GLOBAL
Patient Access Philosophy
Alnylam is committed to making the therapies we develop available to those who will benefit from them
Alnylam was founded in 2002 with the ambitious goal of developing an entirely new class of medicines based on a major scientific breakthrough called RNA interference (RNAi). Patients, caregivers, and advocates have been unwavering partners, standing beside us as we work relentlessly to develop investigational therapies to help people with serious and life-threatening diseases around the world. We deeply value these partnerships. We remain steadfastly committed to understanding patient needs and how to best address them.
Here at Alnylam, we all live by a shared Philosophy when it comes to patient access: our therapies must get to those who will benefit from them. We consider this Philosophy as our compass, guiding how we will behave and the decisions we will make. We established our Patient Access Philosophy before we launched our first medicine, and have made a commitment to ensure patient access to every product we develop. Too often, patients have trouble accessing the medicines their doctor prescribes and we didn’t want that to happen for our treatments. We have come too far and there is too great of a need for our future medicines to accept this situation for our patients.
What our Philosophy means for the people who matter most—
our patient communities:
Patients come first. We actively listen to the challenges patients and their families face and create solutions. Every day, we work with doctors, insurance companies, and government authorities around the world to increase awareness of rare diseases to improve diagnosis and increase access to care so that patients can live healthier lives.
For example: At Alnylam, we’re dedicated to getting medicines to patients as quickly as possible, because we know every day matters. We built a team dedicated to answering patient calls for help in gaining access to prescribed medicines. Our case managers and patient education liaisons roll up their sleeves, answer questions, and support patients in securing access to our medicines.
Patients who have engaged with these teams have been satisfied with the results of their encounters saying they felt adequately prepared to receive treatment.
She ‘went to bat’ for me by talking with the financial person at my infusion center and gave good info. She called back to see how everything was proceeding and if more assistance was needed.
She has followed up with me more than once just to make sure that I have been satisfied. She has also helped to identify a second infusion center I might use.
I never expected her to come to my home to check on me…
She was always available to answer any questions.
At Alnylam, our entire team is committed to serving the best interest of patients through personal, one-on-one interactions. To date, we’ve spoken with nearly 400 patients and their families. And, in a recent survey, we received a satisfaction score of 4.8 out of 5.
Innovation is key in everything we do. We are working as quickly as possible to develop new, innovative medicines that have a powerful and positive impact on lives. And, we are determined to apply this pioneering spirit to our mission of ensuring that patients have access to our approved therapies whenever they are prescribed.
For example: We work with insurers on creative new strategies to get patients the medicine prescribed for their condition. . We have more than 10 value-based agreements in place with payers to ensure price predictability.
Our medicines will always be priced responsibly, meaning they will be priced in light of the value delivered and in consideration of the rare disease markets we serve. We will continue to grow through continued scientific innovation – not arbitrary price increases. Specifically, in the U.S., we’ve vowed to limit price increases – committing to not increase the price of our medicines over the rate of inflation as determined by the consumer price index for urban consumers – which was just 1.9 percent in 2018 – unless there has been valuable new innovation achieved.
Accountability is a must. We fight for policies that promote better medicines and faster patient access to them. We will address and seek solutions to financial barriers to access.
We are actively monitoring and measuring how we are performing against our Patient Access Philosophy and are committed to being transparent about what is working and what isn’t. Check out our 2019 Patient Access Philosophy Report here.
Despite having not yet made a profit, we’ll invest our minds, hearts, and resources – more than $505 million dollars last year alone – in research and development because, if we succeed, we believe we will transform medicine and patients’ lives.
