • Compliance considerations for SPP Contracting and Distribution
  • Structure in developing a compliant nurse educator program
  • Navigating the differences in providing assistance to government vs. commercial patients

• Driving Operational Efficiency – Information presented reinforced the need for on-going program assessment across a number of different areas:
  • The pros and cons of different support service models for your PSP.  Factors to consider include organizational size, the therapeutic areas you are competing in, the specific needs within the specific patient population and the level of customer and data ‘ownership’ your organization wants to undertake
  • Leverage data to improve patient adherence to understand the root causes of primary and secondary non-adherence
  • Optimize Advocate-Pharma relations to enrich the patient experience
  • Thoughtful considerations for development and execution of Nurse Educator Field Teams

CBI’s 2019 Patient Support Services Conference provided a forum for approximately 100 industry stakeholders to share and exchange ideas on ways to continuously improve the patient experience.

About Nuvera:

Nuvera dedicates itself to helping specialty pharmaceutical, biotech and rare disease companies to design and deliver a seamless patient and HCP experience for specialty therapies. Over the last 8 years, Nuvera has helped over 15 pharmaceutical companies to create and implement leading Patient-Centric solutions across 24 specialty therapeutic areas that received over 10 U.S. and Global excellence awards.

Nuvera services include the following:
• Uncover and crystalize patient and healthcare provider (HCP) needs
• Design impactful patient/HCP support experiences
• Build patient support programs and capabilities
• Optimize program performance

To learn more, please visit www.nuveracg.com

Nuvera is excited to welcome a new employee, Ash Chidirala!

Background: Ash has an undergraduate degree in Biomedical Engineering (Rutgers) and a masters degree in Innovation and Management (Tufts University). She has research experience in spinal cord injury rehabilitation and noninvasive optical imaging of the nervous system. During her masters Ash worked to build on her engineering background by iteratively working on projects to create innovative solutions with both business and technical feasibility. Prior to joining Nuvera Ash worked at a biotech startup developing and strategizing market entry for a rapid cervical cancer detection test.

Interests: In her spare time Ash enjoys painting and playing badminton.

Why Nuvera: “The team at Nuvera is passionate about contributing to greater quality of care, and they have a track record of working on projects that make life-saving medications more accessible to people. It’s incredible to know that as a member of this team I can play a small part in that.”

Join us at the upcoming CBI Patient Support Services Conference in Philly, June 19-20, 2019. Nuvera’s Principals, Greg Christianson and Edward Gajewski, will provide insights into how experience drivers impact HCP satisfaction and impact your patient support program investment.

Hear about the Nuvera Team and its work from Greg Klein, Nuvera’s Founder and Managing Partner.

We are excited to announce that we’ve partnered with The Muse to give a first-hand view into the Nuvera team and the meaningful work we do. Click here or follow the link below to meet our amazing team, hear from the employees, tour our office and get a sense of the company culture. Please let us know what you think.

https://www.themuse.com/profiles/nuveralifescienceconsulting

CBI hosted their Hub and SPP Model Optimization Conference on February 26-27 in Philadelphia, PA. Nuvera was proud to be both a sponsor and presenter at this year’s conference. We were thrilled to present select highlights from the PURE Report – Oncology, a Patient Services customer satisfaction survey conducted in the oncology segment. PURE stands for Patient services Utilization, Recognition and Experience.   The presentation highlighted:

• How changing technology is impacting HCP preference in Patient Support Program (PSS) enrollment and communication
• The value of the various communication channels in gaining awareness of PSS
• The attributes of Best-in-Class and Worst-in-Class manufacturer support in PSS

Overall, it is exciting to have quantitative insights to support strategic recommendations.

The presentation also highlighted the importance of conducting a comprehensive assessment of a manufacturers’ Patient Support Programs. Although QBRs tend to be conducted around general program performance, a comprehensive deep dive and understanding around internal strategic alignment, capturing the customer voice, establishing the right benchmarks and assessing your people and processes. All of this allows an organization to understand and address issues while they are still small.

Along with our presentation CBI focused their agenda on breakthrough strategies for compliant service model design and enhancement to improve access and outcomes. Some sessions we found to be most impactful included:

• Regulatory Environment – A number of presentations focused on potential/proposed regulations related to American Patients First. Topics included:
  • Focus on Part B negotiations and Foreign Reference Pricing
  • Ongoing discussions on Drug Importation
  • Potential changes to step edits in Medicare protected classes
  • The significant number of individual state initiatives related to price transparency and notification on price increases

• Legal Environment – Information presented reinforced the government’s interest in continuing to investigate potential infractions related to Anti-Kickback and False Claims Act. A few points highlighted included:
  • Looking for responsible individuals who ‘did bad things’ – not just the company
  • GDPR (general data protection in Europe) where the end user is in control of their own data

• Changing Market Dynamics – a number of presentations were given highlighting the on-going changes in the Hub and Patient Services Space – topics included:
  • Copay Accumulators – the ongoing increase in both utilization and cost implications to manufacturers. An example provided highlighted the impact on an individual product that showed 10% of claims accounted for 50% of the overall cost of the program
  • The Role of the Nurse – reinforced the value a nurse can have on the individual patients and the importance of on-going motivational and soft skills training to ensure an effective engagement
  • Role of Technology – changes in CRM systems and ability to complete eBVs are helping to improve processing speed, better capture data and track key metrics

CBI’s 2019 Hub and SPP Model Optimization Conference provided a forum for over 150 industry stakeholders to share and exchange ideas on ways to continuously improve the patient experience.