Skip to main content

How Technology is Improving Customer Focus for Pharma

Victoria Ebel, Appian
February 7, 2018

Life sciences organizations are making the shift to a more customer-focused business model to respond to pressures from consumers. At the same time, they are gaining great benefit from this approach.

Companies Shift to Focus on the Customer

In our consumer driven society, the demand for pharmaceutical organizations to meet patient demands is at an all time high. New trends have emerged in the industry to account for this shift, including:

Power to the Patient - Organizations are using research and development to make business choices based on data gathered from patient input and feedback. Patients now have the ability to engage directly with organizations, having their opinions be heard and transformed into products that better suit their needs.

Sick-Care to Well-Care - The movement to value-based care also drives a focus on the patient's overall wellness. Life Sciences organizations are adapting their products to respond to this trend and move "beyond the pill." They are adding digital solutions to enhance products by adding monitoring, detection, diagnosis and other capabilities and services.

Personalized Medicine - Organizations are using big data and analytics to provide more personalized medicine. By filtering patients into groups and demographics, they are able to see trends and distinctions that were not apparent before, bringing more precise products and services to each individual based on their unique needs.

These are just a few of the trends transforming the life sciences industry into a more customer focused environment with a goal of improving outcomes for both patients and organizations alike.

Patient Engagement Drives Benefits

Increasing customer engagement is beneficial at the very beginning of drug development. Gathering patient input is the best way for organizations to design clinical trials that will meet the needs of all stakeholders.

Patient perspectives can also help trials gain regulatory approval. Regulators are more willing to support organizations that are developing products for engaged patient populations. The ability to engage with patients across the entire drug development process can also improve the patient experience post product launch, resulting in improved patient outcomes and fewer costs.

The insights gained by achieving patient input can be applied at every stage of drug development and delivery, from compliance, to R&D, to labeling and distribution. This enables life sciences organizations to bring drugs to market that better reflect patient needs and help patients and providers achieve better results.

Innovative Technologies Improve Customer Centricity

To gain customer centricity in life sciences, organizations are implementing new approaches and innovative technologies.

Clinical Trial Patient Portals - Developing an application with a single view of patient interactions, enables organizations to make real-time improvements in the drug development process to better fit the patients' needs. An interface allows organizations to also interact directly with consumers, creating a collaborative environment throughout clinical trials.

Big Data and Analytics- Life sciences organizations are able to aggregate, monitor, and measure patient data from multiple sources. Analyzing big data gathered from patient experience allows organizations to make more informed and personalized decisions, providing better results for the patient and more competitive success for the company.

RPA & AI - Robotic process automation and artificial intelligence helps to streamline the drug development process and offers organizations more intuitive support for decision making. RPA and AI can leverage consumer data to better understand customer segments and determine the best course of action.

The Future of Life Sciences and Clinical Operations

Life sciences' introduction of innovative technologies not only benefits the patient experience, but the entire drug development process. By incorporating big data analytics, RPA and AI, and streamlined process management systems, organizations are able to maintain efficient, patient-friendly, and cost effective clinical operations.

Evi Cohen, Appian's Vice-President of Life Sciences and Mike Montello, Vice President, Global Head of R&D Solutions Information Technology at IQVIA will be discussing the topic of innovative technologies and their impact on clinical operations at the SCOPE Summit on Wednesday, February 14th at 4:55 pm. If you are attending, be sure to stop by and hear more on the transformative impact these innovations are having on the Life Sciences industry, and visit our booth, #900 for a more in-depth discussion.