A Preeminent Senior Expert and Advisory Board Member Who Shapes Access to Healthcare
In healthcare, access is often mistaken for approval. For Rabab Khodary, it is something far more structural.
As a senior leader in Market Access, Pricing, and Health Economics, Rabab operates at the intersection of innovation and system sustainability. In a healthcare environment undergoing rapid transformation, she focuses not merely on enabling therapies to enter the market, but on shaping how value is defined, absorbed, and governed.
With experience across top multinational organizations including GSK, Johnson & Johnson, Vertex Pharmaceuticals, and Novartis, Rabab’s contribution is reflected in more than 60 recommendations spanning multiple therapy areas. Yet her influence extends beyond numbers. Recently, she was appointed as an Advisory Board Member for the HTA Office, a healthcare solutions firm operating across the Middle East and North Africa.
“At senior levels, decisions are rarely about direction,” Rabab reflects. “They are about consequence.”
Beyond Approval: The Discipline of Trade-Offs
In her view, market access is not a commercial negotiation. It is a governance discipline. Each pricing framework, reimbursement pathway, and formulary decision carries long-term implications for system sustainability, fiscal balance, and equitable patient access.
Her leadership is defined by clarity, making trade-offs explicit rather than postponing them, and aligning stakeholders around shared accountability rather than assumed consensus.
Translating Innovation into System Value
Across thirteen therapeutic areas including cellular & gene therapies, oncology, hematology, respiratory, infectious diseases, vaccines, specialty care, cardiovascular and other advanced treatment domains, Rabab has built structured value cases grounded in clinical evidence and localized health economics data.
She integrates health economics models, pricing governance design, and access strategy with strong orchestration across cross-functional stakeholders.
Her work ensures that innovation does not simply enter the system. It integrates into it sustainably.
The Governance Mindset Defined
Rabab approaches leadership through a governance lens. She believes clarity is a strategic asset and that postponing difficult trade-offs often multiplies long-term cost.
In complex healthcare systems, neutrality can appear responsible. Yet she argues that sustainable value is created when ownership is explicit, particularly when choices are uncomfortable.
A notable episode featuring Rabab as an iconic Saudi senior expert in the pharmaceutical industry was hosted by Molka Hachouch, Founder and podcast host of CEOs with Molka, who is also an Executive Search Consultant and ESG Lead of the Middle East region. In the first episode of the podcast, Rabab shared insights on the art of management, leadership, and emotional intelligence while exploring her philosophy of the governance mindset and its intersection with her work in Market Access, Pricing, and Health Economics.
Shaping Healthcare’s Next Chapter
Aligned with Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 healthcare transformation, Rabab sees market access evolving into a strategic lever of national healthcare competitiveness.
Her work supports the shift toward value-based frameworks, real-world evidence integration, and structured collaboration between public institutions and global life sciences innovators.
For Rabab Khodary, access is not the final step of innovation. It is the moment accountability begins.
