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Our Commitment to Patients Means Never Stop Evolving - Our Patient Access Philosophy
April 25, 2024
Tolga Tanguler
Chief Commercial Officer, Alnylam Pharmaceuticals
How should a biopharmaceutical company measure its progress? There are many answers to this question. If you consult Chat GPT, the responses inevitably turn to profit and loss, headcount, or even market capitalization.
Ask any of us at Alnylam, and our answer is rooted in our commitment to delivering the full potential of RNAi therapeutics, a class of medicines we discovered and developed based on Nobel Prize-winning technology, for one reason: to revolutionize health for patients who are waiting.
Since our founding in 2002, we have made tremendous progress, bringing forward five approved products, with more than 5,000 patients on our wholly owned medicines and generating over a billion dollars in annual product revenues.
Alnylam’s progress delivering our medicines has been guided by our Patient Access Philosophy, which was established in 2017, before our first medicine was even approved. The Philosophy boldly states that, in addition to accepting the challenges of scientific discovery and development, we are accountable for ensuring that patients who can benefit from our medicines have access to them. This Philosophy is grounded in three key principles:
- Every decision we make must benefit patients
- We must measure the success of our innovation based on the significance of patient access, outcomes, and societal impact
- We cannot do this alone - we must proactively collaborate with others
At Alnylam, we have enormous potential for further growth. To realize the promise of RNAi therapeutics, we must constantly reevaluate, reimagine, and reinvent where we are going as a company if we are to help many patients in the long-term. That is why we continue to examine our Patient Access Philosophy to ensure its principles embrace the responsibility we have as an independent biopharmaceutical company with a unique opportunity to positively impact the patient journey with innovative medicines like RNAi therapeutics.
These are the driving forces behind the continued evolution of our Patient Access Philosophy:
- Sustainable value and significant impact. It is our responsibility to push the boundaries of discovery, clinical development, and delivery to fuel significant and sustainable patient impact.
- Connect for better outcomes. Together with partners in the healthcare ecosystem, we can reduce barriers to improve outcomes for all, most importantly for the patient.
- Be proactive and accountable. Our Patient Access Philosophy defines our role in patients’ journey to innovative therapeutic options and holds us accountable to progress.
Every year, we measure and report on our progress in each of these areas. I invite you to read our 2023 Patient Access Philosophy & Progress fact sheet to dive into our data.
We have always endeavored to be bold. Positively and productively disruptive. Radically transformative, even. Our Patient Access Philosophy still reflects our commitment to going beyond financial considerations and supporting better access, outcomes, and value for society. It also reflects our belief that to truly keep patients at the center, we must maximize our science so that we remain positioned to help as many people as possible.
In this respect (and many others) though we will continue to evolve for the greater good, we are – and will always be – Alnylam. However, we now have the ability to be even bolder in how we tackle challenges for patients both today and tomorrow. And with the Philosophy as our guide, each day we are closer to transforming medicine so that it works better for everyone, most importantly, the patients.
