Neue Interpharma Boardmitglieder: «3 Fragen an» Ans Heirman, Managing Director MSD Switzerland

Interpharma hat im Rahmen der jährlichen Generalversammlung fünf neue Boardmitglieder gewählt. In unserer Rubrik «3 Fragen an» werden wir die neuen Mitglieder über die kommenden Tage gerne kurz vorstellen.

May we ask you to briefly introduce yourself and tell us a little about your current position in your company?

I’m a Belgian, from the Flemish-speaking side, married to a French speaking Belgian and together with our 6 years old daughter, we moved to Switzerland last summer when I was appointed as the new Managing Director of MSD Switzerland. 

With regard to my background: I have a Master’s degree in Bio-Engineering and a PhD in Applied Economics and Business Administration, both from Ghent University. My early career started in academia and my research focused on high-tech entrepreneurship and ‘how to turn science-based inventions into innovations’, which are inventions that are broadly used and adopted by society.

In the medical and bio-pharmaceutical field, a lot of efforts concentrate in research and development to invent new medicines and new vaccines to treat some of the world’s biggest health challenges. The failure rate is high and once we have a successful new medicine or vaccine, we often observe that it can still take a long time before they reach all patients who need them. This is where my true passion lies: to find ways to ensure that important medical inventions, make it to all patients who need them as fast as possible and to continue to invent new and better treatments for future generations.

In 2005, I decided to leave academia and join MSD, a company which has a long history in delivering breakthrough inventions as for example in oncology, vaccine-preventable diseases and in responding to global health challenges such as Ebola, antimicrobial resistance, HIV and COVID-19. Our company strongly invests in R&D each year. In 2020, MSD invested globally 13.6 billion U.S. dollars in R&D which corresponds to 28.3% of our global revenues. Overall, MSD offers a highly motivating working environment, especially for people who are passionate about breakthrough science and bridging to patients.

Over the past 16 years at MSD, I had great opportunities to move through different local and global positions in marketing, sales, business development, patient access, governmental affairs and general management where I could contribute to bringing our inventions to patients in different countries such as Belgium, Luxembourg, Norway and since September 2020 in Switzerland and Liechtenstein.

I feel truly privileged to lead our Human Health division in Switzerland, a country with one of the most advanced healthcare systems in the world and Europe’s leading pharma hub. MSD has a strong and growing footprint in Switzerland, with more than 1’000 employees across 4 sites in Lucerne for our Human and Animal Health Operations, Logistics and Supply Chain Hub, Global support functions as well as Research and Clinical Manufacturing division and we are further expanding with a new Innovation and Development Hub in Zurich.

What focus do you want to tackle in your role as a board member of Interpharma?

As I mentioned earlier, my driving force is to contribute to make innovations largely available to patients as fast as possible. Switzerland has a strong healthcare system, but we are not excelling in ‘time to patient’, and we do observe delays in access and reimbursement. During the COVID-19 pandemic, we all have witnessed that timelines can be shortened if all stakeholders work together, think out-of-the box and act with a sense of urgency. My wish and my focus will be to keep this mindset of partnership and open dialogue, contributing to finding new ways to accelerate access and ensuring that also other disease areas are handled with the same sense of urgency they deserve.

The pharmaceutical industry is a very strong pillar of the Swiss economy and it will be important to ensure that the ‘pharma hub Switzerland’ remains successful and competitive on an international scale. The pharma and healthcare ecosystem are changing rapidly, driven a.o. by digitization, the potential of data and AI to accelerate R&D, improve health outcomes and create efficiencies. New companies are entering in the healthcare ecosystem, bringing new technologies and new ways to improve health ‘around the pill’. In order to stay competitive, we need to make sure the Swiss healthcare and policy environment will be a fertile ground for such innovations. In particular, we will need to work together on creating a strong framework to unlock the potential of health data. To advance these and other areas together with colleagues and stakeholders will be a priority in my role as member of the Interpharma board.

How has COVID-19 impacted your operations in 2020 and what are your expectations for MSD in 2021?

COVID-19 has demonstrated the need for resilience; the ability to bounce back and adapt to disruptive changes. I am incredibly proud and grateful for the flexibility and creativity our employees have demonstrated throughout the pandemic to adapt the way we work and ensure continuity in the supply of our medicines and vaccines to patients and our interactions with customers. One enabler of being adaptive is our digital transformation that we embarked already before the pandemic and further accelerated within our company and in our engagement with our customers.

Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, MSD has focused towards understanding the biology of the virus and identifying potential vaccines and therapies against the disease. In late January 2021, however, our company discontinued the development of two vaccine candidates as they did not achieve the necessary immune responses to form an effective protection against the virus, and shifted the focus towards a promising therapeutic candidate, an investigational orally available antiviral therapeutic for non-hospitalized patients will now enter Phase III. Our novel investigational therapeutics might soon provide us with an opportunity to help patients with COVID-19. In addition, we announced to support the manufacturing and supply of Johnson & Johnson’s COVID-19 vaccine. We will use our facilities in the United States to produce drug substance, formulate and fill vials of Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine.

The COVID-19 pandemic led to several changes within our company, as for example in the framework of our ‘volunteering program’. This program is an important contribution to society and the community by ‘giving back’. It allows employees to engage in social projects of choice for one week per year. Amid the pandemic, we lifted the 40-hours rule for qualified employees to dedicate more time to pandemic response and helping people in need. In addition, we implemented a new “work-from-home” policy introducing a high degree of flexibility for employees to choose their workplace according to personal needs and work requirements. This policy is a further step in empowering employees, enabling work-life balance and minimizing our environmental footprint through reducing travels.

For 2021 and beyond, I am hopeful that we will emerge from this pandemic stronger as a company and as an industry. As a company, we have a very strong base and an exciting pipeline with potential new launches a.o in Oncology, infectious diseases and vaccines – and two COVID-19 medications. As an industry, bio-pharma companies have demonstrated the importance of having a strong innovative company, able to step-up to develop and produce new vaccines and medicines in record time. However, this is only possible through a close collaboration across all levels and with different public and private stakeholders – with short communication lines – allowing to overcome logistical challenges, incentivizing R&D and ensuring production capacity. We only can advance unified and find solutions to future challenges through collaborations.

I am confident, that this crisis permits to draw many lessons and take the learnings to build a healthier future for all.