Trade & Channel Strategies 2023: An Interview with Paul Chen of Lexicon Pharmaceuticals

In an interview with Pharma Commerce editor Nicholas Saraceno, Paul Chen, Senior Director, Trade and Channel, Lexicon Pharmaceuticals, discusses the upcoming group panel.

Pharma Commerce: Based on your panel discussion, what is the importance of patient and provider access and support solutions?

Chen: I think it really depends on what lens you look at. One of the things we're going to in our session is address it from three different angles. The first one will be from a general pharma perspective, because those people probably look at things one way. Spencer is going to touch on new technology and digital pharmacy capabilities. Cheryl will then go into orphan drugs. Hopefully, it provides for each person in that room.

Pharma Commerce: Can you share trends that you are seeing in the space?

Chen: I think Bill Roth talked about it very well during his opening session. There's a lot of different partners coming out. We're looking at things that are nontraditional and breaking away from the big three for instance when you think of the big 3PL and the big three wholesalers. Where I work, we're a small company. It's interesting that we get levied with the highest fees. I always make an analogy to credit cards. You have the poorest and least likely to be able to pay, but they get hit with the highest interest rates. That's kind of the world we live in now. So, are there other avenues we can explore that will help mitigate some of those expenses to ourselves and still allow us to reach our ultimate goal of providing for the patients?

Pharma Commerce: You also have a session on branded products coming up. Could you dive into any specific that this presentation will entail?

Chen: That session is really more of a facilitation session. It's not where I'm going in to say "This what you should know about this segment of the business," but really, to solicit the knowledge and expertise of everybody that's in the room and then point out examples that I think might be of interest in trade and channel perspective that they can leverage and use in their own business when they go back to their companies. It's about facilitating the right questions and getting a panel of experts within that room to engage.