Meet our Experts

Lieven Annemans is a Senior Full Professor of Health Economics at the medical faculty of Ghent University in Belgium. He is Past-President of ISPOR, the International Society for PharmacoEconomics and Outcomes Research, and was advisor to the Belgian Minister of Health. He has more than 20 years of experience in health economic evaluations and health technology assessments (HTA) of medicines, medical devices and preventive health actions in various medical areas, and conducted a large amount of international projects. He is currently also active as an independent consultant and lecturer in health economics and HTA.

His main interests are epidemiological models, early-stage HTA, retrospective/ prospective health economic evaluations, and physician payment systems. He has published over 300 papers in peer-reviewed journals, and is a much-sought after advisor and educator on health economic evaluations and HTA. He is the author of the book Health economics for non-economists: principles, methods and pitfalls of health economic evaluations (Pelckmans Pro, 2018, click here to buy this book).

Prof. Dr. Annemans joined CELforPharma's faculty in 2009. Since then he delivers the immensely popular course Health Economics for Non-Health-Economists and since 2014 also How to Optimally Manage HTA Criteria & Processes in Europe. In 2020, CELforPharma and Prof. Dr. Lieven Annemans developed the online self-study programme Basics of Health Economics.

As the founder and Chairman of Inpharmation, a consultancy specialising in evidence-based prediction of sales demand and price elasticity for pharmaceuticals, Gary Johnson has been involved in the pricing and/or forecasting of around half of the new molecular entity launches over the past five years.

Prior to founding Inpharmation, Gary spent two decades in the pharma industry holding senior positions, such as General Manager and Head of Global Marketing with a number of major blue-chip pharma companies, including SmithKline Beecham, Fisons and Schwarz. Gary Johnson is a sought-after industry speaker and conference chairman.

Gary is the author of Value Pricing for Market Access: Evidence-based pricing for pharmaceuticals and Sales Forecasting for Pharmaceuticals: An Evidence Based Approach - the definitive works on pricing and sales forecasting of pharmaceutical products. Other books include Monkey Business: Why the Way You Manage is a Million Years out of Date - finalist for the MCA Book Prize.

Gary Johnson joined CELforPharma’s faculty in 2007 and since then delivers the pharma industry’s only regular public course on evidence-based sales forecasting for pharmaceuticals. Since 2008 he also delivers the industry’s only regular public course on pharmaceutical value pricing.

Sam Johnson leads the Research and Development function at Inpharmation – a leading pricing and forecasting consultancy that specialises in evidence-based prediction. Inpharmation has been involved in the pricing and/or forecasting of around half of the new molecular entity launches over the past five years.

Sam graduated from Manchester University with a first-class degree in economics. He joined Inpharmation as a consultant and, after several promotions, was appointed to the main board of Inpharmation in 2021.

During his time with Inpharmation, Sam has worked on pricing and forecasting projects for a huge number of therapy areas. Sam’s experience ranges from small molecules to monoclonals, cell therapies and gene therapies.

As Director of Research and Development, Sam has developed predictive tools including machine learning algorithms, econometric methods, conjoint software and much more.

Sam joined CELforPharma’s faculty in 2021 and now co-delivers the pharma industry’s only regular public courses on evidence-based sales forecasting for pharmaceuticals and evidence-based value pricing.

Niamh heads up the Atlantis Health UK team, leading overall strategy for the market and overseeing daily operations. Niamh enjoys partnering with global clients to deliver best in class patient experiences and support programs, designed to help achieve better health outcomes.

Niamh has an extensive background in patient support strategy, behaviour change and design with an understanding of the commercial impact that personalised solutions can deliver when designed and implemented correctly.

Prior to joining Atlantis Health, Niamh served in general management and global franchise leadership roles within the industry; working in markets of various sizes as well as European and Global roles where she was responsible for multiple successful product launches.

Niamh joined CELforPharma’s faculty in 2022 and delivers the Understanding Patient Behaviour & Developing Personalised Solutions course alongside Prof. John Weinman. Their course unravels the mystery of patient behaviour and offers practical steps to design/enhance your support solutions in a way that delivers true personalisation and support for all stakeholders.

Niamh has a Bachelor of Business with French (Hons) from Waterford Institute of Technology and a Post Graduate Higher Diploma in Applied Leadership from NUIG, Ireland.

John Weinman is Professor of Psychology as applied to Medicines at the Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences and the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neurosciences at King’s College London, and is also Head of Health Psychology (Europe) for Atlantis Health. The main focus of his research has been on the ways in which patients’ beliefs about their illness and treatment affect self-regulation and self-management, with a particular focus on treatment adherence, across a wide range of major physical health problems. This research has been published in a large number of papers in peer review journals, and has provided the basis for many successful interventions for supporting patient self-management and treatment adherence.

He currently holds visiting professorships in University College London, Denmark and Ireland, and has been awarded a lifetime achievement award and an Honorary Fellowship by the British Psychological Society. He is a Fellow of the European Psychological Society, the American Academy of Behavioural Medicine Research, and the Academy of Social Sciences.

Prof. Weinman joined CELforPharma’s faculty in early 2014 and since then teaches on the Understanding Patient Behaviour & Developing Personalised Solutions course alongside Niamh Ward from Atlantis Healthcare. Their course unravels the mystery of patient behaviour and offers practical steps to design/enhance your support solutions in a way that delivers true personalisation and support for all stakeholders.

Nick is currently a Partner with Access Infinity where he works with a talented global team to develop solutions to some of the biggest challenges facing the industry in the arena of pricing and market access. He and the team apply a full range of research, analysis and consultancy skills along with their proprietary suite of digital tools to help build winning strategies.

Nick’s career in the pharmaceutical industry started over 20 years ago when he found himself advising global Pharma companies about their R&D processes as part of doctoral and postdoctoral academic research. This work at the pre-clinical/clinical interface then became a full-time job as he joined an academic start-up company and ignited his true passion to help the industry develop products with the greatest possible chances of success.

Nick’s next move was to a small market access consultancy where he advised pharmaceutical and medical technology clients how to most effectively communicate the value of their products in response to the growing influence of bodies like NICE, SMC and AWMSG by using published literature to frame and showcase their product value story. His next step was to help build and ultimately lead a global pricing and market access consultancy which, over the next 12 years, was involved in the development of price and market access strategies for the majority of the world’s biggest and most successful brands. A large part of this role was translating the perceptions of value between the Pharma industry and payer or health system stakeholders to support a mutually beneficial relationship.

Over the span of his career, Nick has worked directly and indirectly with payers from over 20 countries and is passionate about representing what value looks like to them. His ultimate goal is to promote such a thorough understanding of payers that market access value is baked-in throughout the product development and commercialisation process.

Nick has a BSc (Hons) in Biomedical Sciences from the University of Aberdeen and PhD in Medicine & Pharmacy from the University of Manchester.

Nick Proctor joined CELforPharma’s faculty in 2015 and delivers the Understanding Pharma Market Access & Payers in Europe course. 

Kurt Arco is an independent consultant with over 20 years of international launch experience within big and small pharma and biotech companies. Until the end of 2021 he was a Global Launch Excellence Expert with Trilations, a strategic consultancy agency, where he provided strategic advice across a wide range of clients and treatment areas, helping clients understand and respond to the market challenges they are likely to face with their brands during every phase of a brand life cycle.

Before that he was with MSD (Merck & Co), where he led several major brand launches. Kurt supported several launches in Oncology, Immunology, Virology and Cardio-metabolic fields, as well as in Orphan Diseases. He piloted several major projects in sales excellence and marketing excellence within the UK.

Kurt holds a master degree in Biotechnology engineering and a post master degree in Marketing.

Kurt Arco joined CELforPharma’s faculty in 2018 and since then delivers the Strategy & Planning for Commercial Launch Success in Pharma course.

Dr. Carlos Velez is the Founder and Managing Partner of Lacerta Bio, an international consultancy specialising in in- and out-licensing of prescription and non-prescription product candidates and commercial products, across multiple therapeutic areas and markets. Lacerto Bio also offers a variety of services related to business development and licensing, such as valuation, portfolio analysis and prioritisation, and business planning.
Carlos is also the co-founder of Connexin Therapeutics, a company currently raising their second round of financing for the discovery and development of retinal neuroprotectants.

Prior to the formation of Lacerta Bio in 2010, Carlos was the Director of Business Development at Penwest Pharmaceuticals, where he was responsible for the out-licensing of internally-developed 505(b)(2) programs, as well as the scouting and analysis of in-licensing opportunities in neurology. Penwest was acquired by Endo Pharmaceuticals in 2010. He was also the Chief Business Officer of Lantic Therapeutics (UK) until the passing of the scientific co-founder in 2012. Other previous employers include Forest Labs, Frankel Group (now Huron Consulting) and Genencor (now Danisco).

He holds a B.S. in Pharmacy from the Albany College of Pharmacy, a Ph.D. in Pharmacy from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and an MBA in Technology Management from the Rochester Institute of Technology.

Carlos Velez joined CELforPharma’s faculty in 2023 with the launch of the Business Development & Licensing Course For Pharma & Biotech course.

David Scott is a Licensing and Business Development consultant and a skilled negotiator who has closed a number of major deals for inward and outward licensing for pharmaceutical products, delivery systems and technologies. He has been published worldwide and his best-selling report Scrip's Practical Guide to Pharmaceutical Licensing has been regarded by the international pharma-biotech licensing community as the quintessential reference for almost two decades.  

He has spent the past 24 years as a freelance consultant for a range of worldwide clients, including top-ranking global companies, European regional companies, biotech companies, technology start-ups and universities. He sat on the boards of a number of UK-based pharmaceutical businesses and is a member of the Licensing Executives Society and of the Pharmaceutical Licensing Group.

David Scott joined CELforPharma’s faculty in 2010 and since then delivers the only public course on pharmaceutical out-licensing. He provides carefully structured presentational material which he illustrates with personal examples.

Ben Harbour is Across Health’s Managing Director for the United Kingdom and brings with him more than 18 years of healthcare experience.

Ben has held sales and research positions within the pharmaceutical industry before focusing on global medical communications. Throughout this time, he has worked extensively throughout Europe, US and the emerging markets, providing the pharma, biotech and medical device industries with strategic guidance on a range of multi-channel communication programmes at a corporate, regional, and brand level. His experience spans across a wide range of therapeutic indications in the clinical, medical and commercial phases of product development. This end-to-end perspective has helped him to develop a clear understanding of client needs, allowing him to quickly get to the heart of critical scientific and commercial issues.

Ben Harbour joined CELforPharma’s faculty in 2015 and since then delivers the highly popular The Strategic e-Medical Affairs Course. Since 2022 he also delivers Omnichannel Launch Excellence in Pharma together with Mark Watson.

Chris Toller is a leading international consultant in pharmaceutical medical affairs. 

Educated at Westminster Medical School, London, Chris left clinical medicine in the 1980s and founded MEDIQ Ltd – one of the UK’s first specialist medical communications agencies.  Over the next 15 years, Chris led teams in the UK and USA that devised medical affairs strategies and implemented programmes for most of the world’s top 20 pharma companies.  As well as making important contributions to over 100 different medical brands, his skills have also been utilised by smaller companies and biotech start-ups, acting as a virtual medical affairs department. After the success of MEDIQ, Chris spent 2 years directing medical and commercial strategies for a US-based private biotech company before he joined the Choice Group in 2010.  Initially, he led the international medical communications business, Choice Healthcare Solutions, and was then invited onto the Group board as Head of Strategy in 2012. 

Chris currently works as Managing Partner at Havas Life Medicom UK.

Throughout his career, Chris has had experience in just about every therapy area, and has worked with medical affairs teams in Europe and the USA as well as emerging markets in Asia-Pacific and the Middle East. He has a reputation as a creative strategic thinker, an excellent communicator and an inspirational presenter.

Chris Toller joined CELforPharma’s faculty in 2016 with the launch of the Strategic Medical Affairs for Modern Pharma course. 

Neal Hansen, PhD, is the Managing Director of Align Strategy, an independent international consulting business focused on advising and facilitating superior decision making in lifecycle management and brand strategy. Neal has worked with many of the leading pharmaceutical and biotech companies, supporting pipeline, in-line and established brand planning, with a focus on competitive simulations, late stage lifecycle management (LCM) and emerging markets.

Prior to establishing Align Strategy and its predecessor Hansen Strategy, Neal was the Global Director of Healthcare Consulting within the Informa Group, leading both Phasic Strategy and Datamonitor Healthcare Consulting.

In this role and his previous role as the European Head of Consulting for Wood Mackenzie, Neal led commercial assessment, scenario planning and war gaming projects for numerous top tier and mid-cap pharmaceutical companies in Europe, the US and Japan. Earlier in his career, Neal held various senior roles within Datamonitor, including Lead Consultant and Lead Analyst for Strategic and Company Intelligence.

In 2012, he co-authored Pharmaceutical Lifecycle Management: Making the Most of Each and Every Brand (Wiley & Sons, 2012) and has previously authored several in-depth analyses on strategic issues affecting the pharmaceutical industry, focusing on LCM, pharmaceutical sales force strategies, competitive dynamics in mature and emerging markets and the changing nature of the global generics sector. He has chaired and spoken at numerous conferences in the field of LCM and the changing nature of the generics industry. His work has featured in Scrip, The Economist and The Wall Street Journal.

Neal Hansen is the master mind and trainer of CELforPharma's LCM course since 2007. His course always gets top ratings and is consistently highly praised by portfolio managers of mature/established brands.

Radek Wasiak, PhD is a Chief Data Officer & Head of Real World and Advanced Analytics business unit at Cytel. As Chief Data Officer, he is in charge of developing and implementing Cytel’s informatics strategy for identifying and using a continuum of data assets to support the Cytel business, from clinical trial to e-health data and deploying these data via Cytel’s product portfolio. As the Head of Real World and Advanced Analytics business unit, he oversees a team of 180+ staff who design, execute and disseminate RWE and HEOR projects with biopharma and biotech companies.

Prior to his current position, he was part of Evidera-PPD in various leadership roles, most recently as a Global Head of Peri- and Post-Approval Studies group, which was responsible for real world evidence research and late stage interventional trials activities. RWE and Meta Research practice areas within Evidera, focused on generating and synthesising real-world and clinical evidence. Before joining Evidera, Radek was a research scientist at the Liberty Mutual Research Institute for Safety, where he developed an extensive expertise with multi-level claim and secondary databases as well as with different aspects of research project quality review.

Radek holds a PhD and an MA in economics from the University of Connecticut, as well as an MSc in finance and banking from the University of Economics, Poznan, Poland. He has held adjunct appointments at Trinity College (USA) and the Harvard School of Public Health.

Dr. Radek Wasiak joined CELforPharma’s faculty in 2023 and since then delivers the Generating RWE for Optimising Market/Patient Access course.

Edouard Demeire uniquely combines in-depth pharma marketing expertise with academic rigour and a wealth of training experience all over the globe. His teaching, consulting and research focus is on systematic decision support tools and models for pharma marketing strategy.

Edouard has trained over 10000 executives in the pharmaceutical industry. He is a Visiting Professor at CEDEP (INSEAD) in Fontainebleau and faculty member at CELforPharma. He has given lectures in Solvay Business School and other leading academic institutions in France (SupdeCo), North America (MIT, University of Washington) and Australia (UNSW). In addition, he has staged the marketing training curriculum at Roche and has run hundreds of workshops and consultancy projects at AZ, Eli-Lilly, Novartis as well as with many medium-sized pharmaceutical companies across the globe.  

He co-authored a number of articles, marketing decision support systems and business simulations for the pharma industry with Prof. Marcel Corstjens of INSEAD. Edouard is author of KICCASS PHARMA – Keep it Customer Centric, Agile & Strategically Simple In Pharma & Diagnostic Management (2020) and he also developed the brand plan quality checklist, a tool for assessing the quality of your brand plans.

Edouard Demeire co-founded CELforPharma in 2005 and since then delivers The Pharma Brand Planning Course, an evergreen course that is highly valued by anyone wishing to build a career in pharmaceutical marketing. 

Mark Watson is a Senior Consultant with Across Health, Europe's leading consultancy specialised in omnichannel customer engagement strategies for life science organisations. Since 2018, he supports pharma companies globally on digital transformation strategies, customer-centricity and engagement solutions.

A graduate from Warwick Business School, Mark’s professional background combines 20+ years of experience in digital sales and marketing in the healthcare, consumer and business-to-business industries.

Mark Watson joined CELforPharma’s faculty in 2022 and delivers Omnichannel Launch Excellence in Pharma.

Thomas has 20 years of experience in leading and conducting German and international real-world evidence studies. He brings a wealth of experience to the team with respect to the German market, (claims) database analyses, chart reviews, prospective studies and patient reported outcomes. Thomas has a well-known reputation for conducting claims data analyses in Germany for various indications.

As Principal Investigator at Cytel/Ingress-Health, Thomas led dozens of real-world evidence studies, both prospective and retrospective (e.g., health insurance analyses). He designed analysis plans, evaluated for more innovative and effective ways to present and deliver results to maximise impact and interpretability. Continually collaborated with internal experts to develop statistical and economic models to support data analyses.

Thomas promotes learning with internal and external partners through the development and use of analytics tools and applications to expand the accessibility of data and improve our expertise/efficiency in understanding and using data appropriately.

In addition to his principal investigator role at Cytel/Ingress-Health, Thomas is leading a German University-affiliated research institute (IPAM) in Wismar. He is the author of a number of health economics articles that have been published in a variety of national and international journals.

Prof. Dr. Thomas Wilke joined CELforPharma’s faculty in 2023 and since then delivers the Generating RWE for Optimising Market/Patient Access course.

Vladimir Rogiers is a Senior Consultant with Across Health where he is responsible for developing integrated Pan-European multi-channel marketing plans for Across Health’s key accounts.

A self-confessed multi-channel & metrics fan, Vladimir’s key areas of expertise include CRM & customer experience, direct response campaigns, campaign localisation models, search engine marketing, data visualisation and multi-channel marketing strategy & metrics. He has over 10 years’ hands on experience in implementing and improving the multi-channel marketing capabilities of big players in the healthcare industry (e.g. Janssen) on both a local and regional level.

Vladimir joined CELforPharma’s faculty in 2018 as a co-speaker of The Strategic Digital Pharma Marketing Course.

With over 14 years’ experience in both consultancy and pharmaceutical companies, Graham’s expertise is in developing global launch pricing strategies and producing HTA submissions to address payers’ requirements.

Graham’s industry experience includes GSK, start-up biotech and Ferring pharmaceuticals. During his time at Ferring, Graham was Global Head of Market Access and Pricing, taking responsibility for pharmaceutical & diagnostic products and product launches. Graham’s consultancy experience includes both IMS consulting (previously Cambridge Pharma) and Adelphi Values.

As a pricing and market access expert, Graham regularly speaks at conferences and is a guest lecturer at Grenoble Business school.

Dr. Graham Foxon delivers the Strategic Market Access Planning for Orphan Drugs course since 2022.

Patrik Frei, PhD, is founder and CEO of Venture Valuation AG, specialists in independent, third party assessment and valuation of emerging high growth companies in biotechnology and life sciences. He founded his company in 1999, based on his research at the University of St. Gallen and EPFL Lausanne, for which he collaborated with Novartis Venture Fund, which became his first client. Since then he has been involved in over 600 valuations for investors as well as biotech, pharma and medtech companies. Venture Valuation also runs Biotechgate, a global company, investors and licensing deal database.

Patrik was a board member and one of the original founders of Ineo, a holding company of the Swiss dental implant VC-backed firm Thommen Medical. He was also the Chairman of Ophthalmopharma, a Swiss based biotech ophthalmology company, where he successfully out-licensed a portfolio of 4 products and was a member of the board of Aventron AG, a publicly quoted cleantech company. Patrik’s articles have been published in a number of scientific journals including “Nature Biotechnology”, “Drug Discovery Today” and other business publications. He has also lectured at Seoul National University, South Korea, EPFL Lausanne, University of St. Gallen and gives regular workshops on valuation.

Patrik Frei is a faculty member of CELforPharma since 2007. He developed and delivers the Pharma-Biotech Company & Product Valuation course for audiences of biotech, pharma and tech transfer executives. He consistently gets top ratings for his course.

Paul’s expertise in global and European pricing and market access has been gained from many years working in world leading companies and consultancies, such as Takeda and IMS health/Cambridge Pharma.

During his time in industry, Paul led teams at Takeda and Nycomed responsible for developing launch pricing and reimbursement strategies, optimising price of in-market products and providing input into R&D for pipeline products.

Paul is a visiting lecturer at Grenoble Business school and frequently presents on cutting edge pricing and market access topics at major conferences.

Dr. Paul Craddy delivers the Strategic Market Access Planning for Orphan Drugs course since 2022.

Roger Cox, PhD, has a 30-year career in business development within the healthcare industry, most recently with Johnson & Johnson as Executive Director, Licensing in J&J's worldwide Pharmaceuticals Business Development Group. He is currently the Regional Advisor, UK | Europe with Plexus Ventures, a leading global pharmaceutical business development firm.

His broad experience in the industry includes licensing and business development with a small pharmaceutical company (Medgenix Group), managing investments in unlisted biotechnology companies as a Senior Investment Executive at British Technology Group, and being Commercial Director of the Cambridge-based immunodiagnostics company (IQ (Bio) Ltd).

Roger Cox was co-founder of the Pharmaceutical Licensing Group Benelux, Chairman of the European Pharmaceutical Licensing Council (2007-2009) and Member of the Editorial Board of the Business Development & Licensing Journal for the Pharmaceutical Licensing Groups.

Since 2013 Roger Cox has been presenting a negotiation course on pharmaceutical licensing for CELforPharma. The course is popular with Business Development and Licensing Executives from all parts of the Pharma and Biotech industries and is held 3-4 times a year.

Back in 2009, Jan joined Across Health as a CRM manager, with a background in consultancy for multinational corporations in banking, utilities and telecom. Throughout the past 10 years, Jan has been involved in a multitude of multi-channel projects for leading pharmaceutical & med tech companies. His program involvement ranges from multi-channel strategy definition and campaign planning to hands-on campaign execution and impact measurement. He tends to get his energy from putting concepts into practice, helping life sciences companies embrace this new digital reality. One of his most recent assignments involved the delivery of a global series of multi-channel training & coaching sessions for marketeers, business unit heads and general mgt. teams active in neurology, fertility, oncology and general medicine.

Jan joined CELforPharma’s faculty in 2018 as a co-speaker of The Strategic Digital Pharma Marketing Course.

Maaike Addicks was trained in The Netherlands as a physician. After several years of working in the psychiatric field, she moved to Australia and started her career in the pharmaceutical industry as a Medical Advisor with Organon. During those five years, she gained experience in KOL management, Advisory Board Meetings, CME, compliance, studies and training. She worked on products in different lifecycle stages, from preparing and launching an innovative new medication to being responsible for more established products.

Maaike then moved to Organon’s headquarters in The Netherlands to become the Associate Director Medical Services Gynaecology, Europe. In this more strategic role, she was not only responsible for a portfolio of contraceptives in Europe, but also part of the global strategic teams.

Following this international role, Maaike returned to the local affiliate level as Medical Director for Solvay Pharmaceuticals, where she was fully accountable for responsibilities and tasks of the Medical Department, and thus gained insight into the bigger picture of Medical Affairs and of a pharmaceutical company as a whole.

In 2010, Maaike joined Abbott (now AbbVie) where she managed and developed a diverse team of Medical Managers, Medical Advisors and MSLs. Her responsibilities included the development and successful rollout of the Affiliate Medical and Clinical Plan, budget control, the development and training of her team, and streamlining and clarification of the Medical Affairs roles and responsibilities.

Since 2017 Maaike works as an independent Medical Affairs Consultant with expertise in Strategic Medical Affairs Development, Change Management and Medical Affairs competency development. In this capacity, she has worked and continues to work with a large number of Medical Affairs professionals from different companies and countries, which has increased her understanding of critical and current issues in Medical Affairs.

Maaike joined CELforPharma’s expert faculty in 2017 and since then she delivers the Business Acumen for MSLs course. Since 2022 she also delivers the Strategic KOL Planning & Engagement course.