Sanofi is looking for more ‘real-world’ insight into its drug development and product lifecycle strategies by teaming up with pharmacy benefit manager Medco Health Solutions to help deliver value propositions that can withstand tough scrutiny from regulators and payers, reports PharmaTimes.

The global, multi-year agreement between Sanofi, Medco Health Solutions and Medco’s wholly owned subsidiary United BioSource Corp. (UBC) is designed to support real-world evidence assessments during Sanofi’s product development and pre-/post-approval processes, underpinning improvements in the overall quality of patient care. Details of the arrangement were not released.

According to the new partners, the agreement will enable Sanofi to identify more precisely patient populations with the greatest unmet medical need and will help to determine in which populations drugs will be most effective.

It will also generate real-world comparative effectiveness data to support product value that can satisfy stakeholder evidence requirements, the companies said.

The aim is to build a “consolidated representation” of payer, manufacturer and researcher insight throughout the product lifecycle, to support improved health outcomes and deliver “meaningful” benefits to patients, healthcare providers and payers. 

“Some products that seemed to hold promise in early research might not deliver the intended results when used in real-world practice,” said Dr. Robert Epstein, Medco’s clinical R&D officer. “This partnership will use real-world evidence to develop products that demonstrate value in real-world settings, enabling Sanofi to support high-quality, cost-effective care.”

Medco and UCB offer “robust capabilities to help us close the gap between R&D and the real-world clinical setting,” said Sanofi’s chief medical officer, Jean-Pierre Lehner. “Through this agreement, we will make the leap from discovering and marketing new medicines to providing comprehensive healthcare solutions that are proven to drive safety, effectiveness and relative value for our stakeholders.”

The partners cited Medco’s and UCB’s resources in real-world evidence, comparative effectiveness, personalized medicine/pharmacogenomics, health economics, safety research and clinical/adherence support.