Life Sciences Industry from Research to Patient Class
Supporting Products and Services – Contract Manufacturing, Specialized Raw Materials and Supplies, Regulatory and Reimbursement Consulting, Clinical Trial Design and Management, Medical Products Advertising and Marketing, & Contract Logistics
By Rex Rumsey, MBA Candidate Class of ’25
Developing a Therapeutic is Step #1: Teamwork Brings Innovation to Life 🌿
Creating a groundbreaking therapeutic is only the beginning of the journey. To truly transform lives, healthcare products must have a sustainable impact, be accessible to patients, and be manufactured safely and efficiently. I’m grateful to Milliman, a leading consulting firm; Catalent Pharma Solutions, a contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO); and Fort Wayne Metals, a global supplier of medical-grade wire, for sharing how they drive innovation across the healthcare ecosystem.
Jerry Litchfield, Fort Wayne Metals
This week at IU, Matthew Berman and Rachel Crum shared how their healthcare consulting firm leverages actuarial models and claims data to empower companies with data-driven insights. By forecasting market size and share across key payer segments, including 70M Medicaid, 65M Medicare, and 195M commercial enrollees, they provide strategic guidance to navigate the market. Their expertise includes modeling elasticity of demand to assess how pricing impacts adoption and designing access strategies such as formulary tiering, rebates, and copay cards to enhance patient access and affordability. These comprehensive models enable companies to quantify their impact and effectively navigate the complexities of the healthcare system with tailored, payer-specific approaches.
Matthew Berman and Rachel Crum of Milliman Consulting
Once commercialization strategies are in place, manufacturing becomes critical. Indiana ranks #2 in the U.S. for life sciences exports ($13B annually) and it’s only growing. Major investments like Eli Lilly’s $9B manufacturing expansion for GLP-1s and Novo Nordisk’s pending acquisition of Catalent to address the soaring demand for Ozempic and Wegovy serve as powerful testaments to this growth. CDMO leaders like Sophia Percival shared how they support drugs in clinical trials through tech transfers and flexible pricing, while also assisting established assets by expanding production lines to help developers meet demand when operating at full capacity.
Sophia Percival, Catalent
On the other side of life sciences, Fort Wayne Metals supports the medical device industry by providing high-performance metals used in pacemakers, stents, neurostimulation devices, and orthopedic joint replacements. Their leadership in the field allows them to ship thousands of pounds of medical-grade metals each month that are durable, reliable, and lifesaving.
Indiana’s life sciences ecosystem is thriving thanks to organizations like Milliman, Catalent, and Fort Wayne Metals. These collaborations ensure that from development to delivery, therapeutics and devices make a widespread impact in Indiana and beyond.
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