How Digital Transformation Can Reshape the Pharma Industry
From predictive biomanufacturing to mobile clinical trials, digital transformation can reshape the pharma industry.
In post-COVID 2021, digitization is arguably set in stone in the pharma industry’s future. From marketing innovations to enhanced data security, and from drug discovery to mobile-centric trials, its benefits abound.
Especially now, when COVID-19 has accelerated it, digital transformation can reshape the pharma industry from its fundamentals. As much as data might back this up, however, this is a rather bold statement – so let us elaborate.
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Defining Digital Transformation
First and foremost, let us define “digital transformation” itself. This is a very elusive, broad term that can often devolve into jargon, so grounding it is crucial.
Wikipedia provides a basic initial definition: “Digital transformation (DX) is the adoption of digital technology by a company to improve business processes, value for customers and innovation.” The EU’s i-scoop expands on this definition further, explaining that: “Digital transformation is the cultural, organizational and operational change of an organization, industry or ecosystem through a smart integration of digital technologies, processes and competencies across all levels and functions in a staged and strategic way[.]”
Still, these definitions might leave room for questions. Say, which exact technologies does a digital transformation entail? Here, the American Pharmaceutical Review begins to pinpoint them in more specific terms:
Artificial Intelligence (AI), machine learning, and cognitive computing
Automation and Robotic Process Automation (RPA)
Blockchain
Big Data and advanced analytics
The Internet of Things (IoT).
Now, this list might certainly make discussions easier, but it is by no means conclusive. That is, technologies that warrant inclusion within the term may continue to emerge, in which case the term should change. Thus, we may return to i-scoop’s definition; a digital transformation should:
Affect culture, organization, and operations
Integrate smart technologies across all phases
Be staged, strategic, and specific in its purpose.
While more fluid than a set list of technologies, this concept should arguably best solidify the term. Rather, it may best prevent it from devolving into meaningless buzzwords, keeping it actionable for professionals of all industries.
Digital Marketing Trends That Drive Digital Transformation
Having discussed the term itself, we may briefly outline how digital transformation can reshape the pharma industry as regards marketing. From Direct-to-Consumer Advertising (DTCA) to broader medical marketing, a digital transformation may find ample ground to thrive. However, as outlined above, it should serve distinct, specific purposes to bear meaning. In this sense, it is the changes that happened recently in the digital marketing landscape that calls for innovation in turn. Among them, consider the following examples:
Cause Marketing
Studies show that consumers value brands that champion social causes. The Edelman Trust Barometer confirms this notion, noting that ethical drivers are 3x more important to company trust than competence. Thus, between renewed social awareness and a continued trust deficit, which the pharma industry is no stranger to, cause marketing may emerge as a valuable asset.
AD Blockers
In conjunction with relative market distrust, the trend of ad blockers continues. Research from HubSpot confirms the well-established truism that the majority of web users find ads annoying. This has clear implications for PPC marketing campaigns, which in turn impact the pharma industry’s B2B lead acquisition efforts.
SEO; Local SEO and Featured Snippets
Finally, SEO remains immensely potent – especially with Google’s Core Web Vitals looming. In this regard, local SEO continues to gain prominence as Google My Business (GMB) fuels local searches. Similarly, voice search results are increasingly fueled by featured snippet results, offering enhanced online visibility.
Even at a cursory glance, then, it should be clear that digital marketing continues to evolve in strides. In turn, it’s a staged, strategic digital transformation that can best tackle these new challenges that follow its evolution.
How Can Digital Transformation Reshape the Pharma Industry?
To begin delving into specifics, then, we may pinpoint exact ways in which this course can reshape the pharma industry. These will, of course, be little more than token examples, as this subject is incredibly vast to thoroughly cover here. So, for the sake of text economy, we will delve into 6 industry-specific examples, citing relevant research where appropriate.
1. Digital Health Offerings
First, we may start broadly, with a notable example from Bayer, as cited by Pharmaphorum. “Jeanne Kehren, Bayer’s senior VP of digital and commercial innovation and a member of its Pharmaceuticals Executive Committee”, they say, explained in early 2021: “[i]n the next ten years, we expect digital health offerings to significantly contribute to our revenues[.]”
But what exactly are digital health offerings? The FDA explains that its Center for Devices and Radiological Health (CDRH) discusses such manifestations of digital health offerings as:
“Software as a Medical Device (SaMD)
Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning (AI/ML) in Software as a Medical Device
Cybersecurity
Device Software Functions, including Mobile Medical Applications
Health IT
Medical Device Data Systems
Medical Device Interoperability
Telemedicine
Wireless Medical Devices”
From this list alone, we may extrapolate a simple truth; “digital health offerings” is by no means a buzzword to be used among marketers. On the contrary, it is a substantive field of digital innovation, which increasingly earns its place in the pharma industry.
2. Digital Analytics
Within this framework, we may delve deeper into how digital transformation can reshape the pharma industry. Using the above list of technologies as a rudimentary foundation, we may cite Novartis to discuss data scientists’ perceptions. Specifically, they say data scientists identify the following benefits of applying data science to healthcare:
“improved diagnostic accuracy (64%)
increased efficiency (59%)
ability to predict disease prevalence (54%)
improvements to existing healthcare systems (52%)”
These benefits, echoed in similar forms across other research cited in this article, are by all means feasible. They require a proper framework to realize, however, which begins with Big Data. The pharma industry processes absolutely massive amounts of data, which require new analytical tools to harness properly. That’s the express goal of Big Data, which is why digital transformations spearhead it as their analytical focal point.
3. Accelerated Drug Discovery Through AI
Analytics aside, Avenga provides an excellent example of digital transformation technologies in practice as regards drug discovery. The drug discovery phase, as they aptly point out as well, is particularly tedious and prone to error. According to the NCBI, only 1/3rd (31.8%) of all pre-clinical studies ever enter Phase 1 of clinical trials. What’s more, drug development cycles typically last very long and incur significant costs.
As a potential solution to this, Avenga proposes the next stage of AI and machine learning; neural networks. This, they argue, relies on deep learning’s already established ability to predict the molecular properties of chemical compounds. In turn, they continue, neural networks exhibit two invaluable capabilities:
1. “Predict pharmaceutical ADME (absorption, distribution, metabolism, and excretion) properties of molecular compounds and targets for drug discovery.
2. Predict how chemical compounds will behave in the potential drugs.”
Understandably, these capabilities can only serve as drug discovery accelerants.
4. Predictive Biomanufacturing
On the subject of predictive technologies, we may reaffirm that their applications within the pharma industry are far from new. For a notable example, Teva Pharmaceuticals Industries and Insilico Biotechnology started applying Insilico’s technology for predictive biomanufacturing in 2019. Here, consider how Jason Bock, vice-president of Biologics CMC at Teva, perfectly echoed the above in his related statement:
“Saving experimental efforts and time [with Insilico’s unique technology for digital bioprocess development] perfectly fits the accelerated timelines in clinical development that we are seeing now and even more in the future.”
As PharmTech explains, “Insilico’s predictive biomanufacturing technology, Digital Twins, employ (sic) metabolic models of producer organisms in combination with flexible process models and artificial intelligence to create optimized production processes by computational simulations.” It is this exact application of predictive technologies that Avenga embraced above, and it serves as an excellent example of how digital transformation can reshape the pharma industry.
5. Clinical Trial Digitization
Similarly, returning to digital health offerings, digital transformation offers considerable benefits toward clinical trial expansion itself. In the aforelinked article, Avenga cites a 2019 Contemporary Clinical Trials Communications survey. Among other findings, it found that “patients showed a readiness to use a variety of digital technologies […] if they were practical and easy to use”. Such technologies include:
Wearables
Ingestible sensors
Mobile devices
The latter holds immense significance in itself, as the survey found 51% of respondents were willing to participate in traditional clinical trials. In contrast, 81% were willing to participate in mobile clinical trials.
This trend is, of course, understandable; We Are Social finds there are 5.22 billion unique mobile users across the world. Coupled with expanding internet penetration and social media use, mobile technologies can only be at the forefront of digitization. After all, mobile traffic accounts for over half of all web traffic, and Google’s mobile-first indexing and mobile-centric SEO affirm this. It is this audience that the pharma industry needs to adjust to in the digital age and reap the benefits that follow.
6. Security Through Blockchain
Finally, while digital transformation can reshape the pharma industry, security has always rightfully been a pressing concern across digitizing industries. In this regard, much like other industries before it, pharma is also turning to Blockchain – as Harvard Business Review notes.
To define Blockchain in this context, we may cite BiopharmaTrend:
“Blockchain is software that provides a digital ledger system for records and log transactions, by grouping them into chronologically-ordered blocks.”
Blockchain, they continue, is “ideal for tracking supplies, and ensuring that required storage conditions have been achieved and that goods have not been tampered with”. This is, of course, a crucial asset, as HBR cites the World Health Organization in the aforelinked article to assert that “that one in 10 medical products […] are substandard or falsified in low- and middle- income countries”. It’s for this reason, among others, that global regulations around data protection continue to tighten, with the U.S.’s 2023 DSCSA deadline as a notable example.
In this regard, Blockchain’s decentralized ecosystem can allow for unprecedented security, facilitating verifications across the supply chain. While applying it to “track and trace” is still quite new, HBR cites promising results, including the example of MediLedger Network.
Conclusion
To conclude, then, it should now be evident that digital transformation can reshape the pharma industry for years to come. With COVID-19 as an unprecedented accelerant, the pharma industry’s digital moment is ripe. New, tech-savvy, at times distrustful audiences require new marketing philosophies.
Digital health offerings continue to expand, fueled by such technologies as Big Data and predictive analytics. Thus, from drug discovery and manufacturing to mobile clinical trials and Blockchain-backed supply chains, the technologies that digital transformations entail offer considerable grounds for innovation.
For more on digital transformation and strategic marketing approaches in the pharmaceutical sectors, and how we can help you, visit our section on strategy.
Guest contributor: Lisa Roberts.
