Redefining Access, Innovation, and Impact in Specialty Pharmacy: Insights from Asembia 2025

What you’ll learn:

At this year’s Asembia Specialty Pharmacy Summit in Las Vegas, thousands of stakeholders across pharma, payer, provider, and patient access explored the forces shaping the future of market access. From the rise of AI to the growing influence of pharmacists, the conversations centered on one common goal: optimizing and improving the experiences of patients everywhere.

Across panels, sessions, and casual conversations, it became clear that successful connection now demands a new level of collaboration, adaptability, and foresight. Below are 10 key takeaways that captured the attention of attendees and will shape how market access leaders move forward.

1. Economic Challenges in Rare Disease Specialty Pharmacy

Due to the high costs associated with orphan drugs, manufacturers need to proactively develop flexible contracting models, like value-based agreements, and compelling real-world evidence (RWE) to justify the cost benefit of their therapies. Additionally, panel speakers emphasized a desire for innovative reimbursement programs and improved alignment with key performance indicators (KPIs) to ensure patient access without jeopardizing the economic viability of specialty pharmacies (SPs).  

Subsequently, market access teams can expect a higher level of scrutiny from payers on rare disease drug prices, requiring tighter pre-launch access planning, value-chain stakeholder education, and targeted payer engagement strategies. 

2. Empowering Community Pharmacists in Specialty Care

With community pharmacists’ expanding role in delivering specialty care services, manufacturers have a great opportunity to create targeted specialty pipeline education and training programs to improve product use and adherence at the retail level. This has the potential to transform healthcare delivery, improve clinical outcomes, and close physician shortage gaps. 

With this growing influence on treatment initiation and persistence, market access teams should plan for the inclusion of pharmacists as key value chain stakeholders in patient journey mapping and hub services design. 

3. Advancements in GLP-1 Therapies

As indications for GLP-1 therapies expand to treat obesity and cardiovascular disease, manufacturers must ensure clear cross-therapeutic positioning to ensure that their payer messaging covers multiple disease states and outcomes beyond glycemic control. 

Market access teams will need to create differentiated value propositions to better navigate more complex benefit designs that target both pharmacy and medical benefit placement. 

4. Specialty Pharmacy Pipeline: Emerging Therapies

As specialty drug pipelines for rare and serious diseases become more robust, manufacturers will need to strategically plan around market-shaping, education, and launch sequencing to secure preferred formulary placement and uptake. 

As the landscape evolves, market access teams must anticipate payer questions about comparative efficacy and cost impact from the earliest pipeline stages to influence pricing and contracting strategies. 

5. Integration of Artificial Intelligence in Pharmacy

AI is increasingly being deployed in medication management, predicting adherence risks, and streamlining drug interaction checks. As these emerging technologies transform pharmacy operations, clinical support, and patient engagement, manufacturers should engage in AI partnerships to ensure their capabilities keep up with an evolving landscape. 

Market access teams can leverage AI-generated insights to elevate value narratives through enhanced patient identification that optimizes outcomes and lowers payer risk. 

6. Patient-Centered Approaches in Specialty Pharmacy

Offering personalized education resources, culturally competent care, and calculated navigation support to improve adherence and outcomes are becoming essential elements in prioritizing the patient perspective when designing specialty pharmacy programs. Manufacturers will need to ensure that their support services are customizable to unique patient needs. 

To ensure access strategies stay aligned with these new priorities, market access teams must provide evidence of patient-centered outcomes and patient experience metrics to meet their access objectives. 

7. Policy and Regulatory Updates

Major regulatory shifts, such as the Inflation Reduction Act, Medicaid price rules, and a sustained push for more transparency in pharmaceutical pricing, will force manufacturers to brace for increased payer leverage in pricing negotiations, creating a greater demand for more dynamic launch price justifications. 

Market access teams should deploy policy scenario planning, payer education, and flexible contracting strategies to mitigate the risk of regulatory and financial pressures. 

8. Technological Innovations Beyond AI

In addition to AI, innovations like robotic pharmacy dispensing, drone delivery systems, and the future potential of AR/VR and 3D-printed medications, manufacturers will have an opportunity to collaborate with technology partners and differentiate their products through enhanced delivery systems to improve patient experience. 

These tech-enabled delivery options may provide new pathways to improve adherence and real-world outcomes, ultimately strengthening market access teams’ payer value proposition presentations.  

9. Collaborative Efforts to Enhance Patient Access

Stakeholders across the value chain are emphasizing the importance of constant collaboration between manufacturers, PBMs, and providers to reduce access barriers. Pharmacies occupy an expanded role in streamlining the patient journey. To take advantage of these collective efforts, manufacturers should invest in integrated distribution models that engage all stakeholders and foster real-time access solutions. 

Market access teams can expect cross-stakeholder collaboration to speed up time to therapy initiation and improve adherence rates, critical metrics that can help maintain preferred status with payers. 

10. Future Outlook and Continued Engagement

Looking ahead, there is a robust consensus among attendees and presenters that the specialty pharmacy environment will continue to rapidly evolve. Manufacturers must stay agile, and stakeholders need to adapt, leverage data, and collaborate across the value chain to ensure patients have access to innovative therapies. Ongoing investments by manufacturers in payer engagement, RWE, patient support, and policy advocacy are essential to sustained success. 

Market access teams will need to demonstrate more than just clinical value, with special attention to presenting compelling economic and social benefits to payers, providers, and patients alike. 

Asembia 2025 made one thing clear: we have the opportunity to plan early, act boldly, and center everything around the patient. In an environment defined by complexity, economic pressure, and constant innovation, successful market access strategies will integrate evidence, technology, and collaboration at every step.