For the first time, the Healthcare Club succesfully hosted two treks to visit companies in the heathcare sector, including start-ups, big pharma, biotech, and VCs. One group of students went to the annual trek in Switzerland, while another group was a part of the first-ever healthcare trek to Boston. To get a better idea of the student experience on these treks, we are pleased to feature the persepectives of HCC members who participated. Here's a post re: the Swiss trek written by Maria Guerrero (Class of 2015):
Last December IESE landed in the country of chocolate, banks and the pharmaceutical industry, Switzerland.
Our first stop was Novartis. We visited the main headquarters with impressive buildings designed by Rafael Moneo and Frank Gehry, hosted by Diana Villavieja, Global Associate Brand Director in specialty dermatology. It is an exciting time for this department, which is preparing the launch Secukinumab, a biologic treatment for psoriasis that has been proven to be more effective than current treatments for this disease. We had the opportunity to learn about the challenges that Novartis is facing to launch new products and how new strategies are being set up to adapt to this new environment. Patients are more informed than ever, the competition is fierce and public administrations are cutting down their expenditures. This excellent group of professionals based in Basel interacts with the divisions located in each country and it plans, executes and follows up product launch to be sure that patients will have the opportunity to benefit from Novartis products.
Our next stop were the headquarters of Roche in Basel, another quintessential example of a Swiss pharmaceutical company. We had the opportunity to talk to Stefan Frings, Head of Business Development in Oncology at Roche and learnt how the model of discovering new drugs is evolving. Roche has a group of professionals dedicated to looking for new opportunities outside its organization in different therapeutic areas, both in biotech companies and academia. Just listening to Stefan you could notice the entrepreneurial mindset that the company gained after the full acquisition of Genentech based in California. We also discussed with Sohail Sheikh, part of the Global Strategy team at Roche, how the company is approaching the launch of new products since the early stages of development.
There are companies that are taking other alternatives to minimize the risk associated with bringing new drugs to the market. As a good example of this approach, we visited the headquarters of Bayer in Basel, dedicated to the OTC (over-the-counter) business. Joerg Ohle, Head Region Europe, and Martina Noenninger (Global Brand Director) offered us the opportunity to learn more about this area and how the pharma business and the OTC business interact and benefit from each other.
Some of these OTC products are branded by one company and manufactured by a different one. This is actually the case for some of Bayer OTC products. For example, Supradyn from Bayer is manufactured by the chemical company DSM, which actually was our last visit of the trek. DSM main areas are health, nutrition and materials. One of the most important activities within the company is the production of ingredients and vitamins for the food and pharmaceutical industry. Through years of experience DSM has developed optimal processes to produce these products in a sustainable way.
In conclusion, the IESE Healthcare Switzerland Trek was definitely the best way to know more about the pharmaceutical industry and the challenges that this industry is facing. I encourage anyone with interest in this industry to come with us next year!