Annual Reports

For me, ownership means claiming unlimited responsibility and accountability for something of importance. A great example was the implementation of Veeva Vault PromoMats, which is a comprehensive solution for compliant, commercial content and digital asset management. Previously, promotional documents were printed and routed throughout the company in folders for review and approval, but that process was not very efficient or sustainable.

After months of collaborating with cross-functional teams, leveraging resources and testing multiple configurations, Veeva Vault PromoMats was successfully deployed in 2017. Its deployment has exceeded expectations and gone far beyond the original goal of simply streamlining a process.

Its success is a testament to the drive and enthusiasm of a whole range of contributors, and it is a project which I am extremely proud to have been engaged on.

During over 20 years with Octapharma, I have been fortunate to witness the development of the company into one of the key suppliers of plasma products in the German market. Integrity has been one of the crucial factors in establishing a solid presence in that market: all members of the sales and distribution teams have worked hard with our customers to build a mutual system of reliability and trust.

Over the years, during various shortages, we have been able to solve critical supply problems through open communication and reliable actions that ultimately served both sides and increased our standing within the sector.

The integrity we demonstrated in earlier supply disruptions made many stakeholders – patients, physicians, distributors and hospitals alike – turn to us to solve their critical needs during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Leadership can mean supporting employees and thus investing in the future. At Octapharma, I have been fortunate to benefit from good leadership and support myself. After starting as a research associate in the quality control laboratory, I am currently completing on-the-job training to become an expert pharmacist in pharmaceutical analysis and technology.

Taking responsibility – for our processes, for our products and ultimately for our patients – is also an essential aspect of leadership. At the research and development site in Heidelberg, we work on new projects to develop innovative medicines.

In my new position as a Qualified Person, I also have responsibility for guaranteeing the quality of new drugs. This gives me the opportunity to have a real impact on the safe development and manufacture of new medicines and thus significantly improve the lives of our patients.

The best example of a project in which I have been involved where sustainability featured prominently involved two small-scale studies. These aimed to replace the environmentally harmful chemical detergent Triton X-100 with a more environmentally sound alternative, Poloxamer. In our large-scale processing, we use three regeneration solutions and one storage solution to clean and regenerate two chromatography columns after the product has passed through.

The first of these solutions contains Triton X-100. In the study, we used a scaled down version of our actual process, with smaller chromatography columns and sample volumes. Everything else remained identical to our large-scale process except for the first regeneration solution, in which we replaced Triton X-100 with Poloxamer.

The results were fantastic. We found that Poloxamer was just as effective at regenerating both columns as Triton X-100 is, with no negative impact on the final product.

Working with a group of colleagues who continuously challenge each other to achieve the near impossible, I get to witness Octapharma’s culture of entrepreneurship every day.

One project that I have been involved in that exhibits our commitment to being a driver of innovation in the plasma industry is our Donor Experience project. The main goal of this project is to enhance the overall experience of our donors while in our donation centres. Taking an entrepreneurial approach, we have sought out ways to not only change the donor experience but also to revolutionise the entire donation process.

Though this is an ongoing project, tremendous strides have already been made in differentiating Octapharma from our competitors when it comes to donor experience, which is great both for our donors and for our continuing relationship with them.