Team size: Three

Major legal advisers: Matheson and Pinsent Masons

What impact did the pandemic have on the pharmaceutical and medical technology industries in Ireland?

Unsurprisingly, the pandemic has had a significant impact on healthcare, in general, and on the life sciences industry, in particular. In my view, the main effects attributable to the pandemic can be roughly broken down into two major categories.

First, restrictions on individual movement both within a country and across country borders, for example national or local ‘lockdowns,’ have significantly affected the ability of patients to engage with their clinicians on almost any matter except for covid or covid-related illness. Patients have spent less time with their doctors in a face-to-face setting and have had fewer opportunities to have their health status (re-)assessed. Many selective interventions had to be postponed or cancelled. While it is still very early to make definitive estimations on the impact on individual patient care, certain trends are starting to emerge and one example which illustrates the impact of covid19 on overall patient welfare is the reduction in life expectancy, or the loss in excess years of life, noticeable across multiple high- and medium-income countries.

Second, the same restrictions on movement have affected the industry’s overall ability to connect internally, within teams and organisations, and externally, with the healthcare communities including the ones of physicians, nurses, other medical staff as well as other stakeholders. On the positive side, despite a steep learning curve, this has accelerated the adoption of new technologies, and remote digital ways of working. However, this has also affected the ability of an innovative industry to communicate externally and has limited the access of external stakeholders to valuable information ranging from scientific data on innovation, medical education, and other key industry developments.

In the longer term, as an industry we are expecting to see not just in Ireland, but broader across all markets, more focus from national and regional authorities on supply chain resilience and cost containment, but also more robust cooperation to address the challenges raised by the pandemic in the best interests of patients.

What are the most significant cases and/or transactions that your legal team has recently been involved in?

Further to the acquisition of Allergan completed in 2020, a global transaction with an estimated value of approx. $63 bn, we have been closely supporting the transformative integration process across both the UK and Ireland. As a team, we are excited to be able to contribute to the construction of the ‘new AbbVie’ which will be a well-diversified leader in many important therapeutic areas, with both on-market and pipeline assets, and which will continue to invest in innovative science to serve unmet medical needs of patients that rely upon us.

The work of an in-house team in the life sciences industry is always very diverse and no two days are the same, so it is difficult to call out specific projects or transactions that we have been involved in. It should be said, though, that we are constantly looking for opportunities to add the most value and to further embed the legal function at the heart of the organisation, as a facilitator of the company’s mission and business objectives in continuous compliance with the applicable laws.