November 7, 2023

IntegriChain Presents The Tina Patel Shining Light Award to Patrick Townsend of Vertex Pharmaceuticals

New Award in Memoriam for Market Access Leader Tina Patel of Boehringer Ingelheim

Additional Customer Award Winners Include Johnson & Johnson Innovative Medicine, Alexion Pharmaceuticals, and Tarsus Pharmaceuticals

Philadelphia, PA, November 7, 2023 – IntegriChain, delivering pharma’s only comprehensive technology, data, consulting, and outsourcing platform for data-driven commercialization, announced the winners of its annual customer awards today at the Access Insights Conference, co-hosted with Blue Fin Group. IntegriChain presented a new award, The Tina Patel Bright Light Award, to Patrick Townsend, Director of Distribution Strategy, at Vertex Pharmaceuticals. IntegriChain also presented its Commercialization Visionary Award to Johnson & Johnson Innovative Medicine, the Lighthouse Award to Alexion Pharmaceuticals, and the Zero to Launch Award to Tarsus Pharmaceuticals

The Tina Patel Bright Light Award is presented in memory of Tina Patel, Vice President, Market Access Marketing, for Boehringer Ingelheim. Patel was a rapidly advancing and highly regarded executive in Market Access with an impressive 22-year career. She joined Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals in Finance and over the next two decades advanced throughout the organization. In her most recent executive role, Patel led the Payer Marketing, Payer Solutions, Access Solutions, and Business Innovation teams at Boehringer Ingelheim.

“Tina Patel was a dear friend and colleague. She was a mentor to many, always generous with her time, an advocate for the underdog, and a brilliant and highly respected professional in our industry. I was fortunate to work with her over the years. She was gone too soon, but will always be remembered,” Chris Marsh Senior Vice President, Value & Access, Boehringer Ingelheim.

“We are thrilled to celebrate the success and vision of these pharma market access and commercialization groundbreakers,” said Josh Halpern, Co-Founder and CEO of IntegriChain. “We are especially humbled to present our Shining Light Award in Tina’s honor. Tina was a brilliant and respected professional in the pharmaceutical industry and was a very early – and importantly an essential  foundational – customer to both IntegriChain and Blue Fin Group. We credit Tina’s unique vision and insight and her true partnership with us in partnering with our teams and leading to so many innovations across channel, patient, and access data.”

The Tina Patel Shining Light Award: Patrick Townsend, Vertex Pharmaceuticals
Townsend leads distribution strategy at Vertex. He is recognized as an innovative trade leader, evolving winning strategies across multiple product archetypes – from rare disease to CRISPR-based gene editing to primary care. Townsend supports the ongoing distribution success for Vertex’s novel treatment that has changed the lives of tens of thousands of people living with cystic fibrosis. He also led the expansion of Vertex’s distribution strategy to launch the first CRISPR-based gene editing product. Most recently, he is leading the commercial strategy as Vertex plans another new exciting launch.

“We are honored to recognize Patrick with this well-deserved recognition as an industry shining light,” said Bill Roth, Senior Vice President and Managing Partner at Blue Fin Group. “He recognized early that there are no ‘copy-and-paste’ models or analogs for any of the commercialization scenarios he’s led at Vertex. His success is due to his incredibly strong base of industry knowledge, a sense of curiosity, and the courage to continuously say ‘what-if?’. He doesn’t think outside the box; he thinks and behaves in a way that indicates there is no box…it’s never existed. To me, he truly exemplifies Tina Patel as an industry shining light. ”

Commercialization Visionary Award: Johnson & Johnson Innovative Medicine
This award is presented to an innovative pharma company demonstrating forward-thinking and innovation in its product commercialization. Johnson & Johnson Innovative Medicine (formerly Janssen) has commercialized the largest portfolio of products in the US, spanning all product archetypes – from all key areas of specialty pharmaceuticals, orphan and rare disease treatments, specialty lite, cell and gene, and general medicine. Uniquely, the commercial and access teams approach each launch individually across the expansive portfolio, developing a bespoke strategy unique to the product type and patient population.

Lighthouse Award: Alexion Pharmaceuticals
The Lighthouse Award is presented to an innovator in strategy, data and analytics, and/or outsourcing for commercialization and access. Alexion Pharmaceuticals has commercialized five innovative products across a number of rare diseases spanning immunology, hematology, and metabolics. Rare disease presents complexity in commercialization in contracting, pricing, contract performance, and revenue leakage. Alexion demonstrates deep understanding of these complexities and has developed innovative commercialization and access strategies to best get their critical therapies into the hands of patients in need.

Zero to Launch Award: Tarsus Pharmaceuticals
This award is presented to an emerging pharmaceutical company that has recently launched its first product, a critical time for any emerging pharma manufacturer. Tarsus Pharmaceuticals launched XDEMVY™ (lotilaner ophthalmic solution) 0.25%, the first and only FDA-approved treatment for demodex blepharitis. The Tarsus team approached launch strategically, relying on a data-centric approach to chart its course, developing innovative distribution and contracting strategies to ensure access for the estimated 25 million patients in the US who previously had no other approved therapeutic options. 

About Blue Fin Group, an IntegriChain Company
Blue Fin Group develops strategies to optimize patient access, commercialization, and gross-to-net to support life sciences manufacturers throughout the product life cycle. Blue Fin Group is a full-service management consulting firm delivering research, strategy, and implementation to help manufacturers align all the elements of marketing, market access, field sales, pharmacy and distribution, and patient services as a seamless commercial strategy that helps optimize patient outcomes. Blue Fin Group has served more than 300 manufacturers–primarily those commercializing their first asset or large global firms with products that span cell and gene therapies, orphan/rare, specialty, primary care, vaccines, biosimilars, and generics. For additional information, visit https://consultbfg.com/ or follow on Twitter @bluefingroup and LinkedIn.

About IntegriChain
IntegriChain helps pharma manufacturers bring their science to market, ensuring patients have affordable, timely, and sustainable access to therapy. IntegriChain delivers Pharma’s only data-driven commercialization platform — from strategy to operational execution. The Company’s unique focus on data, technology, consulting, and outsourcing helps connect the commercial, financial, and operational dimensions of drug access and profitability. Through the ICyte Platform, IntegriChain enables pharmaceutical innovators to achieve better commercial outcomes by digitalizing daily and recurring business activities and by integrating data and operations across contracting, pricing, channel and distribution, and gross-to-net. IntegriChain is backed by Accel-KKR, a leading Silicon Valley technology private equity firm, and is headquartered in Philadelphia, PA, with offices in Ambler, PA, and Pune, India. For more information, visit www.integrichain.com, or follow on Twitter @IntegriChain and on LinkedIn.

Contact
Jennifer Guinan, Sage Strategic Marketing, 610.410.8111, Jennifer@sagestrat.com