In a recent blog, A Brave New World: Six Key Healthcare Trends to Monitor in 2025 for Emerging Biopharma, IQVIA’s Luke Greenwalt outlined six major forces reshaping the pharmaceutical landscape. While these influences are presenting challenges industry-wide, they also pose distinct implications (and opportunities) for small and pre-commercial companies. Robust market knowledge and deep analytical know-how can help emerging biopharma teams adapt, align, and act. In this blog, we provide strategic analytic insights on how emerging pharma teams adapt, align, and succeed.

1. Mitigating regulatory change
   Policy dynamics are shifting at unprecedented speed, from CMS rule changes to IRA inflation caps and accelerated timelines for HTA reviews. Pre-commercial companies can’t afford to wait until submission to understand how pricing and market access might be affected. By implementing policy scenario modeling and pricing corridor forecasting, small teams can more effectively anticipate coverage, rebating, and gross-to-net pressures well before launch.
2. Navigating benefit design changes
   Payers are fundamentally reworking benefit structures by creating new specialty tiers, applying site-of-care rules, and inserting copay accumulators. Smaller teams without dedicated payer strategy functions need early insight into which provider segments are likely to face benefit design-related prescribing hurdles. Developing segmentation and targeting strategies based on payer mix and expected benefit design impact can simulate likely coverage friction points so that commercial teams can proactively plan affordability programs or hub service enhancements.
3. Lower OOP caps impacting demand models
   Pre-commercial teams often lack robust distribution infrastructure, so knowing where demand will surge, and where it won’t, is critical for prioritizing early investment. Lower out-of-pocket maximums under recent CMS changes will accelerate patient uptake, particularly among previously underinsured populations. By modeling provider-level responsiveness to demand changes, understanding patient funnel bottlenecks, and identifying which access-advantaged HCPs are best positioned to absorb early demand, teams can better prepare for market dynamics.
4. The 'pill penalty' implications
   For small biopharma bringing oral therapies to market, missing payer friction signals early can delay time-to-adoption and waste limited field resources. Oral therapies, particularly those used in oncology, face coverage disadvantages relative to infused or in-office products. The ability for small biopharma companies to quantify provider-level prescribing friction for oral therapies, while building payer-aware messaging strategies to elevate value-based engagement, is crucial. Adopting strategies that support scenario planning for access misalignment and field prioritization will be critical for success.
5. Real-time launch visibility
   With limited field teams and shorter runways, small biopharma cannot afford the luxury of slow feedback loops — they need actionable launch visibility from day one. The volatility of today’s launches demands real-time diagnostics, as a missed onboarding cycle or underpowered sales approach can doom an asset before it matures Field-facing launch monitoring dashboards that track performance metrics, geographic pull-through, and account-level prescriber engagement are essential. Additionally, supporting early prescriber archetyping helps optimize messaging and channel mix in-market.
6. The hidden challenge of demand capture
   For small teams, marketing and field efforts need to convert every opportunity. Missed downstream referral paths mean missed revenue, which is something few pre-commercial companies can’t afford. Adopting referral mapping across institutions and networks can help to ensure engagement flows through the entire treatment funnel. It also helps clients identify white space at both the HCP and institutional level and offer targeted tactics for capturing downstream opportunity.

Navigating success through analytics

Anticipating policy shocks with strategic foresight
Rapid regulatory shifts, from IRA provisions to CMS pricing mandates, can derail commercialization plans if emerging biopharma teams are caught off guard. Strategic scenario planning enables early insight into how policy levers may impact pricing, rebates, and patient access.

Navigating access complexity through targeted segmentation
Emerging biopharma teams often lack the scale to reach everyone, making it essential to focus on where access barriers are lowest. Strategic segmentation that blends coverage dynamics and HCP prescribing behavior allows lean teams to prioritize their highest-yield opportunities and avoid wasted engagement efforts.

Unlocking downstream opportunity with referral pathway intelligence
For small and pre-commercial biopharma, every patient counts, but many miss out due to fragmented referral pathways. By mapping how patients move between community and institutional care, teams can identify the true treatment journey, prioritize the right HCPs, and build targeted strategies that convert awareness into initiation and long-term adherence.

Mapping the true friction points in the oral launch journey
Oral therapies introduce payer and provider resistance that’s easy to underestimate. Understanding where drop-offs and delays occur, especially around step edits, coverage rejections, and prior authorizations, enables smarter onboarding support and resource allocation.

Looking ahead

As the healthcare environment becomes more volatile, the need for tailored, data-driven support for smaller pharmaceutical players has never been more urgent. With its integrated and flexible service model, IQVIA’s EBP Analytics team stands ready to help you plan smarter, act faster, and succeed in this brave new world. We combine deep therapeutic expertise with transparent, modular delivery to equip clients with the clarity and precision needed to make confident, data-driven decisions.