The pharmaceutical industry is at an inflection point
Worldwide drug sales are forecast to grow from $901bn in 2020 to over $1.4 trillion by 2026. At the same time, healthcare budgets are under unprecedented pressure — strained by aging populations, rising rates of non-communicable diseases and the long tail of post-pandemic backlogs. The question facing every major pharma company is no longer just how to grow. It's how to grow in a way the world can sustain, and justify.
The old go-to-market playbook won't get you there.
Why the traditional GTM model is breaking down
The conventional model — sales reps in the field pushing product messages, back-end teams negotiating market access — was built for a simpler landscape. Today, GTM complexity is accelerating on every front. Regulatory bodies are demanding stronger real-world evidence. Payers are moving toward value-based contracting. Healthcare professionals are increasingly skeptical of pharma-led content. And trust, which took decades to build, remains fragile.
Research conducted by Valtech Health found that HCPs rate trust in healthcare significantly higher than their trust in pharma companies — and are highly unlikely to use pharma-owned assets as a primary source for their most urgent learning needs. That gap between how pharma sees itself and how stakeholders experience it is where GTM models go to fail.
A next-generation model built on trust, data and deep engagement
This whitepaper from Valtech Health outlines a fundamentally different approach. One that starts not with the product but with the unmet human needs that exist across the full disease journey — and builds engagement strategies from that foundation outward.
The framework introduces three interconnected capabilities. The Human-2-Business (H2B) model maps unmet patient and HCP needs across the entire disease journey, identifying the shared opportunity spaces where pharma can create genuine value. The Omnichannel Lab moves beyond fragmented multichannel activation to deliver seamlessly orchestrated, pull-based experiences that meet stakeholders where they are. And Digital Health Programs position pharma not just as a product provider but as a shared disease owner — facilitating public-private-people coalitions that tackle the systemic challenges no single organization can solve alone.
Together, these capabilities define what next-practice GTM looks like: not a one-dimensional negotiation over price, but a coalition-led model built on demonstrable outcomes, mutual trust and sustainable commercial growth.
What's inside
The whitepaper covers the COVID-19 aftershocks reshaping healthcare budgets and GTM complexity, the innovation equilibrium between best-practice and next-practice GTM, a practical framework for identifying shared opportunity spaces and concrete recommendations for pharma companies ready to lead necessary change.
Download the whitepaper to explore the full model.