Sophie Rochon: Still at the Vanguard of Innovation
January 21, 2026
For more than two decades, Sophie Rochon has been a leader in Canadian health policy and patient access for novel pharmaceutical products. In 2019, 20Sense spoke with her about the introduction and integration of cell and gene therapies like CAR-T in Canada, and how manufacturers had to re-think their whole approach to infrastructure, training, review processes, and systems in order to launch these products.
“Everything about the treatment is new, so we expected the process to look different,” said Sophie at the time. “Some truly great minds have gone into the development of cell and gene therapies. In this case we can actually say: it is rocket science.” The original article was: At the Vanguard of Innovation: Interview with Sophie Rochon [Issue 8, April 2019]. Read it here.
Now Vice President of Access, Policy and Patient Experience at Otsuka Canada Pharmaceutical Inc., Sophie is still leading the charge to make novel therapies available and accessible for Canadian patients, in areas like mental health and nephrology. We caught up with her to get her perspectives on how the market access environment has changed over the past decade, and how companies can be prepared to meet new challenges today and in the future.
Looking back over the past decade, what have been some of the biggest changes in the market access realm?
I think the most significant change is that it takes longer for products, once they're authorized by Health Canada, to be reimbursed. Right now in Canada it takes about two years to get public reimbursement, and that makes us the slowest of the G7 countries. Unfortunately, the number of layers for patients to have access to the drugs they need has increased. After a positive health technology assessment, the negotiations take place at a pan-Canadian level, and then we need to secure listings with all the different jurisdictions. Private payers are also demonstrating a growing appetite to negotiate rebates on our products and are taking longer to complete their review.
One of the big reasons why it takes longer is that the drugs we’re bringing to market are more complex. We went from trying to introduce molecules that had morbidity and mortality data, to molecules in specialty and for rare diseases, which come with higher uncertainty in terms of clinical evidence due to limited number of patients, but which are in areas of higher unmet need. Currently, there is no HTA framework to assess molecules for rare disease. This uncertainty translates into higher rebate requests from payers. To date, we have not found a path to do outcomes-based agreements that are easy to implement.
Pharmaceutical companies need to come up with a value proposition that works for patients as well as our public and private payers – and the payers have to figure out how to deal with the uncertainty around new drugs. As a manufacturer that’s part of a global company, it’s important for us to continue to attract and launch innovations in Canada.
Looking at where we are today, what do you think needs to be done to get drugs to patients sooner?
It starts with early dialogue with the all the stakeholders in the health ecosystem: patient groups, HTA, public drug plans, private payers, caregivers, health care professionals…this allows us to have a common understanding of the value of the innovation that we bring, and to better understand where our product fits in the patient journey. I know there are efforts to speed things up, like time-limited recommendations at CDA-AMC and the FAST program in Ontario for oncology drugs. I think those are great, but we need to go further, broaden the eligibility criteria for those new initiatives, and make our processes even more agile. We understand all the steps and why they’re needed, but there must be a way to shorten them. We know that because other countries are doing it! We also need to look at the benefits of new therapies beyond the traditional boundaries, and to look outside the silos of health and on a longer time horizon. I believe that patients deserve healthy lives from early intervention.
In your opinion, how can pharmaceutical companies set up their research to help make these downstream processes easier?
In the past, drug development was all about fulfilling an unmet need for patients. That’s still our most important goal, but now we also need to prioritize bringing drugs to the market that will be reimbursable – ultimately, for the patient to get access, someone needs to pay for the drug. So we’ve had to shift our thinking and planning, and consider whether we have the right data to get us through our reimbursement processes. We are working on better alignment at earlier stages of product development, to make sure that the research plan addresses the most important needs of patients and is aligned with what is valuable for payers.
“My hope for the future is for overall access to healthcare that supports every part of a patient’s life.”
Sophie Rochon VP Access, Policy and Patient Experience, Otsuka Canada Pharmaceutical Inc.
What’s your blue-sky vision for healthcare in Canada in the next 10 years?
My hopes for the future are about overall access to healthcare – I think we're good at the fundamental solutions, like developing a drug that could fix a health problem, but the reality of any patient living with a disease is that it affects many aspects of their life. We need to think about the whole person. In schizophrenia, for example, there are great long-acting antipsychotic medications available, but a patient might also need societal support, like housing support or hospital care. They need a chance of a functional recovery, not just a drug or an intervention. We want to be able to provide better overall care for patients in Canada, by helping coordinate all those different angles.
Honestly, I'm very hopeful for the future. I think there's a true willingness in our ecosystem to try to bring what's best for Canadian patients, and hopefully we can achieve that.