Month: June 2023

At Viatris, we believe that access is incredibly personal. It is fundamental to our mission and a universal need and right, especially important in challenging times.

Given Viatris’ unique portfolio and footprint, we touch all of life’s moments, from birth to end of life, acute conditions and chronic diseases. We see across multiple therapeutic areas to people at the center of their own unique health journey. We are focused on meeting individual needs, whether with a generic medicine, an improved version of an existing medicine or a truly novel therapeutic solution.

We provide medicines on the WHO Essential Medicines List (EML) and the WHO Prequalification List (PreQ), which are important components of scaling access. Essential medicines are those that satisfy the priority health care needs of a population. They can save lives, reduce suffering and improve health. They are selected considering disease prevalence and public health relevance, evidence of efficacy and safety and comparative cost-effectiveness. They are intended to be available in functioning health systems at all times, in appropriate dosage forms, of assured quality and at prices individuals and health systems can afford. The PreQ list allows for U.N. and other multilateral donor procurement, as well as accelerated registration processes in low- and lower-middle income countries.

We go beyond developing, making and distributing highquality medicines. With the needs of people at the heart of what we do, we work to help find solutions that support resilient health systems. We have designed our global operations and supply chain to be a reliable and flexible partner for access across the world, constantly adapting to an ever-evolving landscape.

We pursue holistic approaches to prevention, diagnosis, treatment and disease management. We work to build public health awareness, to support and implement research, to deliver access to health education, and to advocate for public policies that advance sustainable access.

As a global healthcare company committed to truly supporting equity in access to treatment, we advocate for policies advancing efficiency of regulatory systems, creating pro-competitive policy environments and supporting longterm market viability and global supply networks. Unless continuous support for access is prioritized across all policies, limitations on access will persist.

Through global and local engagement, we seek to bring regulatory harmonization and increased effectiveness across geographies, to speed up approval procedures, product registrations and geographic expansion – all part of making quality treatment available faster and often at more affordable prices to patients across the world.

Our Portfolio and Reach in 2022: 

Served ~1 billion patients globally1Sold > 80 billion doses of medicine across > 165 countries and territoriesReached ~ 90% of low- and lower-middleincome countriesHad >250 products on the WHO EML and 62 products on the WHO PreQ ListProvided products that treat the top 10 of the WHO’s leading causes of death globallyLocally available medicines addressed at least half of the top ten local causes of death, across all country income bands, in >100 countries

Advancing On Our Initial Access and Health Goals 

We help address the challenges in preventing and treating both infectious and noncommunicable diseases (NCDs). In 2022, we set initial company-wide goals to expand access and support more resilient healthcare systems. The first goal involves combatting the global HIV/AIDS epidemic, an area in which we have made a strong impact for many years. The second goal centers on strengthening healthcare professional education and training — a vital element to building more resilient healthcare systems and addressing the burden of NCDs, which account for nearly 75% of global deaths annually.3

Our Access Goals:

Provide ARV therapy equivalent to a total of 30 million patients, including more than 2 million children living with HIV/AIDS, between 2022 and the end of 2025.

Our Progress: In 2022, we made progress toward our goal by providing treatments for approximately 8 million patients, including almost 600,000 children living with HIV/AIDS.

Impact 100 million patients via HCP education and outreach regarding prevention, diagnosis and treatment options for cardiovascular disease, diabetes, cancer and other important chronic conditions to improve outcomes through the NCD Academy by the end of 2025.

Our Progress: More than 19,000 individuals have an NCD Academy account, representing approximately 48.6 million patients impacted.2

Sources

1The number of patients served is an estimate calculated using internal sales data (global volume of doses sold in 2022 in all markets as aligned with IQVIA standard units), divided by estimated per patient usage, which is based on treatment dose, treatment duration, and treatment adherence as estimated by Viatris Medical Affairs based on approved label indication and instructions for use, current international guideline recommendations, and common usage in clinical practice. Patients using multiple Viatris medicines may be counted as multiple patients. Certain adjustments were applied in consideration of announced divestitures and to account for acceptable alternatives to the patient usage factors noted above, and rounded to the nearest hundred million. Estimates may be subject to reassessment.

2Patient reach calculated by multiplying the number of HCP learners by the average number of patients treated, as self-reported by HCP learners upon registering for NCD Academy. Patient reach includes unique patients as well as repeat patient encounters. As of January 2023.

3WHO HIV and AIDS Fact Sheet

View the full 2022 Sustainability Report here.

“Just as the creation of shareholder value requires performance on multiple dimensions, sustainable development is also a multidimensional challenge.” These words by Prof. Stuart Hart and Mark Milstein underscore their sustainable value framework.[i] “Yet,” they continue, “most managers frame sustainability not as a multidimensional opportunity, but rather as a one-dimensional nuisance.”

The idea of sustainable value, therefore, is to show how “the multiple challenges associated with global sustainability, seen through the appropriate business lenses, can help to identify strategies and practices which improve performance in all four quadrants of the shareholder-value framework. This, in turn, facilitates the creation of sustainable value for the firm.”

Interestingly, they begin by looking at the basic components of shareholder value, which they illustrate through a matrix with four quadrants. The two axes represent time (today versus tomorrow, i.e. the short-term versus the long term) and place (internal versus external, i.e. within the firm versus beyond the firm). This results in four distinct dimensions of performance crucial to generating shareholder value: cost and risk reduction (today, internal); reputation and legitimacy (today, external); innovation and repositioning (tomorrow, internal); and growth path and trajectory (tomorrow, external).

Hart and Milstein use the same axes as their shareholder value matrix (today-tomorrow, internal-external) to create a sustainable value matrix. By making innovation both socially inclusive and environmentally sustainable, they argue that significant business and societal value will be created. Hence, the first dimension (today, internal), driven by trends in pollution, consumption and waste, advocates the strategy of pollution prevention, by minimising waste and emissions from current facilities and operations, which in turn will reduce cost and risk.

The second strategy (today, external) is driven by civil society, transparency and connectivity. The focus is product stewardship, by engaging stakeholders and managing the full life cycle of today’s products, which will enhance reputation and legitimacy. The third strategy (tomorrow, internal), driven by market disruption, technology trends and the ecological footprint of companies, is clean technology, by developing and deploying next-generation solutions, which will accelerate innovation and repositioning.

The final strategy (tomorrow, external), driven by population changes, poverty and inequality, is called sustainability vision, by creating a shared roadmap for meeting unmet needs, resulting a growth trajectory. This links directly to Hart’s previous work on BOP markets. Hence, sustainable value is created by bringing together BOP market needs with best environmental practices. This resolves two dilemmas. The first is that only the rich can afford to be sustainable, which smacks of elitism, privilege, and even racism. And the second is that, without the billions of poor having access to sustainable options, the world (including the rich countries) will never achieve sustainability anyway.

Turning this sustainable value ideal into practical reality requires what Hart, together with Clayton Christensen, has called “The Great Leap” of driving innovation from the base of the pyramid.[ii] Others have called this “frugal innovation,” a term popularised by Navi Radjou and Jaideep Prabhu.[iii] Some trace the concept back to Mahatma Gandhi’s approach to technology in the 1930s and 1940s; others point to “frugal engineering” that was coined by Carlos Ghosn when he was joint CEO of Renault and Nissan in 2005.

For Radjou and Prabhu, they were looking for a way to describe the kind of “do more with less” innovation that they encountered in India and other emerging markets. When they asked people how they would define this frugal, flexible, inclusive innovation, they would use the Hindi word “jugaad.” The power of Hart and Millstein’s sustainable value concept is that it is not only about economic, social or environmental benefits, but all three simultaneously. When Radjou was asked in an interview how frugal innovation might do the same thing, he gave the following example of how sustainability, frugality and decentralisation work.[iv] 

One of the Fab labs in Barcelona decided to look at the issue of pollution in the city. So they conceived, designed and manufactured a device which has two components – one part has sensors which sit outside your window and pick up levels of nitrogen, carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, noise and sunlight, and the other part fits into your computer so that is where the sensor sends the data through very low-energy, low-frequency radio signals. Now this data is sent through the Internet to a central server where data from other citizens who also have this device can then be processed. This data, which gives us information on the noisier parts of Barcelona or a particularly high level of carbon monoxide in the air, can then be used to lobby with the local government to make a difference.

In all cases, the idea is to creatively simplify and redesign traditionally complex, expensive products to be highly affordable. There are numerous examples, from Limbetless’s additive manufacturing personalised bionics and prosthetics, to G.E.’s hand-held ultrasound scanners. What makes sustainable value distinctive from generic frugal innovation is that it adds the environmental dimension. A good example might be the HANS Solar Briefcase and PowerPack, which emerged from billionaire Manoj Bhargava’s Stage 2 Innovations, a $100 million investment fund for sustainable development.

[i] Hart, S.L. & Milstein, M. (2003). Creating sustainable value, Academy of Management Executive, 17(2).

[ii] Hart, S.L. & Christensen, C.M. (2002). The great leap: driving innovation from the base of the global pyramid. MIT Sloan Management Review 44 (1): 51–56.

[iii] Radjou, N. & Prabhu, J. (2015). Frugal innovation: how to do more with less. London: Profile Books.

[iv] Aulbur, W. (2016). In conversation with Navi Radjou and Jaideep Prabhu. Thinkers.in, October 24.