Advanced Therapies Are Expanding Patient Access in Specialty Pharmacy | Asembia AXS26

Fran Gregory, vice president of emerging therapies at Cardinal Health, discusses the evolving role of specialty pharmacy and advanced therapies, with a strong focus on holistic patient care and improving patient access. Gregory explains that pharmacists entering the specialty pharmacy space must look beyond medications alone and consider the full patient journey. Many patients face difficult diagnoses, complex treatment regimens, and uncertainty about outcomes. As a result, pharmacists need to develop empathy, understand patient preferences, and support them across clinical, emotional, and logistical dimensions of care.

Gregory highlights the preference for oral medications compared with injectables. Patients often prefer not to self-inject, and orals can be more convenient for both patients and pharmacies, eliminating challenges like refrigeration, storage, and stability. However, treatment decisions must balance patient preference, clinical appropriateness, and cost. In the specialty pharmacy environment, price remains a major factor, and oral therapies that offer comparable outcomes at equal or lower cost can deliver significant value to patients and the healthcare system.

Gregory also discusses insights from Cardinal Health’s 2026 Advanced Therapy Industry Report, which shows that nearly all health care providers want to see improved access to advanced therapies such as cell therapies, gene therapies, and bispecifics. Currently, these complex treatments are heavily centralized in academic medical centers and urban hubs. She stresses the need to expand access by enabling more community providers to administer advanced therapies.

This shift would bring cutting-edge treatments closer to patients’ homes, particularly in underserved or geographically remote areas, while allowing academic centers to remain innovation hubs that master new therapies and then help disseminate them to the broader community.

“Thinking about all stakeholders and how we can all work together to ensure that we focus on patients at the end of the day,” Gregory said. “Patient access is kind of our key goal, as well as fueling innovation so making sure that we are appropriately shifting those high-cost, advanced treatments from those academic medical centers to the community.”