Legal and compliance head | Roche
Juan Ignacio Zamora Montes de Oca
Legal and compliance head | Roche
Team size: Five
Country: Costa Rica
Could you share an example of a time when you came up with an innovation that improved the way your legal team works and did not come at great cost?
Innovating means changing according to the requirements of the business, the ecosystem and in our case the patients who require our treatments. Working with more than 24 countries is a challenge when the team is only physically located in two countries, so our approach of always being present and making the most of technological resources and digitalisation has allowed us to be part of the solutions that each country provides to the challenges posed, always with a clear vision of risk, compliance and legality.
What are some of the key developments that have affected your business over the past year?
Political changes always represent important challenges for business, as the administration must face accelerated global and regional changes that include access to new therapies, digitalisation, the search for agile solutions, and the correct use of public funds, among others.
All of this develops plans that ultimately intentionally seek to establish sustainable ecosystems that allow countries to provide better access to healthcare and that manage to involve technology and digitalisation in all processes for the benefit of patients and the public purse.
How do you see the in-house legal role evolving in the coming years?
As an expert in technology law, I believe that the legal function should be increasingly open to the use of technology as an ally not only in management and administration processes, but also in technical decision-making. This would allow the in-house lawyer to devote more time to strategic functions that would streamline decision-making and processes, always under a criterion of risk analysis and adherence to current regulations.
Do you use any ‘legal technology’ products and, if so, for which areas of your work do you find them most useful?
Internally, we use several proprietary platforms for compliance case management, document archiving, and information repositories.
Legal and compliance head | Roche Pharma
Juan Ignacio Zamora Montes de Oca is the legal and compliance director of Roche Pharma CCAV (Central America, Caribbean, and Venezuela). He holds a Juris Doctor from Universidad Escuela Libre de Derecho, and a Master of Law in information technology law from the Leibniz University of Hannover. Juan Ignacio has also completed a number of higher education programmes, including at Lund University, Sweden, the Centre for Commercial Studies at Queen Mary University, London, UK and the Henri Dunant Foundation, Santiago, Chile. Juan Ignacio has spent the last eight years working as an in-house lawyer in the pharmaceutical industry, as well as the last ten years as a professor and lecturer at different Universities in courses related to Information technology law. In his current position, Juan Ignacio is responsible for training and empowering Roche employees in the CCAV (consisting of more than 24 countries) in order to bring innovation to patients in a way that protects the company’s reputation, guarantees license to operate and builds trust among different stakeholders. A proud father of a daughter and a son, Juan Ignacio is a member of several local and global associations related to technology law and regulatory compliance.
