Digital Transformation in Pharma: Barriers and Impact Posted on February 22, 2022February 4, 2025 by Andrii Nikulin Over time, pharma gets under fire due to its excessive talks about ‘digital transformation.’ It needs to be clarified what these words refer to and whether these grandiloquent statements work for actual doctors and patients. How many healthcare professionals and patients have yet to see the impact of digital technologies in the healthcare industry? Has it already improved pharma’s daily operations? Let’s figure out where the pharma sector is on the road to the digital age, how this process is changing how they do business, and how it affects the HCPs and patient engagement. What is Digital Transformation for Pharma companies? “Every digital transformation is going to begin and end with the customer, and I can see that in the minds of every CEO I talk to.” Marc Benioff, Chairman, and Co-CEO, Salesforce. Digital Technology in the pharmaceutical industry pushes us to change, poses challenges we don’t want to take, and makes us move forward. These changes may be dramatic. But when life wants us to grow, it makes us change to remain competitive. The problem is that digital technologies are changing faster than we are, leaving us with no choice but to keep pace. When we speak of digital transformation reshaping, we mean the natural evolution of existing processes with new technologies, introducing patterns and strategies that enhance customer experience, and building a genuine dialogue with the customer. In the pharmaceutical sector, this process was launched three years ago, when the pandemic, without much readiness, forced life sciences to increase their digital innovation culture drastically or, in particular cases, grow it from scratch. Looking back, we may go through all cliches of that period, but the digital shift declared a standard of communication with customers. Digital Transformation Barriers: where are we? Where are we now on the road to digital success? Despite being spurred by the pandemic, the digitalization process runs slowly. In terms of pharma digitalization, there are still many regions on the map where companies’ digital development level is consistently low. This map shows how pharmaceutical companies assess their readiness to become digital organizations. According to this map, the digitalization process among countries remains uneven. This is primarily associated with the poor scalability of implemented solutions among the regions and resilience to changes. Now, 1/3 of pharmaceutical companies believe they need to be better resourced for digital engagement. The other 40% report a need for more talent and the right technology for transformation. It’s important to understand that each industry has its own specifics and digitalization in pharma won’t be as smooth as anywhere else. However, this process highlights the areas where the mindset change should happen and what soft spots digital business processes transformation is designed to cover. How does Digital Transformation reshape the Pharma industry? Digital innovation in the pharma sector can help companies perform better by increasing productivity and reducing costs through collaboration, digital technology centralization to optimize delivery, and empowering a company or department. supply chain A global pharmaceutical company is experimenting with VR in its manufacturing operations. Managers can cut training time in half by creating virtual training programs that render production environments and speed up the path to excellence. streamline processes and marketing efforts Another biopharmaceutical company reduced its marketing spending by 20% by building a global system. The move followed a duplication analysis, in which the company found that up to 60% of localized asset-creation activities were duplicative. The company now has a centralized content center to deliver standardized marketing materials in flexible formats to more than 40 local markets. acquiring talent more efficiently The medical company double-checked the licenses of applicants for a nursing license during the interview. This included visiting the verification website, taking a snapshot of the applicant’s license, and storing the information in the applicant’s file. The HR bot was able to automate 80% of the process. Robotic process automation resulted in a 65% reduction in labor costs and a reduced risk of errors. This freed up the equivalent of one full-time job, allowing employees to focus on more critical activities. Disruptive Technologies and Market Dynamics Digital technologies can help companies deliver a competitive, digitally enabled, engaging, impactful experience to customers, the workforce, and ecosystem external partners. Key disruptive technologies include using digital tools to engage patients and other stakeholders remotely, involving social and other community networks, and personalizing experiences with user data to deliver excellent value. Creating a platform for customer experience.The Patient Service and Care Management Platform delivers consistent patient experiences across all channels and enables treatment adherence and care coordination with an entire network of healthcare providers for each patient. Through connected apps and devices, it supports digital therapy, helps improve patient outcomes, and helps health professionals coordinate patient care management. The platform analyzes internal and external data to gain insight into patient care and interactions and can integrate with the platform to analyze real-world data. Connecting patients, biopharma, caregivers, health care providers, and other stakeholders. The platform helps biopharma companies build partnerships with advocacy groups and providers to enhance patients’ experience with complex, chronic, and terminal diseases. It supports a next-generation digital healthcare network focused on patient support and digital engagement. Patients who consent to share their data receive information and updates from the sponsoring organization (typically biopharma companies and patient advocacy groups) to help navigate their disease. Optimizing the content provided to health care practitioners. A large global biopharmaceutical company has created a self-service portal for more than 30,000 practitioners across Europe to access digital marketing and sales materials in various media. The content shared with each practitioner differs based on previous browsing habits, allowing for custom targeting and enhancing the effectiveness of the marketing approach. Artificial Intelligence in the Pharma Transformation Over the past few years, the use of Artificial Intelligence in the Pharma industry and Life Sciences has become a trending topic. Many pharmaceutical companies are progressively implementing more efficient automated processes that include data-driven decisions and use predictive advanced analytics tools. The next step of this advanced data analytics approach will consist of artificial Intelligence and machine learning. Some of the ways AI is being applied in the pharmaceutical sector today include the following: Manufacturing process improvement Drug development Processing biomedical and clinical data Rare diseases and personalized medicine Identifying clinical trial candidates Predictive forecasting Drug adherence and dosage From early-stage drug discovery to prescribing options, the use of Artificial Intelligence is growing steadily within the pharma industry, with an estimated market volume reaching $10 billions by 2024 (including diagnostics, AI-based medical imaging, personal AI assistants, genomics, and drug discovery). Can we hold the digital transformations back? Remember your life before the pandemic; now, it seems like a dream to you, right? Like no other, these two years greatly impacted our lives, habits, and priorities. In 2019, marketers expected a quick end to the pandemic and a return to routine communication with customers. After three years, again like a dream, the pandemic is slowly receding (at minor restrictions). It begs the question: do we need to digitalize further? And will this process be slowed down now? No. Because the digital shift catalyzed some fundamental changes. Pharma marketing has always been a complicated environment characterized by complex relationships with its target audience. However, the shift towards digital innovation in pharma has exposed many problems that previously needed to be tracked. Searching through the old reports is like getting into a time machine that can take us back to changes that have taken place. The retrospective looks as follows: In 2019, 77% of pharma companies reported issues with content localization/translation. Only 28% could repurpose their content with a little manual effort. Back then, 62% say their organization has yet to make plans for using AI-driven content technologies. The most significant impact of digital technology in the pharmaceutical industry was on HCP engagement. Before COVID-19, 64% of meetings with pharma sales reps were held in person. During the pandemic, this shifted to 65% of meetings being held virtually. The old patters revolve primarily around internal content production issues in the pharmaceutical industry and don’t consider the main factor – HCP’s experiences. Today, searching for personalized experiences for the customer is the cornerstone of all companies that want to withstand competition in the market and have a serious competitive advantage. In the end, we should remember that technology exists to make our life easier. In life sciences, the ultimate goal of Digital Transformation is to introduce new technologies that will allow space and time for more strategic decisions on customers. These technologies should solve the long-standing issues of MLR optimization, content and taxonomy management, and multivendor environment support. Transformation in the Pharmaceutical sector: what it refers to Pharma often speaks clichés, but most critics are associated with a lack of clarification of what it refers to. The pandemic exposed many problems in pharma that, in the new era of communication, cannot remain unresolved. We’ve tried to highlight them all for you to see that Digital Transformation usually touches people, processes, tools, and content, areas where innovations are needed to simplify the internal processes that often hinder the natural evolution of companies toward strategic marketing. Why do we need it? In communicating with our customers, we should remember that the biggest shift occurred in patients’ mindsets. Not speaking their language, we can compare our audience to distant stars we try to reach in the dark. The main driver of prescriptions in the pharma industry is loyalty. The main factor that affects loyalty is the message your brand translates. Feel free to learn about it by checking our pharma digital transformation case study. Companies that help with pharma digital transformation Such professional services companies as Mckinsey, Vaimo, and Viseven are driving Digital Transformation by offering an end-to-end content operating model that is aligned with strategy, and ready for scale and innovation adoption. Viseven combines technology and marketing expertise mastering the entire chain of enablers to deliver a best-in-class digital experience. Contact us to learn more about how we enable digital transformation for pharma businesses of all sizes and maturity levels.
How is Virtual Reality used in Healthcare and Pharma Industries? Posted on June 7, 2018February 4, 2025 by Andrii Nikulin The future is unpredictable on every occasion. It significantly influences our daily lives with more technologies that we couldn’t even imagine back in the day. From social networks and media to touchphones and complex applications, digitalization changed our way of perception of things. Even more, it has changed a lot of business approaches and industries. As for the pharma and life science industry, the digitalization and use of modern technologies became a like a breath of fresh air, forever impacting the most vital thing for healthcare in common — communication. Modern-day pharma faces the enormous challenge of shifting to more efficient ways of engaging doctors with the recent explosion of VR and AR technologies. What does it mean? Imagine presenting your clinical data simultaneously, using any suitable device instead of manually sorting out and laying huge rows of useless documentation on the table. The wide range of scientific resources and data usually contained from a bunch of digitals and charts can be presented in a visual form, hands-free, and portable whenever and wherever it is most in demand. “The pattern of activity in a brain region involved in spatial learning in the virtual world is completely different than when it processes activity in the real world,” said Mayank Mehta, a UCLA professor of physics, neurology, and neurobiology at UCLA College and the study’s senior author. Let’s see how virtual technology helps to build strong patient engagement. What is Virtual Reality in Medicine? Let’s start with what VR is. Usually, this is something associated with video gaming: users can watch some virtual objects superimposed on the display and sometimes even interact with them. Since 2012, technology production has become massive with a huge explosion of Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, Gear VR, and Google Cardboard. Since that, it has become a massive hit at medical conventions, conferences, and live events. Denise Strauss, former VP of cardiovascular marketing at Boehringer, now VP, and head of marketing at Sunovion Pharmaceuticals, notes: “For sales reps, rather than walking into a physician’s office with print material, the Google Cardboard VR experience immediately catches their attention.” At this point, virtual reality technology in healthcare can be easily confused with augmented reality (AR), as they share the idea of bringing virtual objects to the user’s perception. Yet VR and AR are significantly different. While VR devices are aimed to detach a person from real-life entirely, augmented content is a consequent response towards delivering information directly into users’ eyesight without losing touch with the real world. With AR, you stay in a physical world with added virtual elements. Hence, it might bring a better understanding of users’ real-world experiences. Still, we are going to focus more on virtual reality in healthcare. So what does it offer? 4 Production Modes are offered by Virtual Engagement: Theater mode 360-world video’s combination of content and images presented on a simulated theater screen can drive deeper engagement with your brand among its potential audience. For physicians, if it’s for training or educational purposes, VR solutions such as simulation can help get an inside view of patients’ inner processes and conditions, which are usually hidden. For example, how it feels to “experience” Parkinson’s disease or migraine, what symptoms may occur, or to view the whole migraine aura. 360-degree video The most widely used VR tool. Despite being unable to change the user’s position while watching, it remains a significant virtual immersive experience and education provider. With the help of VR equipment, patients may observe how the prescribed drugs and medicines work in 3D just before their eyes. Another example is LOROS hospice in Leicester, which created a VR film of a walk in a park to provide respite to terminally ill patients. Simulated 3D Environments Designing, implementing, and integrating 3D objects into the VR world with a particular software such as Cinema 4D or Maya allows users to determine their position. For example, the audience can interact with your drugs at the molecular level and integrate the data in a 3D world. Gesture-based Interactivity This activity has its peculiarity — the ability to recognize human gestures while interacting with VR objects. It works perfectly for patients with movement disorders. Implementation of Virtual Reality in Healthcare In modern healthcare, the use of VR is adopted to help patients and doctors achieve better results in treatments, including surgery, physical and cognitive rehabilitation, pain issues, mental health, and others. Medical Education and Training Modern medical universities like George Washington University are implementing VR into learning and medical training for real neurosurgery and thoracic surgery. VR allows for creating and exploring an operating room with a model of a patient’s brain and body before performing a procedure. It significantly improves the awareness of doctors doing surgery, patients lying under surgical blades, and even their families, who can better understand procedures ahead of time. Another good example is that the company that produces stents for cardiology or angioplasty can use VR to provide doctors with a safe experience. Instead of providing clinicians with reading materials and presentations, VR training creates an immersive space to describe a production process, explain usage, and educate about correct device implementation. Pain Management Did you know that your brain doesn’t differentiate between real and fake? We must look for additional triggers and questions to identify whether something is true. Meanwhile, our brain always lives “between worlds,” easily mixing the real world with imaginary stuff and not caring to discover what is what. Does it sound unpleasant to you? Either way, it works perfectly for such medical purposes as pain management. Thomas Caruso, MD, a pediatric anesthesiologist at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital Stanford, states, “pain is a perception that’s coupled to your attention, mood, and emotions.” It means that if a patient’s mindset can be less focused on the surgery moment or other unpleasant nuances of medication, they will more likely feel less pain and struggle — significantly influencing the therapy. A good example is patients being busy with medical VR games and barely feeling the stick of a needle or an IV going in. Also, using VR helps patients to deal with the fear of dental care – or even losing it all — because of decreased pain. Physical Therapy and Rehabilitation At this point, using VR gives many healthcare possibilities. First, it allows clinicians or medicine developers to feel what the patient with Parkinson’s disease feels regarding movement. This experience will enable doctors to step into patients’ shoes and create a more accurate treatment approach based on practical knowledge. Second, it gives a proper rehabilitation space to help patients suffering from movement disorders and diseases. In the medical VR environment, the patient interacts with objects doing necessary exercises. The overall gamification of the procedure makes people forget about the pain and different psychological factors that may distract and interfere with rehabilitation. For example, children with complex regional pain syndrome (CRPS) experience pain in one or more limbs almost all the time. Medical VR games like squashing watermelons help them to focus more on the movements and the game rather than pain and stress. As a result, children’s confidence is increasing, and treatment improves. Virtual Reality in Pharmaceutical Sales Using VR tools gives enough space for unique promotion ideas for pharmaceutical companies. As marketing and sales communications are often a question of content and delivery, we all know upfront that PowerPoint presentations and PDF brochures with walls of text and strange infographics will bore healthcare professionals to death. As a result, you get the interruption of communication. Not quite an outcome you expect from your revenue teams, right? Your target audience will likely be impressed with what VR offers. This is where the “customer journey” term becomes literal: you can take the HCP through the prepared virtual project demonstrating the medication and how it works. Users can be presented with an analog of the human body and see how its health is affected by the medicine you present. VR in pharma marketing convinces people much stronger than any possible wording on your next sales slide. Pros and Cons of Virtual Reality in Healthcare VR technology isn’t for everyone. Unfortunately, it is not a cure-all for every disease, and its possibilities are limited. The implementation of VR may be costly and take some time. The VR hardware glasses range from 60$ (Google Daydream View) to $1,500 (HTC Vive Pro Eye Full Kit). Also, these kits are fragile and need to be maintained regularly. You may need additional software that fulfills your business needs. At this point, there’s a need to find an appropriate team of developers who can create a unique application for healthcare based on virtual engines like Unity or Unreal Engine. Some people may feel nausea, similar to motion sickness, as their vestibular apparatus did not adapt to the new environment. Getting used to VR may take some time or several sessions. The main problem is that VR is a young technology, and its use standards and policies are still being determined. It is getting less severe with every technology update — the better software and hardware, the fewer people feel the discomfort. Despite VR providing the best immersive experience, it is still not a panacea for education. A virtual environment works perfectly for describing information or engaging in new activities. However, it can not provide 100% immersion as it does not give a user proper hand control. For example, it can simulate surgery and let you go through every aspect of the operation. Still, it cannot give the feeling of a scalpel in hand, living tissue, and other nuances that are possible only in the real world. Nevertheless, the benefits of virtual reality in healthcare are much more significant and valuable to those whom it helps to stop struggling. As we listed above, from educational and training purposes to unique therapeutic experiences and rehabilitation, the future of virtual reality in healthcare is quite promising. See and feel for yourself: once you get your headset, there are thousands of medical applications of virtual reality which do not require a doctor’s prescription. Instead, these applications promise better health and wellness for specific conditions. For example, Embodied Labs, a company specializing in immersive educational technology, created an educational app for caretakers. This app holds several training sessions that address the issues of hearing loss, eyesight, and dementia. The healthcare market is growing, and the pharmaceutical sector will be constantly updated with new VR ideas and solutions, improving medical education and patients’ procedures of treatment. If you still have any questions about VR technology or want pharmaceuticalexpertise, do not hesitate to contact us. Our experts will provide you with full consultation.
