A Pipeline for Global Health

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Hikma Pharmaceuticals manufactures medicines that are making the world a healthier place, one global region at a time

In 1978, Samih Darwazah had an ambitious vision to shape a healthier world by bringing high-quality affordable medicines to greatly underserved patients in the Middle East and Northern Africa (MENA). He started Hikma as a modest regional company, and today Hikma continues to make strides in improving global health, making access to better healthcare a reality for countless individuals worldwide.

The $2.56 billion global enterprise specializes in the development, manufacturing, and distribution of a wide range of branded and generic pharmaceutical products across a range of therapeutic areas. The London-based firm manufactures high quality generic and branded generic medicines and a growing number of licensed, specialty, and compounded products.

Millions of patients across North America, MENA, and Europe benefit greatly from the company’s portfolio of 760 products, which range from injectables such as Naloxone, Diazepam, Morphine, Phenobarbital, and Lorazepam, to generic versions of Icosapent, Fluticasone nasal spray, Fluticasone/Salmeterol delivered via a dry powder inhaler, Prednisone, Amoxicillin, and many others.

So far this year in the U.S. market Hikma has launched several products, most notably Naloxone Hydrochloride Injection in a pre-filled syringe form for the emergency treatment of illicit fentanyl overdoses.

Trish Bousfield

“We continually invest in research and development to create new products and expand our existing pipeline and portfolio of medicines,” said Trish Bousfield, Hikma’s Chief Information Officer. We are also exploring opportunities to enter new countries and strengthen our market share in regions where we already have a presence.”

Hikma’s global presence consists of 32 high-quality manufacturing facilities across 12 countries, including the U.S., Portugal, Germany, Italy, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Algeria, and Egypt. They manufacture their own products and offer contract manufacturing services to other pharmaceutical companies. With eight R&D centers and the drive to expand their presence in emerging and established markets, Hikma is building a pipeline of medicines to meet the evolving needs of patients and healthcare professionals around the world.

They’re particularly strong in complex formulations and specialized delivery systems, and as such are expanding their capabilities in the biosimilars space. “We seek growth opportunities through acquisitions and partnerships that complement our existing portfolio, enable expansion into new therapeutic areas, and strengthen our manufacturing capabilities,” Bousfield added.

Bousfield joined the organization in 2020, and over the last two years has focused on transforming Hikma’s IT capabilities from a regional organizational model to global teams; moving out of a reactive delivery model to an engagement-based, business-aligned model; from tactical delivery to strategic planning; and, from heroic individual efforts to consistent governance, transparency, and prioritization. “We deliver over 100 projects of various sizes and complexities each year and our approval process is focused on the value provided to the business. We pride ourselves on operating  with trust and transparency and are focused on delivering on our commitments.” Bousfield notes that the company has already seen significant benefits from the approach because the business now views IT more as an embedded partner rather than a cost of doing business.

Globalization for a healthier world

“When you appropriately globalize and have the teams with the right knowledge working across the organization, you are tapping into a lot more knowledge and expertise that can be leveraged globally,” she noted. “If something happens in any of our countries, we can pull our teams together and see what's going on globally.”

Her teams are undertaking several initiatives to keep the company on a fast track to the future. To bolster their security and risk posture they have increased investments in information security, hiring new leadership, expanding the team, and reorganizing for a tighter alignment with Infrastructure.

“We’ve partnered with Cisco to optimize the tools we use and introduce new capabilities such as network detection and response. We’ve also updated and replaced all our firewalls and much of our network equipment, enabling end-to end visibility and strengthening network segregation,” she explained.

To maintain Hikma’s unwavering commitment to pharmaceutical product quality, her teams embarked on a program to modernize and rationalize their quality system landscape. In partnership with the business side of the organization, they selected Veeva Systems’ quality and regulatory SaaS suite and introduced a document management and quality management system across their U.S. operations and tier one markets in Europe and MENA.

“We’ve been on a multiyear journey to meet the U.S. FDA’s Drug Quality and Security Act by implementing serialization and aggregation for full track and trace of our products in the supply chain,” she said. The regulations are designed to combat drug counterfeiting and theft and enable an individual item to be tracked from manufacturer to distributor to dispenser.

“We leverage SAP’s ATTP for serialization and aggregation and Tracelink’s track and trace product to share data with our partners.” Moviltas has been a key partner in the implementation of the complex technology stack in their manufacturing and distribution centers and interfacing with Hikma’s ERP.

The company recently introduced their first ecommerce platform in the injectables business, partnering with Unilog to enable direct-to-hospital sales for their newly launched 503B compounding business. Additionally, they are modernizing procurement, using Sievo global vendor spend analytics technology and are implementing Ivalua’s source to contract software across their operations.

“We advance health and wellbeing through access to medicines, which is a cornerstone of our sustainability agenda,” Bousfield pointed out. In 2022, Hikma donated $4.3 million worth of medicines to people in need, which included getting medicines to Ukraine and providing malaria medications to Sudan in response to the extreme floods. In the U.S., they continually work with the FDA to anticipate and address drug shortages, and in MENA, one of their many educational programs provided free breast exams to 7,000 women.

The firm is committed to protecting the environment by making their operations more efficient, reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and focusing on water and waste management. From 2020 the company has achieved a 15% reduction in Scope 1 and 2 GHG emissions.

Trish concluded with the company’s purpose and its promise to patients: “Hikma puts Better Health, Within Reach, Every Day®. By creating high-quality medicines and making them accessible to those who need them, we are helping to shape a healthier world that enriches all our communities. In these days of global unrest, pandemics, and inflation, this mission is more important than ever.”