Katharina Gasser 

Katharina Gasser, General Manager of Roche Pharma (Switzerland) Ltd, imagines how AI will reshape healthcare, highlights the importance of innovation and explains why she is so passionate about health policy.

Roche was founded in Basel by Fritz Hoffmann in 1896. How important are your company’s Swiss roots?

Switzerland is our home. Basel has been our headquarters from the outset. This location remains extremely important to us, and we’ve invested consistently in research and development as well as production. We recently opened the Institute of Human Biology, which is tackling research questions of the future with new approaches, such as combining organoids grown in petri dishes with data science. Indeed, we invest 3.5 billion francs every year in research and development in this country. This is 14 million francs each working day.

This investment underscores our commitment to Switzerland as our base. But the location also needs to serve us well and continue to offer good framework conditions. We need skilled workers, so freedom of movement for people is extremely important, as is legal certainty. Switzerland has excellent universities, enabling lively collaboration between academics and researchers from our companies, and this is very important for innovation.

While I’m a huge supporter of Switzerland, I believe it’s important not to rest on our laurels, especially given the current geopolitical situation.

Is geopolitical uncertainty something you think about a lot?

I try not to let every unexpected incident dominate my thoughts, but I do follow developments, of course.

US President Donald Trump has pointed to a global imbalance regarding drug pricing. If looked from that perspective, we must admit that adjusted for GDP per capita, Switzerland is in the lowest third in terms of spending compared to other developed countries. The US spends much more and objects to paying for the majority of medical innovation that is globally used.

Beyond these recent developments, we’ve been highlighting for many years the inadequacy of reimbursement for innovative products in Switzerland. Today, we are only ranked 7th in Europe in terms of access to new medicines – just ahead of Bulgaria. Germany is much faster, offering access to around twice the number of innovative products we can provide to patients in Switzerland.

This lack of access is difficult to reconcile with Switzerland’s position as a global innovation leader. We lead in patents per capita and have produced numerous Nobel laureates, yet when it comes to healthcare – a fundamental good – we are falling behind.

Against this background, I have serious concerns about the planned revision of the Health Insurance Ordinance. Some elements are hostile to innovation – that’s bad news for Roche, the life science industry here, but also for all of us as potential patients in Switzerland. I’m committed to making sure our voice is heard so that the law supports ongoing innovation and access to novel therapies. 

How are technological advances reshaping healthcare?     

I believe that digitalization is key to tackling the challenges that lie ahead in healthcare. On the one hand, we’re sitting on a treasure trove of dormant data. Every patient journey generates invaluable insights, but this potential remains locked as long as the data exists in fragmented, analogue silos. On the other hand, imagine the efficiency to be gained by not having to repeat health histories to every provider and by being able to consolidate imaging and laboratory analyses.

Beyond this, data and digitalization are at the heart of a much-needed revolution around the true value of innovation. By leveraging data and technology, we won’t just know the number of services provided or medications administered. We’ll be able to capture the benefit of every intervention – surgical, pharmaceutical or other. At scale, this data helps us understand whether a therapy delivers on expectations, needs to be adjusted or is only helpful to a specific patient population. I believe this is where we should be heading: transitioning from a volume-based model to one that prioritizes patient outcomes and measurable value.

Data is also at the heart of synergies between pharma and diagnostics, an important topic for Roche. Which synergies are already being used today, and how do you think they will be used in the future?

Roche is here for every step of the health journey: prevention, diagnosis, treatment, and hopefully cure. This makes us unique in the pharma space. We cover therapeutic areas from the earliest diagnosis or prevention, through to treatment, therapies and follow-up. We apply this end-to-end approach in several therapeutic areas, including oncology, cardiovascular and metabolic disease as well as neurology.

AI naturally plays a huge role here – for example in neurology, where I think we’ll learn a great deal in the coming years about degenerative diseases of the brain, such as Alzheimer’s. I think AI will help us enormously as a tool in the laboratory and then through diagnostics, data processing and along the patient pathway during therapy. At the end of the day, it’s people we treat – AI alone will not solve everything. Interpretation and validation remain vital, and these steps are carried out by teams of enthusiastic, optimistic and energetic researchers.

How can we ensure that AI is used to its full potential, but also that patient data is handled securely?

There is still some way to go when it comes to digitalizing data in Switzerland. There have been some pilots, but as a country we’re behind many locations that are already using AI in everyday practice. This is a major disadvantage for Switzerland, not just in terms of potential outcomes but because research goes where data is available.

Whether AI-driven or not, it is vital that data protection regulations and legal frameworks prevent the misuse of data. Personal information—and health data in particular—is a sensitive asset that must be handled with the utmost care. Companies like ours are well-equipped to meet this responsibility, drawing on a proven track record of managing data in clinical trials. 

In this period of rapid technological transformation, skilled tech employees are in high demand. Why do you think tech specialists choose Roche over tech companies?

We all need a purpose—why we work, how we work and what we do. Data scientists and tech experts find that clarity of purpose at Roche. We call it ‘Doing now what patients need next’. Here, they contribute to developing innovative medicines, diagnostics and therapies that truly change lives.

The sense of fulfillment our employees find at Roche offers a meaningful alternative to roles focused on optimizing click rates or driving the consumption of non-essential goods.

Today’s young professionals are looking for more than just a job; they are seeking a career defined by purpose and meaningful contribution.

At Roche, I’m honestly very proud of the impact we have. It’s incredibly rewarding to know that my work helps ensure innovative medicines actually reach patients here in Switzerland. That’s a very tangible purpose that drives me.

My role at the Zug Chamber of Commerce adds another layer to that. It’s a chance to look beyond our own sector and engage with the broader community—from local craftsmen to international SMEs. I’ve become a very convinced advocate for the Bilaterals III because, at the end of the day, our success depends on stable relations with Europe. For me, that also means fighting for programs like Horizon; we need to make sure our young researchers in Switzerland keep their seat at the table and stay connected to European funding and innovation. It’s about keeping the whole region competitive, not just one industry.

What would you like your legacy to be when you eventually hand over leadership of Roche Pharma Switzerland?

Ultimately, I’d like to be remembered as someone who fought hard to get innovative therapies to Swiss patients as quickly as possible. That, and ensuring Switzerland remains a powerhouse for research and production in life sciences—not just because it’s good for the industry and the Swiss economy, but because innovation is our future.

On a more personal level, I really hope the people I’ve worked with look back and feel that their time here was truly worth it. We spend so much of our lives at work, so it’s incredibly important to me that we create an environment where people can actually have fun, experiment and grow. I’d love for my legacy to be a culture where everyone feels they didn’t just ‘work’, but truly moved the needle and had a fulfilling journey along the way.