Did you know this about the market access environment in Finland?

^{Oriola’s Market Access Manager Anna-Leena Sokka has in-depth experience of working in different Market Access and Medical Advisor roles in the pharmaceutical industry.}

For outpatient prescription medicines, inclusion in the reimbursement system is generally needed to gain true access to the Finnish market. In the price and reimbursement application, the Pharmaceutical Pricing Board will, among other things, assess the therapeutic value of the medicinal product and the costs of the medicinal treatment compared to its benefits. Conditional reimbursement, which was introduced into the Finnish Health Insurance Act in 2017, offers pharmaceutical companies a chance for market entry with new, expensive medicines where there is a high unmet need and when there are uncertainties related to the therapeutic value or cost-effectiveness in the Finnish market.

“When negotiating conditional reimbursement, you need to be aware of the special medical need for the medicine and manage the uncertainties related to its use,” notes Anna-Leena Sokka, Oriola’s Market Access Manager who has in-depth experience of working in different Market Access and Medical Advisor roles in the pharmaceutical industry.

For new innovative medicines used in hospitals, there are several steps that need to be taken in order to gain access to and success in the Finnish market. Oriola can help pharmaceutical companies in introducing innovative medicines to the hospital sector, all the way from the Finnish Medicines Agency Fimea’s health technology assessment (HTA) process through managed entry agreements to competitive tendering. The next tendering process, involving one hospital district, will start in early 2022. If a company wishes to participate in the tendering in 2022, preparations should be started as soon as possible.

“What makes Oriola stand out is that our hospital access services cover everything from insight into the HTA processes all the way to medicinal product procurement and handling day-to-day communication between the hospital and the pharmaceutical company,” says Anna-Leena Sokka.

“We can guide companies throughout the entire tendering process.”

Landscape analysis provides information you don’t want to miss

When a pharmaceutical company considers introducing a new medicine to the market in a therapeutic area they are not yet familiar with, landscape analysis plays a key role in predicting the medicine’s position on the market. This means, among other things, determining the potential number of patients or mapping patients’ treatment paths to find out information such as where the diagnosis is made and which factors particularly affect treatment choices. This kind of information is not usually available in treatment guidelines but requires discussion with healthcare professionals.

“An important part of landscape analysis is liaising with healthcare professionals, such as the future prescribers, and discuss the treatment paths with them. The information obtained will help companies in decision-making,” notes Anna-Leena Sokka.