Pharmaceutical & Medical Technology (P&MT)

The P&MT specialization is focused on the dynamics of different industries (pharmaceuticals, biopharmaceuticals and other technologies produced through biotechnological processes, medical devices and other medical technologies). Students learn about the regulatory environment, management issues and tools to assess and promote added value of emerging technologies: HTA (Health Technology Assessment), economic evaluation, pricing strategies, stakeholders’ management and marketing strategy.

Students choosing this specialization are likely to find positions in pharmaceutical, biopharmaceutical, medical technology companies or consulting firms in areas such as Health Economics and Outcome Research, Market Access, Marketing Strategy, Public Affairs.

The P&MT specialization includes the following courses:

• Pharmaceutical Policy and Management: provides students with an understanding of the dynamics of the pharmaceutical market from both the regulatory authorities’ and the pharmaceutical companies’ perspectives, discussing the pharmaceutical market trends, the innovation process in the pharmaceutical industry, the impact of drugs on healthcare systems and organization and the pharmaceutical market regulation
• Health Economics of Medical Technologies: aims at illustrating the peculiarities of the industry of medical devices, how the sector is regulated, what are the characteristics of medical devices vis-à-vis other technologies, namely drugs, and the implication of their characteristics when assessed, and how functions such as Market Access, Government Affairs, Health Economics & HTA are shaped within medical devices companies
• Advanced Economic Evaluation of Health Care Programmes (Modelling): provides the students with an introduction to the concepts and methods of decision-analysis and modelling to support economic evaluation of health care programmes. Simpler (Decision Trees) and more complex (Markov Models) models are illustrated and discussed within the scope of taking decisions under conditions of uncertainty
• Market Access for Pharmaceuticals and Medical Technologies: provides the students with an understanding of market access strategy and tools for pharmaceuticals and medical devices. Market access strategies activities are discussed through case-studies and throughout different phases: early development and late development, market launch, and post launch
• Marketing Strategy for Pharmaceuticals and Medical Technologies: provides a strong foundation in strategic marketing planning in markets, such as medical technology and pharmaceuticals, where the customer is the healthcare system, delivering it in an interactive manner, connecting concepts and models with application to case-studies
• Digital Health, Big Data and Data Science: analyses (i) the practice of leveraging the information and communication technology (ICT) to connect caregivers, healthcare systems, health care professionals, hospitals and patients and to draw integrated internal and external information flows; (ii) the potential, challenges and specificities of the application of Big Data in the healthcare sector and their promise of supporting a wide array of functions in the health care sector, from population health management, to personalized medicine, from clinical decision support to better surveillance.