Many launch plans I have reviewed start and end with the doctor.
Which specialists, how many calls, which messages. All important. But in many Gulf markets, the doctor chooses the medicine and someone else decides who pays for it.
Before any launch plan, I ask the team to map the payers for that brand:
- The health authority. Registers the medicine and sets its public price.
- The insurers. Decide which plans cover it, and on what conditions.
- Claims administrators. Apply the approval rules to each prescription, every day.
- Formulary committees. Decide whether the hospital lists and stocks it.
- The prescriber. Chooses within what the patient's cover allows.
- The patient. Pays whatever share the plan does not cover.
Each of them asks a different question. The authority wants a complete dossier. Insurers want to know which patients benefit and what it will cost. A formulary committee wants evidence that the medicine is better, safer or better value than what is already listed.
None of them wants a relationship instead of evidence. Work with payers is transparent, and built on data that medical colleagues can stand behind.
A brand that doctors like but no plan covers will struggle, however good the field team is.
“The doctor chooses the medicine. The payer decides who pays for it.”
Lesson 3 of 17 in Step 4: Distributors and market access, with the full guide and a checklist for this week.