Winner
Jazz Pharmaceuticals' EU Launch of Sunosi (solriamfetol)
with support from GCI Health, Ashley Medical Communications, Salt and HRW
Summary of work
Excessive daytime sleepiness (EDS) is a debilitating symptom of both narcolepsy and obstructive sleep apnoea (OSA), which affects nearly all aspects of an individual’s daily living, from falling asleep at unexpected times during the day to negatively impacting relationships and day-to-day activities. Despite this, recognition of EDS is low amongst nearly all stakeholders, including treating physicians, payers, and the patients themselves. Jazz identified the existence of a significant unmet need to both treat and provide education on EDS as a serious symptom of narcolepsy and OSA. With the introduction of Jazz’s new treatment, the basic ability for people to stay awake as a result of these conditions has the potential to be realised.
Jazz’s new product launch success can be attributed to extensive market and customer research, spanning two distinct patient and treating populations, and the adaptation of a traditional ‘top-down’ regional launch strategy to a more localised launch plan, ensuring initial successes in specific markets.
Jazz executed high-impact launch activities, injecting energy into ongoing launch success across the EU. Additionally, cross-country collaboration remained core to Jazz’s launch strategy, with learnings shared on a regular basis to overcome barriers and continue to improve patient outcomes by expanding access.
Judges’ comments
Jazz Pharmaceuticals’ entry was well-structured and well-written. The judges felt it was great to see the effective use of disease education to support this complex product launch. It had a good blend of top down and localised market input and was candid about the information on work to be done.
