
Health & Life Sciences
Policy expertise in pharmaceuticals, biotechnology, medical technology, and digital health
Our seasoned team of policy advisers specialising in health and life sciences, sustainability, and retail and supply chains, help clients in these technology-enabled sectors drive and navigate policy change to deploy innovation that improves the health of people and the planet.
Product, Platform, and Disease-Specific Policy & Government Affairs: We navigate the complex landscape of policy and government affairs specific to individual products, platforms like AAV-based gene therapy and CAR-T, diseases like COPD and cervical cancer, and broader therapeutic areas from oncology to infectious disease. Our approach integrates deep political insights with a keen understanding of health and life sciences innovation to foster environments that enhance market entry and sustainability. Our expertise has been called upon for companies looking to influence laws, streamline product approvals, prepare for launch, and expand coverage. We focus on creating strategic, win-win engagements with policymakers and patients, ensuring that the interests of our clients are effectively represented and advanced.
Multistakeholder Alliances, Coalitions, and Public-Private Partnerships: Our team excels in orchestrating and leading multistakeholder alliances, coalitions, and public-private partnerships that drive forward health and life sciences policy priorities. By leveraging our extensive network across government, industry, academia, and civil society, we create synergistic collaborations that accelerate innovation and access to healthcare solutions. These partnerships can stand alone as independent initiatives or become embedded within or adjacent to multilateral forums like APEC and Summit of the Americas. They are tailored to harness collective strengths, address common challenges, and optimize outcomes in healthcare delivery and disease management, particularly in areas like rare diseases and immunization.
Market Shaping and Market Access Strategy: We are a leader in developing market shaping and access strategies that ensure the successful launch and sustained availability, accessibility, and affordability of medical innovations. Our strategic insights help clients navigate complex pricing, reimbursement, and access landscapes from a proactive, upstream, and government affairs/policy-oriented perspective. By analyzing market trends and stakeholder needs, we work with our Market Access teams to design and implement strategies that optimize product positioning, help educate payer bodies and HTA bodies, and maximize patient reach.

What we do
- Shape the policies that enable your access to markets worldwide
- Assemble and manage coalitions or partnerships to drive policy solutions
- Navigate and drive change through multilateral organisations, including the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation Forum, the World Health Organization (WHO), the Summit of the Americas, and the Organization of American States (OAS).

Advancing immunisation policy and access in the Asia-Pacific
Access Partnership serves as the Secretariat for the APEC Vaccines Task Force (VTF), a public-private initiative established in 2020 under the APEC Health Working Group. In collaboration with APEC economies, the VTF led the development of a multi-year strategy to improve immunisation in the region. The action plan outlines 21 specific targets and measurable indicators to help APEC economies build resilient, sustainable life-course immunisation programmes by 2030, organised around seven core pillars.
To support implementation of this action plan, track progress, and drive accountability, Access Partnership developed the APEC Regional Dashboard on Vaccination Across the Life-Course, which uses primary and secondary data to assess progress and features best practice spotlights from economies and partners.
With 2025 marking the halfway point for both the Action Plan and the WHO Immunisation Agenda 2030, the Dashboard provides a critical platform for knowledge sharing and performance monitoring. We continue to work with APEC economies and private sector partners to evaluate gaps identified in the dashboard, inform policy reforms, and co-develop strategies to accelerate vaccine uptake and strengthen immunisation systems across the region.

Strengthening regulatory convergence
In Latin America, patients wait an average of 57 months – nearly five years – for access to innovative medicines after FDA or EMA approval. Regulatory convergence accelerates access by streamlining review processes, reducing duplication, and promoting more efficient use of limited regulatory resources. Access Partnership works with regulators, industry and academia – as well as ministries of trade, finance, and health – in the Americas and the Asia-Pacific to advance regulatory convergence.
In the Asia-Pacific, Access Partnership acts as Advisor to the Chair and Vice-Chair of the APEC Regulatory Harmonisation Steering Committee (RHSC), a multi-stakeholder platform that promotes a strategic and coordinated approach to regulatory harmonisation. Access Partnership equips regulators with international best practices to continually drive regulatory convergence in a constantly evolving scientific environment. Through a set of key performance indicators, the RHSC tracks progress on regulatory convergence in the region. For example, in 2008, only nine economies allowed a single licence to cover multiple sites. As of 2024, 16 economies allow multi-site licences.
In Latin America, Access Partnership serves as Secretariat for Americas RISE for Health (RISE) – a multisectoral platform that harnesses the collective strengths of the region to build sustainable health economies and ecosystems. Through its regulatory pillar, RISE found that while major markets in the region have the legal authority for regulatory reliance, how that reliance is used varies. RISE is also developing regulatory KPIs to measure and track regulatory convergence and established the RISE Network for Regulatory Capacity Building to train regulators.

Health financing, health technology assessments, and market access strategy
Our team of experts at Access Partnership have supported many health financing policies and sectorial reforms in Latin America, Africa, and Eastern Europe. In collaboration with the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, USAID, and the World Health Organization, we have contributed to advancing the institutionalisation of Health Technology Assessment (HTA) and Managed Entry Agreements Globally.
Currently our team is engaged in and actively contributing to emerging global policy topics in the field of systematic priority-setting for health technologies with the International Society for Pharmacoeconomics and Outcomes research (ISPOR) and Health Technology Assessment International (HTAi). These include living HTAs, value-based pooled purchasing, HTA for medical devices and hospital-based HTA.
Access Partnership has supported internal and external capability building on market access policies and strategies, as well as policy shaping initiatives for infectious, non-communicable, and rare diseases.