We are living in exciting times. The development of new technology and innovative ideas that can change the way we live is occurring at an unprecedented rate. In spite of the fact that the pharmaceutical industry is considered very technologically advanced, it is also quite internally focused and thus stuck in the past. Pharmaceuticals and healthcare as a whole have been relatively slow to adopt digital strategies in comparison with other industries. It is therefore very interesting to understand how technology and innovation are shaping trends in the pharmaceutical industry, and how ready the industry is for those trends.
In order to understand why a pharmaceutical company should invest in digital technologies,
we must develop a simple model of the attributes that make digital technologies attractive and useful in drug discovery and marketing. In the Internet-era there can be very rapid the exchange of personal (or one-to-one) communication – this can be very simple like the use of email or it can be extremely complex like the use of interactive web-based communication. Internet communications facilitate a broad range of transactions, from the sharing of information to the exchange of goods and services. The Internet is already widely used by pharmaceutical companies for internal and external communications, product promotion, and a variety of transactions. The Internet will nevertheless become more important to companies in the near future due to a combination of forces. In addition to unspectacular pipelines, critical media coverage, social and political pressures, patent expirations, new therapeutictechnologies, and changes in e-business models, these forces often fall outside the realm of e-business. A growing number of industry customers are dissatisfied with the cost and quality of service they receive. Cost cutting and improving service are key to improving customer satisfaction. As digital technologies become more advanced, they can be used as cost-saving tools. The Internet will begin to play a pivotal role in day-to-day business in everything from drug discovery to clinical trials to physician detailing. The Internet and digital technology are seen as the most likely enablers of this transformation, so the pharmaceutical industry is now entering the e-age.
Over the medium term, however, technological advances (both digital and biotech) will change the way physicians and consumers interact, and pharmaceutical companies need to be prepared to capitalize on these developments. Biology and digital technology will cause healthcare to shift from an industry that provides largely the same service to every patient to one that provides increasingly personalized services to consumers, based on their preferences, needs, and desires. A medical approach that satisfies our needs, depending on our genetic susceptibility to disease and response to treatments, is referred to as ‘individualized medicine’. The delivery of this data-intensive personalized service will only become feasible with the adoption of digital technologies. We are on the threshold of major advances in medicine. Using remote diagnostics, artificial intelligence, and biomonitoring devices, we will be able to manage many aspects of our health without the direct intervention of a physician. This is the real digital revolution, the first tangible step towards pharmaceutical companies dealing directly with the end-consumer, the patient, and opening up a door to innovative collaboration with physicians in order to create and deliver customized therapeutic solutions. The use of disease management packages will be increasingly bundled with specific treatment regimens to lock doctors and patients into a long-term relationship with a particular drug. The physician is slowly but surely drawing into the web of digital innovation, and pharmaceutical companies, when they provide solutions that make daily practice easier, address privacy and safety concerns, and provide innovative solutions, can use the Internet to build relationships with prescribers. An effective digital technology strategy is simply not something a pharmaceutical company can ignore. The pharmaceutical industry must consider how to use the Internet to support the entire value chain and prepare for the inevitable opportunities in therapeutics and technology that will occur in the digital age. For the pharmaceutical company of the near future, digital strategy, e-business, and the Internet will play an increasingly important role. Even thoughmany applications are specific to parts of the pharmaceutical value chain, such as e-clinical trials in drug development and e-CRM in sales and marketing, the efficiency and transparency they offer will increasingly be used to save money and improve customer service, whether they are internal or external. With digital technology and financial pressures, global pharmaceutical industries will undoubtedly experience organizational transformation. Customers, whether physicians or consumers, must be interacted with in real time and on a small group or individual level which requires skills in CRM and analytics that have not previously been regarded as important for career success in pharmaceuticals. Incorporating digital technologies into the pharmaceutical value chain is well on its way to realization; the next step is maximizing their potential
