Launch excellence, re-examined

Approved in March.
In a patient by when?

More than eight in ten launches miss their first three years. The best resourced teams in the industry produce that result, which suggests the problem is not effort. It is that we measure launches backwards, once the window has closed. The days that actually decide the outcome are the ones between approval and the first patient receiving the drug. Nobody owns them. Nobody counts them.

Five short chapters on what those days cost, who fills the gap when it opens, and what changes if the industry agrees on one way to measure them. We call it Time to First Patient Access.

Start with Chapter 1, the scale of the gap Read the discussion paper

4 min read. No form, no download.

Written by Abhijit Sengupta, Founder, BrandLaunchX

The series

Five short chapters

About twenty minutes end to end. Read them in order, or start wherever it hurts most.

Chapter 1

The scale of the gap

128 days in the fastest European market. About 840 in the slowest. Same class of medicine, same continent, same year.

4 min read · Read chapter 1 →

Chapter 2

The cost of delay

A single day runs to roughly $500,000 on the peer reviewed figure. Here is who actually pays it, and why the same slip costs more in 2026 than it did in 2023.

4 min read · Read chapter 2 →

Chapter 3

The shadow launch

Patients do not wait patiently. When the legal supply is slow, something else is not. What moves into the gap, and what it does to a brand.

5 min read · Read chapter 3 →

Chapter 4

Access denied

Named markets, dated waits, real launches. What the delay looked like from inside the teams that lived it.

4 min read · Read chapter 4 →

Chapter 5

Why TFPA

EFPIA and CRA concluded the causes of delay “cannot be untangled with perfect precision” after the fact. So trace them forward instead. What changes when everyone measures the same thing.

5 min read · Read chapter 5 →

In development

The Global TFPA Index

We are building the benchmark for this measure, and we would rather it were shaped by the people who run launches than handed to them finished. The discussion paper sets out the method, the evidence grades and the two lenses.

7 pages · Read the discussion paper →

De-Risk. Accelerate. Maximize. Launch Success

Join the conversation

Join the conversation on time to first patient access

We are building the benchmark for this measure, the TFPA Global Index, and we would rather it were shaped by the people who run launches than handed to them finished. If you have a view, or a number of your own, we would like to hear it.

Approved in March.In a patient by when?