Job Description Summary
#LI-Hybrid
Location: Panama
The Country Value & Access (V&A) Head leads the development and execution of integrated access, pricing, HEOR/HTA, and healthcare system-shaping strategies to secure and sustain timely, equitable, and commercially viable patient access to Novartis innovations. The role ensures end-to-end access excellence across the portfolio, with a strong focus on priority Therapeutic Areas and key launches in large, complex healthcare systems.
The role drives external partnerships, shapes the evolving healthcare ecosystem, and leads cross-functional collaboration to deliver compelling value propositions for payers, policymakers, providers, and patients.
Job Description
Key responsibilities
- Lead the national access strategy for priority Therapeutic Areas and key assets, integrating commercial, medical, and public affairs priorities into actionable plans.
- Represent the payer perspective in early pipeline and Target Product Profile discussions, assess access feasibility, and define long-term asset maximization and indication-sequencing strategies.
- Identify healthcare-system and product-specific access hurdles and develop policy solutions that enable timely, sustainable access and best-in-class launches.
- Build strategic partnerships with government bodies, payers, policymakers, hospitals, patient groups, private insurers, wholesalers, and other ecosystem stakeholders.
- Co-create innovative healthcare solutions that improve patient access, affordability, and system sustainability while anticipating and shaping policy evolution.
- Lead national pricing strategy, governance, research, scenario forecasting, tendering, contracting, and price and reimbursement negotiations, including innovative and outcomes-based agreements.
- Lead HEOR/HTA strategy and integrated evidence planning, ensuring timely, high-quality submissions, value dossiers, economic models, budget-impact and cost-effectiveness analyses, and locally relevant evidence generation.
- Provide strategic leadership to Access Field teams and cross-functional account planning, supporting early-access schemes, contracting execution, hospital listings, and healthcare-system readiness.
- Ensure compliance with international pricing policies and provide strategic guidance on national access, negotiation frameworks, reimbursement submissions, and external engagement.
- Build a high-performance culture by recruiting, coaching, developing, and retaining talent, strengthening succession pipelines, and role-modelling Novartis Leadership Expectations and Behaviors.
Essential Requirements
- University degree in Health Economics, Public Health, Life Sciences, Medicine, Pharmacy, Economics, or equivalent; 10+ years of experience in Market Access, HEOR, Pricing, Health Policy, or related disciplines.
- Direct leadership experience managing large teams, with a demonstrated ability to engage, empower, coach, and develop talent.
- Deep understanding of the local healthcare ecosystem, ideally complemented by exposure to other market archetypes or above-country experience.
- Proven experience engaging government stakeholders, regulators, HTA agencies, payers, hospitals, and other healthcare-system partners.
- Strong track record in pricing and reimbursement negotiations, innovative contracting, payer-strategy development, and compliance with pricing governance.
- Experience co-creating healthcare solutions with external stakeholders at healthcare-system or disease-area level.
- Demonstrated ability to represent the payer perspective in early pipeline shaping and clinical development discussions, supported by strong HEOR/HTA and evidence-planning expertise.
- Strong cross-functional leadership across Commercial, Medical, and Public Affairs, with the ability to navigate complexity, influence senior stakeholders, build trust, and deliver collective impact in a highly matrixed environment.
- Fluent in Spanish and English.
Commitment to Diversity and Inclusion
Novartis is committed to building an outstanding, inclusive work environment and diverse teams representative of the patients and communities we serve.
View Diversity and Inclusion resource
Skills Desired
Analytical Thinking, Cross-Functional Collaboration, Employee Development, Finance, Health Economics, Health Technology Assessment (HTA), Influencing Skills, Innovation, Inspirational Leadership, People Management, Process Management, Product Launches, Project Management, Public Affairs, Real World Evidence (RWE), Regulatory Compliance, Results-Oriented, Risk Management, Stakeholder Engagement, Value Propositions