Ashfield Commercial & Medical Services Redefines Healthcare Outsourcing to Meet Pharma Challenges

UDG Healthcare plc (formerly United Drug plc) has integrated its sales, marketing and medical service offerings within one division to better meet the needs of pharmaceutical clients. The new division, Ashfield Commercial and Medical Services, combines eight service areas under the Ashfield division umbrella, allowing the newly created cross-functional business approach to enhance future client engagements.

The global healthcare environment is increasingly complex and characterised by: an increase in speciality products; greater regulatory control; reimbursement difficulties; healthcare professional access challenges; better informed patients; increased use of technology and media influence and continued pressure on pharmaceutical companies to demonstrate real world patient benefits to justify treatment costs. Ashfield, as a leading international outsourced service provider for the pharmaceutical industry, is responding to these needs by utilising a partnership approach to bring greater insight, more flexibility and ingenuity to its services for global clients.

Bringing together highly successful individual business brands including Ashfield In2Focus, Business Edge, Pharmexx, InforMed, Watermeadow Medical, Pharma Marketing Academy and Universal World Events under the Ashfield brand provides even more value to clients through a cross-functional business approach. This enables Ashfield to develop solutions that harness excellence across their areas of expertise and work in partnership with clients to ensure impact, effectiveness and efficiency.

Ashfield’s eight areas of expertise are: Ashfield Commercial; Ashfield Clinical; Ashfield Healthcare Communications; Ashfield Insight and Performance; Ashfield Market Access; Ashfield Meetings and Events; Ashfield Pharmacovigilance; Ashfield Medical Information.

The Ashfield portfolio provides solutions throughout the product lifecycle. In the pre-launch phase, services include managing investigator meetings and developing scientific communications, through to organising advisory boards and conducting the market research required to develop brand strategy. Once products are approved, Ashfield provides marketing consultancy, designs and organises launch conferences and implements sales force effectiveness programmes to ensure launch success then delivers sales solutions via Ashfield’s multi-channel field and call centre services. In addition, Ashfield provides the clinical education, patient support programmes and medical information services to ensure patients and healthcare professionals receive the information and support they need.

Chris Corbin, Managing Director of Ashfield Commercial & Medical Services, commented: “This transformation of our business allows us to deliver more for the industry, healthcare professionals and patients through our combined expertise and insight, whilst retaining the ingenuity and energy that our companies are known for. We have always put our clients and customers first and uniting these businesses in one division will help us address their challenges even more effectively.”

Ashfield Commercial & Medical Services, +1 215 688 1975, www.ashfieldhealthcare.com / www.udghealthcare.com.