Fusion Cells
Fusion Cells & Life Sciences

Accelerate, Align, and Enhance Drug Launches

Fusion Cells can accelerate launch teams’ alignment, communication, and trust to enhance the outcomes for your patients and other stakeholders.

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Change is the Only Constant in Life and Science....

We know that there are continuous, sometimes revolutionary, changes happening in the life sciences. After years of grinding away, there’s a breakthrough, and the landscape is suddenly shifting. Remaining committed to your foundational principles, while anticipating change with a team that’s focused, flexible, and ready for the future is a daily tension.

Christopher Fussell

Vice Chairman

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A Fusion Cell can, with a very small footprint, connect key people and departments to share information and decision-making support at all levels. This creates a nervous system for information flow unhampered by bureaucracy or boundaries, in order to keep pace with threats, and act as a powerful tool at any phase of crisis.

When we are all focused on the mission of making it easier for people to get the care they need, we are in sync, and it feels great to be a team. It's when we misstep unintentionally that it feels like we are in a never-ending cycle of trying repair, regroup and communicate, and then get back to our work.”

DEVICE MARKETING MANAGER

We believe our Fusion Cell team model can be universally applied for more effective and high-impact change across organizations.

Here’s how these advantages can be applied to high-performing drug launch teams:

In a high-intensity environment, leaders run out of time to address issues that are escalated to them, primarily because by the time they get attention, they are complex and urgent. Untangling problems at the corporate level is time-consuming and stressful, particularly if there are timeline pressures and the threats of FDA warning letters or 483s around every turn.

Addressing issues cross-functionally sooner prevents issues from deepening and can solve them entirely in some cases. The silo prevention tactic keeps teams in different departments connected, sharing information, building trust, and working towards their shared mission, allowing senior leaders more focus on priorities. The ability to assess and react to external threats can allow a more nuanced and responsive plan for outshining the competition in the life sciences marketplace.

Fusion Cells are designed to enable cross-functional thinking and sharing, and to drive action so that not every complex problem requires executive attention. Given the challenges of measuring impact in a pre-sales environment when revenue, prescriptions, and other market outcome data are not available, Fusion Cells offer alignment opportunities that calibrate for the best potential outcomes. 1

 

No two Fusion Cells look exactly alike, but successful ones rely on similar principles:

Fusion Cells are most appropriate at high-consequence or particularly dynamic points of the launch life cycle. They can be used as part of a launch or to address a specific issue, even as it arises. By creating a Fusion Cell and empowering the team members, the mission is clear, and everyone agrees that is their “North Star.” Ideally, everyone is working toward the same goal, but using their own expertise and experience, and sharing it for the benefit of the organization.

Changes are happening fast, with departments such as Medical Affairs gaining more operating scope and impact, and more comprehensive scrutiny on molecules for commercialization potential and value based strategic acquisitions. In addition to global outsourcing and Procurement revisiting sourcing due to supply chain issues, there are a number of trends at play right now that will need high levels of responsiveness.”

HEALTH ECONOMIST

Fusion Cells bolster trust with transparency and communication. Clarity and concision drive shared success. Sharing information with other members and back to their teams is part of the Fusion Cell’s power in leveraging the combined strengths of all members. The intent is to push information down and across to drive specific, measurable actions. In the short-term, Fusion Cells can tighten feedback loops within a launch; over the long-term, those feedback loops create a culture of learning. Fusion Cell members must build horizontal trust across traditional boundaries and bind together operational experts who may have never worked together. While opportunities for misunderstandings abound, members will need to assume others’ positive intent and remain focused on the mission.

 

...there's been a rapid acceleration of patient advocacy groups. We see ecosystem players leaning in where they have never before. [For Example] in the MedBen Space, we're seeing payers leaning into a purchasing channel much more than ever before. Historically you could have a trade team to decide delivery model... now they need to talk to market access team on how payer will respond. [It's a] byproduct of how everyone is assessing it more quickly than before.”

MEDICAL BENEFITS VP

 

Fusion Cells can bring high performers from across the functions into a single, cohesive unit. The most effective Cells are based on trust and help foster trust between siloes, with vertical trust, driving action downward and horizontal trust creating alignment between departments. The Fusion Cell must also have a straight (and short) line to decision-makers, ensuring that leaders have the information they need. The Cell must link to those in a position to act on the intelligence, and those acting must link back to the Fusion Cell to report on the quality of insights.

Fusion Cells 

Connected Multi-Organization COVID Response

Fusion Cells were originally designed to combine US military, intelligence, and law enforcement resources into a unified network to beat the al-Qaeda network, first in Afghanistan, then Iraq, and then globally. Like al-Qaeda, COVID-19 was an opportunistic enemy, attacking ruthlessly and without warning. It did not respect city, county, state, or international boundaries or whether people were at home or work or play. A network response reaching across jurisdictional and agency boundaries, with coordination between non-standard partners, and the willingness to employ creative tools was the only way to address it. Connecting these fusion cells into a national network created a nervous system for information flow unhampered by bureaucracy or state boundaries, to keep pace with the network spread of COVID-19. Fusion Cells created a small footprint, but connected key organizations to share information and co-develop decision support for government leaders at local, metropolitan, regional, and state levels. As we saw with the Delta and Omicron variants, network threats adapt and evolve. Responders combat not only the crisis, but also fatigue. Fusion Cells adapt with the threat and make information sharing easier and more effective, for whatever phase comes next.

Fusion Cells For State Emergency Response

Watch this short film to understand how our team supported the state of Nebraska set up a fusion cell for their COVID-19 response with the multi-step process of focus, stakeholders, lines of effort, and exchange.

Finding Life Science Equilibrium

Fusion Cells leverage a variety of data but with a human and operational element, supporting faster and more contextualized decision making, and driving faster action. They can also extend outside of an organization to leverage and align third-party stakeholders.

 

Aligned Goals vs. Individual Excellence 

Challenge: Most priority efforts require a whole-of-business effort to succeed in a complex environment. While many teams are increasingly tactically and operationally focused, competitive success requires that they connect their efforts to priority goals, while managing dependencies with other teams.

Solution: Fusion Cells invite the right people in with laser-focus on the mission, offering clear ways on how to move quickly and more powerfully, knowing how that boosts the shared effort.

Decision Support vs. Direct Action 

Challenge: Traditional approaches often struggle to connect “information to decisions to action” quickly enough to adequately support priority work. Traditional reporting channels and approaches often slow and de-contextualize decision-making, even as increasing operational complexity and messaging on priority issues increasingly drives decision requests up the organizational hierarchy.

Solution: Clarity comes with focus. Rather than adding more data, and more decision-makers, it’s the right information at the right level. These are insights rather than bulky aspects of every division. The Fusion Cell blends “need to know” with norms that allow for trust in each member to offer what’s needed, when it’s needed.

This helps decision-makers at every level move faster because the goals are clear. Fusion Cell offers creative options already cross-checked with other relevant factors within the organization. Time is saved by only pushing out actionable insights, while the senior leaders get the high level operating picture.

Intelligence vs. Information

Challenge: Most organizations have too much data, and aggregate it in ways that can only be interpreted by those with the training to do so. Multiple operating pictures create confusion and teams struggle to understand what’s true for the organization, here and now. This drags down teams’ responsiveness as they try to sort through information to identify priorities and dependencies. Anxiety about missing the right competitive information and the prolonged planning process mean a slow response that still risks being off target.

Solution: A Fusion Cell filters the data, leverage expertise to “fuse” the right metrics into fact-based insights. One single operating picture emerges, based on the Cell’s constant action to contextualize the data. They add it to the broad plan, with action items, and allow for information to be pushed up and inform strategic thinking. This offers both a comprehensive view and the capacity for a nimble response.

Fusion Cells for Product Launches

Watch this short film for an overview of how fusion cells can streamline information and intelligence sharing for product launches in highly complex and competitive environments.

Fusion Cells can accelerate launch teams’ alignment, communication, and trust to enhance the outcomes for your patients and other stakeholders.

We have tools designed to meet the needs of your teams, and services to improve how they work today so you can focus on the future.