AstraZeneca UK wins top industry award at PMEA

The award, for companies with an annual turnover of more than £150m, was one of four PMEAs the Anglo-Swedish pharma company picked up for work carried out in 2010.

During this time AstraZeneca UK (AZ) focussed on building better relationships with NHS stakeholders in order to work more collaboratively, and central to this were the company’s partnerships with the health service at national and local level, which helped ensure that it was aligned and engaged with NHS priorities.

“AstraZeneca has been through a fundamental cultural change and completely altered its commercial model with great success,” said Daniel Mathews, managing partner of the UK Life Science Practice at Accenture and chairman of the PMEA judges.

“It has piloted a number of new projects and worked hard to connect the UK operating company into Europe and its healthcare systems. Despite stretched resources, AstraZeneca has come a long way and really understands the new environment it is working in,” he added. 

AstraZeneca UK - winners of the Accenture Company of the Year at PMEA 2011

In 2009, in partnership with NHS stakeholders across oncology, pathology, genetics and chest medicine, AZ established a network of epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) mutation testing in advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC).

The partnership led to a sea change in the delivery of personalised medicine in lung cancer and saw the number of EFGR tests increase from 219 in 2009 to 5,435 in 2010.

AZ also won the Healthcare Collaboration Award and Customer Focus Award in recognition of the work it undertook in EFGR testing, which resulted in ‘test all’ approach to EFGR mutation-positive testing when Iressa (gefitinib) was recommended by NICE in July 2010.

The Iressa Team attracted particular commendation on the night for securing long-term change in NHS practice by developing the infrastructure for EGFR testing, and took home the GSW Worldwide Marketing Team of the Year Award.

PMEA 2011: Full results

PMEA 2011: Winners in pictures

PMEA 2011: Photo gallery