EXPERT VIEW: How can pharmaceutical companies adapt to the digital era?

‘Digital pharma’ is by no means a new concept for pharmaceutical marketers. But what is new is that the next three years will see a dramatic change in the digital maturity of pharmaceutical companies, writes Sunil Rao, global life sciences technology managing director, Accenture. We will see digitalization as a credible ‘transformational strategy’ for big pharmaceutical companies, rather than just a nice marketing gimmick. From the recent partnership between Novartis and Google on the licensing of a smart contact lens that revolutionizes glucose monitoring for diabetes patients, to the use of ‘big data’ in cancer research, digitally-enabled pharmaceutical companies are disrupting the traditional view of their role in healthcare.

Disruption can be positive when it means breaking an old model that is no longer as effective. The traditional ‘innovate and sell’, product-focused pharmaceutical business model is becoming increasingly constrained in addressing the many challenges faced by the pharmaceutical industry today – the patent cliff, global healthcare cost controls and the rise of patient-centered paradigm just to name a few – forcing companies to rethink how they research, produce, distribute, market and sell products. One part of the strategic response lies in adopting and deploying digital practices. The growing prevalence of new data sources and the maturity of digital technology, including health, biometric, genomic and lifestyle data, have enabled new ways of both researching and treating diseases and interacting with patients and physicians. And this is why digitally-enabled pharmaceutical companies are poised to power revolution through new business models.