Introduction

SPEAKER: 
Fayez El-Shakfeh, Director of Market Access UK & Ireland, Bayer 

KEY TAKEAWAYS: 
• Bayer UK consolidated five specialized roles into three integrated functions 
• Mount Vernon partnership added capacity for 230 prostate cancer patients 
• Organization deployed 19 modular training units covering NHS environment 
• Cross-functional collaboration requires addressing ego and trust barriers 
• Success measured by customer-initiated collaboration requests signalling value partnership 
 
Healthcare providers face an exhausting reality: multiple representatives from the same pharma company arriving with different titles, different agendas, and overlapping messages. For Bayer's UK and Ireland operation, this fragmentation reached a breaking point in September 2024 when the organization launched a fundamental restructuring of its customer-facing model. "We had KAMs, MSLs, HPMs, MDMs, PRMs, all these individuals effectively having specific roles and functions where they're engaging with our customer," Fayez explained. "Now there's one customer and potentially five or even more touch points when you bring in marketing, medical affairs, etc.

The transformation built upon Bayer's enterprise-wide Dynamic Shared Ownership initiative, which Fayez described as "a reconstruction of the way that we work internally, taking away layers, reducing bureaucracy and ultimately this is the big thing, empowering the people closest to the customer." 

From Five Roles to Three: Structural Consolidation 
Bayer's initial ambition targeted complete consolidation—a single field representative handling all customer interactions. The organization ultimately settled on three integrated functions, recognizing that compliance constraints around promotional versus medical discussions created practical boundaries. Yet structural change alone couldn't bridge the capability gap separating product-focused specialists from healthcare system navigators. 

"The consequence is upskilling those individuals to better understand the environmental landscape," Fayez emphasized. "Because I think a really important thing is understanding different processes. The patient journey, end to end journey. We need to understand this." The transformation demanded mastery of funding mechanisms, capacity constraints, and institutional decision-making leverage points—knowledge domains extending far beyond traditional pharma competencies. 

Bayer responded with systematic capability development reaching beyond customer-facing roles. "There's 19 modules in this which are based on the NHS, the environment, understanding the funding streams and the pathways etc.," Fayez noted. "And we're equipping the whole organization so not just the customer facing people because I think this is an organizational change and necessity." The organization-wide deployment recognized that effective healthcare system solutions require contributions from medical affairs, market access analytics, regulatory teams, and commercial strategy. 

The training investment addressed a fundamental career development question: Does specialist consolidation dilute expertise or enhance professional value? "What we see in the industry is diversity of skill sets, is having that more wider, holistic understanding and so helping educate the individuals involved that this strengthens and empowers you for future opportunities," Fayez argued. 

Mount Vernon: Cross-Functional Problem-Solving in Action 
Mount Vernon Cancer Centre in northwest London provided the proving ground for Bayer's integrated engagement model. A medical science liaison identified significant prostate cancer waiting list pressures during routine clinical discussions. Time delays posed serious risks for patients requiring urgent oncology intervention, yet consultant oncologist capacity constraints offered no immediate relief. 

"This MSL then took the problem to the other customer facing individuals, the market access specialist and the salesperson," Fayez recounted. "Then those two went in together into Mount Vernon to truly understand what the challenge was, what the problem was, and more importantly, what could we do in collaboration with Mount Vernon to alleviate this." The joint assessment revealed workforce capacity as the binding constraint. The team identified non-medical prescribers—pharmacist consultants and nurse consultants—as an alternative pathway. 

Bayer supported training enabling these clinicians to become oncology prescribers, creating a clinic model that absorbed patient volume previously requiring consultant oncologist time. "This so far has been a massive success," Fayez reported. "It's improved capacity, it's added 230 extra patients to those who have been seen by the Mount Vernon Centre." The impact extended beyond immediate capacity relief. Mount Vernon committed ongoing investment, transitioning the initiative from pharma-funded pilot to permanent institutional solution through a collaborative agreement. 

The case exemplified a fundamental shift in pharma value proposition. Bayer's team didn't arrive promoting product benefits or negotiating formulary access. They diagnosed an operational challenge, co-developed an institutional solution addressing workforce constraints, and delivered measurable outcomes improving patient flow. 

Human Barriers to Organizational Change 
Organizational charts create collaboration frameworks but cannot mandate behavioral adoption. Fayez acknowledged that Bayer's transformation confronted human obstacles resistant to structural solutions. Ego-driven individual ownership, trust deficits between functions, and adult cynicism replaced the innate cooperation children demonstrate when pursuing shared objectives. 

Change fatigue compounded resistance. Bayer's UK operation had navigated "successive changes over the past few years" as therapeutic portfolio shifts and market dynamics demanded repeated adaptations. Each reorganization extracted emotional capital, leaving teams simultaneously resilient and exhausted.

Some individuals embraced integrated working immediately while others struggled with ambiguity around responsibilities and decision rights. 

Leadership modelling became critical for demonstrating collaboration's practical value. The organization reframed specialist consolidation as career development rather than expertise dilution, arguing that healthcare system fluency strengthened rather than weakened professional prospects in an evolving industry. 

Reflecting on early implementation lessons, Fayez offered advice to his pre-transformation self: "Don't rush things. And I know sometimes we work with urgency and urgency is important, but take the time to ensure that you bring people on a journey with you. If you can avoid surprises, I think that's helpful." 

Measuring Success Beyond Traditional Metrics 
Two months into implementation, Bayer's transformation remained early in its maturity curve. Yet Fayez articulated success metrics extending beyond traditional pharma performance indicators. "We want to bring innovation to patients. And patients deserve the best treatment" he stated. "So one of those solutions from one of the outcomes is that we are better able and more quickly able to bring the innovations to the patients who deserve it the most."

 
Customer behaviour provided validation signals independent of internal assessments. "If our customers are coming to us, asking to collaborate and work with us because of the value they've seen through the interactions they've had with Bayer, that to me would be a success" Fayez explained. This metric captured fundamental relationship transformation—from healthcare systems tolerating pharma representatives as transactional necessities to proactively seeking pharma partnership based on demonstrated problem-solving capability. 

Internal collaboration maturity constituted the third success dimension. Fayez envisioned teams where individual ownership anxieties dissolved into collective accountability, where medical, commercial, and market access functions operated with natural coordination. "We look at a football team, you got goalkeeper and a striker. The goalkeeper doesn't ask why they have a striker and vice versa" he explained. "They know there are specific roles that are there to achieve an objective and we'll win together or we won't win together." 

Industry-Wide Collaboration Opportunity 
Fayez expressed disappointment that cross-industry collaboration remained limited despite shared healthcare system challenges. Pharma companies approached institutions independently with duplicative solutions, creating customer frustration when coordinated approaches could deliver greater impact. "I'm sometimes disappointed that we don't do this more often now," he stated. "I think our customers hate it when we come to them independently. Forget selling a drug for now, let's pause that. But we come to them independently and try and fix the same solution different ways." 

The opportunity existed for pharma companies to jointly tackle capacity constraints, workforce development, and patient pathway optimization—moving from competitive positioning to collective problem-solving on challenges transcending individual company interests. "I'd be really open to exploring how we can help patients more readily," Fayez offered. 

The Mount Vernon case demonstrated proof-of-concept, yet scalability questions remained unanswered. Could non-medical prescriber training models replicate across therapeutic areas with different clinical complexity profiles? Would compliance frameworks evolve to enable the single-role consolidation Bayer initially envisioned? 

Early directional indicators validated the strategic approach, yet behavioural embedding required patience. Healthcare systems would render the final verdict through partnership requests, access decisions, and willingness to co-invest in solutions addressing their most pressing operational challenges. For Bayer's UK operation, success meant evolving from pharma vendor to healthcare system partner—a transformation measured not in prescriptions but in problems solved. 

To get you highlights of Pharma Customer Engagement EU faster, we are using generative AI technology to summarise the transcripts of the sessions. If you have any feedback about the summary, please contact lucy.fisher@thomsonreuters.com. 

“We know that in healthcare we often move at the pace of bradycardia,” Condoleon observed. “Now we’re going to have to measure up the speed of technology with the speed that we think of moving.”

The opportunity lies in aligning healthcare’s rigor with digital velocity — not abandoning caution, but learning how to operate with momentum and responsibility at the same time. Medical affairs teams accustomed to multi-year planning cycles now see technology evolve in months. Commercial engagement models refined over decades are being complemented by the rapid emergence of tools that change how information is accessed, interpreted, and acted upon. 

The acceleration is not only about adoption, but also sophistication. Condoleon shared how rapidly large language models have advanced against medical knowledge benchmarks. GPT-3.5 scored just above the sixty-percent pass threshold on the US Medical Licensing Examination less than three and a half years ago. GPT-4.0 consistently scored around ninety percent. Early reports suggest GPT-5 may exceed that. “For the first time in human history we have a technology, not specifically trained on medical content and knowledge and information, that is consistently scoring above the human standard theoretically to become a physician in the US,” he emphasized. This progression fundamentally expands what is possible in information access, decision support, and clinical reasoning — not as a replacement for clinicians, but as a powerful augmentation of human expertise. 

Crucially, this is not a future-state discussion. Patients and healthcare professionals have already integrated AI into their daily behaviors. Condoleon cited recent IQVIA HCP data showing “46% who are using ChatGPT for medical or scientific information, 23% on Gemini, 21% on Copilot”. Another Bain reports shows “60% of HCPs are regularly using large language models of some sort to seek information at times of their need, and 70% of patients are using LLMs at diagnosis.” This adoption occurred in just a few years, signaling a mainstream shift rather than isolated experimentation. Patients now arrive with better-formed questions. Clinicians have access to synthesized information in real time. The opportunity for pharma is to evolve engagement models to maintain relevance in this new phase of Gen-AI adoption for medical and scientific information. 

Condoleon provoked that this environment demands a strategic reframe. “Maybe we’re in a period where rather than ‘business as usual’, our challenge is to work out how to lead through ‘business unusual’ … a period where momentum matters more than mastery,”. The implication is not to abandon rigor, but to recognize that learning now happens through action. The organizations that thrive will be those willing to experiment responsibly, build capability while deploying it, and treating curiosity as a competitive advantage rather than a risk. 

Approached the right way, AI’s exponential advancement represents a significant opportunity for productivity and reinvestment. Condoleon referenced recent McKinsey research projecting that “in the life science sector, between 75 and 95% of roles will have AI agents next to them, and that that will free up 20 to 40% of capacity in the organization.” How that capacity is used will shape the next decade. “If we view these latest technology approaches as just being a way to outsource cognition, we’re going to deploy these technologies, we’re going to downsize workforces, and in doing that we’re not going to have discovered any new drugs,” he cautioned. Efficiency alone is not the prize. The real opportunity lies in augmenting human potential and redeploying time and talent toward higher-impact work. 

Condoleon described an alternative path centered on value creation.

“I think the opportunity to think about [is] how we augment human potential with technology—flip that script—it’s a question of can we drive productivity in order to redeploy human effort in ways that have bigger impact?”

That redeployment could mean tackling harder discovery challenges, advancing personalized medicine, deepening scientific dialogue, or elevating standards of care. Pfizer’s early deployment results suggest the value creation path is achievable with concrete evidence reported in their 2024 Annual Report. “With content we were seeing a 40% reduction in timelines for first draft, a 15% overall timeline reduction to manuscript development,” Condoleon reported. “That means information is getting to the medical community sooner, and that means that information provides better clinical practice.”  

In another example, Condoleon noted an AI collaboration that was initiated with Veeva over a coffee conversation. It led to a draft proposal within two weeks, and AI summarization features introduced industry-wide just a few months later. As a result, field medical teams now spend less time preparing for engagements and more time deepening scientific conversation. 

Underlying this shift is what Condoleon described as co-intelligence — a concept articulated by Wharton professor Ethan Mollick — where human and AI capabilities are woven seamlessly into daily workflows. “Are you embedding AI in absolutely everything you do?” Condoleon challenged. The advantage does not come from access alone, but from fluency. Teams that worked with AI tools daily achieved dramatically better outcomes than those using them occasionally. Organizations must move beyond viewing AI as an occasional productivity boost toward treating it as a fundamental capability that requires cultivation. 

That capability scales most powerfully when innovation is democratized. “When you give these tools to the front line where the friction is higher, where the urgency is greatest, they’re going to come up with ideas more brilliant than what anyone in the organization can think,” Condoleon emphasized. Frontline teams understand pain points leadership never encounters. Empowering them to experiment enables hundreds of parallel improvements to emerge simultaneously. Competitive advantage shifts from centralized planning to connected learning. 

In that context, leadership is less about having the answers and more about creating the conditions for learning at speed. “I think today is not about worrying about being a leader. I think today it’s about worrying about learning fast,” Condoleon said. The opportunity window is open. Customer behavior has already changed. Technology continues to accelerate. The organizations that capture this moment will be those that translate restlessness into readiness. 
Condoleon returned to where he began — with restlessness — not as a flaw, but as a signal.

“Boldness is our response to restlessness. It’s going to take courage. It’s going to be a very painful period of transformation”

he acknowledged. Yet the alternative — incremental movement in an exponential environment — carries greater risk. The companies that choose momentum over mastery, democratize innovation, and redeploy capacity toward advancing healthcare value will define the next era of pharmaceutical leadership. In healthcare’s digital dawn, restlessness is not a warning sign. It is an invitation — to act, to learn, and to lead boldly. 

To get you highlights of Pharma Customer Engagement USA faster, we are using generative AI technology to summarise the transcripts of the sessions. If you have any feedback about the summary, please contact lucy.fisher@thomsonreuters.com. 

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