Entrée Health Princeton: 2016

Entrée Health Princeton

210 Carnegie Center, Suite 200

Princeton, NJ 08540

Telephone: 609-936-8588

E-mail: [email protected]

Website: entreehealth.com

 

 

Accounts

Account wins 4

Active business clients  5

 

Brands by 2015 sales

Brand product accounts held        10

$50 million to $100 million 2

$100 million to $500 million          3

$500 million to $1 billion    1

$1 billion or more    1

Products not yet approved/launched     2

 

 

Services mix


Access and reimbursement 100%

Channel mix


Print 85%

Interactive 15%

 

 

Entrée Health, the flagship market access agency of the Omnicom Health Group, is dedicated to helping brands gain profitable market access and to helping patients and providers understand the complexities that come with reimbursement, executives say, adding that the agency is driven by the idea that people deserve access to the healthcare they need.

“We believe conversations about access are fundamental to healthcare decisions,” says Andrew Gottfried, president. “It makes us proud to come to work every day.”

According to agency leaders, 2015 marked a year of rapid development for Entrée Health Princeton. The standard metrics, including new account wins, organic growth of in-line business, and additions to the agency’s headcount were all achieved over the course of the year, executives say, but it was another agency milestone that executives call truly formative – and transformative – for the relatively young agency, which opened in 2013.

“Four brand launches in the second half of the year – that kind of experience will mature your agency in a hurry,” says Lauren Walrath, senior VP, client service director.

A new arrival in 2015 herself, Walrath highlights staffing as a key to the year’s success.  “We were able to call on a combination of veteran staff and new hires to build the right dynamic across all our launch teams,” she says.

Jason Dineen, group creative director, says, “Back-to-back brand launches can be daunting; we made sure to mix the hard work with a lot of fun. I’d bet our teams would be up for it again in 2016.”

 

The year’s accomplishments

Two wins in 2015 grew out of the agency’s longest-standing client relationship with AstraZeneca – previous existing business with MedImmune’s FluMist and Synagis led to work on Lynparza from AstraZeneca, executives say. In the past year, the agency built a suite of materials aimed at securing access and smoothing potential distribution hurdles for the launches of Iressa and Tagrisso, both for non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC).

The agency’s approach aims to build partnerships with clients from the earliest stages of strategic planning, long before tactical projects are initiated, executives say. One such partnership is with Relypsa, which in late 2015 launched Veltassa, the first new medication for hyperkalemia in more than 50 years. A pre-launch period of market education and relationship-building was followed by launch campaigns including value-focused details for payers, hospitals, and integrated systems, along with journal advertising.

The launch of Ninlaro, the first oral proteasome inhibitor for multiple myeloma from Takeda Oncology, involved frequent flights to Cambridge, Mass. “Our work with Takeda Oncology represents one of our first wins after we opened the agency,” Dineen says. “The launch was an incredibly proud moment for our team.” The agency created branding for Ninlaro 1Point, the brand’s access and reimbursement hub, supplemented with a training curriculum for field teams to allow them to answer providers’ questions about in-office dispensing, specialty pharmacy distribution, or Medicare Part D.

For clients at Shire, the agency is currently preparing for an upcoming launch into the ophthalmology space.

And for all of the above brands, according to executives, the agency also helped to deliver promotions for access and reimbursement hubs – the range of patient and provider services and support that help ensure the right patients have affordable access to their medicines.

This increased focus on value echoes a larger conversation across the industry, executives say. Working with the U.S. market access strategy group at new client Sanofi, the agency “worked to think above-brand, and engage organized customers as they seek innovative, value-based solutions,” Walrath says.

The agency is also supporting Sanofi with new training programs, workshops, and communications that present the full range of Sanofi capabilities customers can leverage toward improving population health, executives say.

 

Structure and services

The agency’s above-brand and branded work both demonstrate core agency strengths, according to Walrath. “As a full-service access and reimbursement agency, everyone on our team focuses on what value means to different and diverse stakeholders in the health economy,” she says. “We use that understanding to build strategies and shape communications, campaigns, and programmatic ideas that help clients succeed in making their products available to patients through key channels.”

With organized customers across the industry looking closer at the value of the medicines they pay for, the agency has expanded the breadth of its expertise to help clients meet, and lead, conversations about value, executives say.

“We’ve always worked with partner agencies and public relations firms within the corporate family,” Dineen says.

To those existing relationships, Walrath says, “We’ve built competencies via big data partnerships, and we’ve added to our bench in the payer strategy department to strengthen our thinking and our work in population health management.”

 

Future plans

Executives say learning and development is a priority for the agency, expanding its professional development offerings to ensure employees are fluent in the latest market access trends. Additionally, digital capabilities will continue to be refined with support from iVenturesHealth, the latest offering from The CDM Group. The agency’s payer strategy department is growing, to keep pace with clients’ needs for channel expertise and insights into payer decision-making.

 

Philanthropy

Entrée Health Princeton dedicates “GoodWorks Day” efforts to supporting hunger relief and arts education in underserved areas in New Jersey, executives say.