Director, Medical Innovation & Excellence

Sage Therapeutics is searching for a creative, resourceful, integrative thinker for ahighly visible role that is responsible for conceptualizing, developing, and implementing novel solutions to address barriers in patient care pathways.

Sage has combined our medical affairs and health economics/outcomes research (HEOR) groups into a single integrated function. This combined function, Medical Value Partnership (MVP) integrates traditional medical affairs and HEOR capabilities to address value drivers and pain points of the various stakeholders gaps within the healthcare ecosystem via a single, unified strategy focused on patient outcomes. This position will represent MVP priorities on various cross-functional initiatives and will engage with external stakeholders to better understand the specific pathways in the healthcare ecosystem to gain appropriate medical care. The successful candidate will have an established track record of cultivating partnerships with fellow team members, including individuals within medical strategy, clinical development, HEOR, patient advocacy, market access, analytics, Digital Enterprise Capabilities (DEC) and marketing teams. The position will also provide medical/scientific leadership in support of relevant therapeutic area initiatives within MVP, including digital opportunities, data analytics and data visualizations that enable rapid recognition of key opportunities to improve patient outcomes. **

Roles And Responsibilities (Essential Functions)**

Medical Innovation

• In partnership with the Executive Director, Medical Information Excellence & Innovation, create vision, mission and strategic objectives/priorities in standing up the new function for the Medical Innovation team

• Develop team charter, operating model, and internal communication matrix. Hire and manage team members and articulates ways of working for the new team

• Responsible for developing process to:

  • Identify and understand unmet needs in the patient care pathway
  • Curate list of potential interventions that will improve patient outcomes and align on prioritization across internal and external stakeholder groups.
  • Develop, test and modify pilot initiatives in collaboration with cross-functional partners within and outside of MVP
  • Deploy novel solutions to address pain points in the care pathway
  • Propose and maintain budgets and manage CROs

• Maintain proficiency in emerging trends in both the management of patient care as well as relevant technologies, methodologies and digital tools that have applications in optimizing care delivery.

  • Identify opportunities for gathering feedback via surveys, advisory boards, strategic working groups, and professional networking
  • Leverage deep knowledge of HCP practice patterns to identify opportunities for successful collaborations and methods to address gaps in pathways as reported by patients, HCP and other relevant decision makers
• Develop strong relationships with internal and external experts in applying novel approaches to care delivery models.

MVP Excellence

• Work with other MVP functions to define MVP outcomes/ deliverables and translate them into reporting metrics and MVP dashboards reflecting all sub-functions
• Closely partner with internal data management teams and DEC to identify opportunities that enable automated, scalable solutions for understanding HCP community feedback
• Provide strategic input into medical strategy to ensure insights, engagement, and awareness analytics are incorporated into annual development plans
• Ensures that insights gleaned from MVP activities can be applied to improving the ways Sage can support appropriate HCP education and innovative patient care models
• Support field medical teams and medical directors in developing novel approaches to tracking HCP journey from awareness to active engagement with Sage
  • Provides input into HCP surveys and classification approaches that allow Sage to understand KOL landscape
  • Communicates output from external interactions (i.e. HCP surveys) to appropriate Sage stakeholders
• Collaborate with medical directors and MVP product leads to identify KPIs and key data necessary for longitudinal tracking of key themes
• Secure an MVP standard of assessing the Patient Journey along the various relevant stakeholders in the health care system

Experience, Education And Specialized Knowledge And Skills

Must thrive working in a fast-paced, innovative environment while remaining flexible, proactive, resourceful, and efficient. Excellent interpersonal skills, creativity, ability to develop important relationships with key stakeholders, good conflict management and negotiation skills, ability to analyze complex issues to develop relevant and realistic plans, programs, and recommendations. Demonstrated ability to translate strategy into action; excellent analytical skills and an ability to communicate complex issues in a simple way, both verbally and in written formats, and to orchestrate plans to resolve issues and mitigate risks. **

Basic Qualifications**

• PhD/PharmD or an advanced degree with a data analytics or economics focus
• 8+ years of combined pharmaceutical industry and/or academic/clinical medicine experience including a minimum of:
  • 5 years prior industry experience
  • 2 years in a leadership role involving understanding patient care pathways, HCP and KOL preferences

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience in psychiatry or neurology preferred
• Experience using Power BI to create and maintain insightful data visualizations and reports
• History of collaborating with internal stakeholders to plan approach to bring meaningful value to HCPs, patients and payer audiences
• Able to perceive non-obvious opportunities by connecting the dots between existing knowledge, new data, and HCP unmet needs in real time
• Prior experience in developing medical strategic and tactical plans in support of drug launches
• Leadership skills, including a passion for challenging the status quo and the ability to tailor communication to multiple social styles
• Successful history of working across multiple teams to drive alignment in ambiguous environments and achieving results in a matrix organization
• Must possess excellent communication skills, relationship building capabilities, and proven ability to influence decision-making without authority
• Ability to manage many complex projects in parallel, structuring the actions of many people toward shared outcomes
• Embrace our core values: Put People First, Improve Lives, Cultivate Curiosity, Do Right, Forge New Pathways
• Excitement about the vision and mission of Sage and MVP

Benefits and Compensation The base salary hiring range for this position is $179,528 - $246,851.*

• The actual salary offered within the range is dependent on a variety of factors including, but not limited to, relevant experience, qualifications, education, skills, and performance.
• This position is eligible to participate in the Companys annual bonus plan; the bonus varies based on performance and is subject to the standard terms and conditions of the incentive program.
• To support your well-being, we offer a comprehensive benefits and wellness package, which includes medical, dental, and vision coverage upon hire. More information can be found in our Benefits Guide.

_*Base salary ranges are periodically reviewed and subject to change.

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