Manca Povsic, AMICULUM Access

I first stumbled across market access when, like PhD students before me, I was faced with the overwhelming realisation that despite spending 4 years working in a research lab, academia just wasn’t for me. I’ve loved science from a young age, so it was only natural to pursue this, by studying microbiology at university before making the leap into a post-graduate life in protein engineering. After the initial excitement, the reality of lab work set in: long hours, repetitive tasks, failed experiments and progress at a glacial pace. In my final year, I took every opportunity to do additional training and to research other available career options. I soon realised that while I enjoyed working things out, I didn’t like the monotonous bench work, and although I loved writing about science, I didn’t enjoy subjects that weren’t applicable to the real world.

The next logical step was to find a dynamic role that intersects science, the real world and writing. Easy?! A career in MedComms quickly presented itself and, after visiting a few career fairs and talking to people in the industry, I began applying for medical writer positions. I was eventually interviewed for a role as a writer in a market access consultancy, a subject I’d not heard of before, and after a lot of online searching and the reassurance that it was ‘similar’ to MedComms, I accepted the position. This decision set me on a 5-year path to where I am today, and one from which I have never looked back.

My first few years in market access were quite similar to MedComms. I primarily focused on desk research, understanding the products and developing materials to fit the clients’ needs. As I learned more about how to achieve approval and reimbursement for different therapies, and all the moving parts involved in bringing a therapy to market, I began to have a more strategic involvement. I transitioned from writer to senior writer and then to consultant, working even more closely with our clients and overseeing larger streams of work. Moving to AMICULUM has allowed me to continue developing in this area and has given me the opportunity to help build our market access agency: AMICULUM Access.

This agency makes AMICULUM pretty unique as it allows us to offer a range of MedComms, training and market access services, and ensures that no 2 days are alike. One day I could be writing an approval document for a rare disease, the next overseeing the development of training for a medical device, and then moving on to consulting with a client about clinical trial design. Despite this variety, my day-to-day work still involves the fundamentals of market access – finding and communicating the value of a therapy to different stakeholders in different ways, combining scientific acumen, problem solving, writing skills and creativity. The mix of these activities, and the variety of projects, is what keeps the role fresh and interesting, and the knowledge that I’m helping patients makes my job extremely satisfying.