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How Pharma Growth Strategy Now Extends Beyond Human Intelligence

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That the drug Industry’s growth strategy now extends beyond human intelligence, across the value chain, are being vindicated by several reports, around the world since several years. Illustratively, on September 1, 2019, Novartis and Microsoft announced a multiyear alliance which will leverage data & Artificial Intelligence (AI) to transform how medicines are discovered, developed and commercialized.

The trend is going north and fast. For example, on November 28, 2023 another such report highlighted yet another interesting initiative. It reported that to advance – mind boggling generative AI and foundation models. These extend the technology’s use beyond language models, for which Boehringer Ingelheim collaborates with IBM to accelerate its pace of creation of new therapeutics.

There isn’t an iota of doubt now that AI is rapidly transforming the pharmaceutical industry, including the way companies market their products. The technology is being used in a variety of ways to improve marketing effectiveness, reach new audiences, and personalize patient interactions, among many others.

I wrote about the need to leverage AI in pharma marketing on July 26, 2021. However, in today’s article, I shall focus on the criticality of investment in collaborative partnership in the AI space including generative AI, to acquire a cutting edge in the business process, for performance excellence. Let me start with some specific areas of relevance of using AI in pharma marketing space:

Examples of the relevance of using AI in pharmaceutical marketing:

  • Personalized drug recommendations: AI can be used to analyze patient data and recommend the most appropriate drug treatments for each individual patient. This can help to improve patient outcomes and reduce the risk of adverse drug events.
  • Patient education and support: AI can be used to provide patients with personalized education and support materials. This can help patients to better understand their conditions and make informed decisions about their treatment options. 
  • Real-time feedback and insights: AI can be used to collect and analyze real-time feedback from patients. This feedback can be used to improve the effectiveness of marketing campaigns and develop new products and services.

Several years ago, on October 31, 2016, I wrote in this blog on the relevance of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in creative pharma marketing. Interestingly, today it appears that many pharmaceutical companies are fast realizing that AI is rapidly transforming the drug industry, in its entire value chain. Now from its relevance let me dwell on the examples of specific areas where the pharma companies have started leveraging AI in their marketing processes.

Several areas where pharma companies are using AI in marketing:

  • Improving marketing effectiveness with targeted advertising and audience segmentation: AI algorithms can analyze vast amounts of data to identify the most effective channels and messaging for specific patient populations. This allows pharma companies to reach the right people with the right message at the right time, maximizing the impact of their marketing campaigns. 
  • Reaching new audiences: AI can help pharma companies to identify and reach new patient populations that may not have been accessible through traditional marketing channels. This can be especially helpful for reaching patients with rare diseases or who live in remote areas. 
  • Patient journey mapping and engagement: AI can be used to track patient interactions with a company’s brand, from initial awareness to post-purchase behavior. This data can be used to create personalized patient journeys, providing the right information and support at each stage of the healthcare process.
  • Chatbots and virtual assistants: AI-powered chatbots can provide 24/7 customer support, answering patient questions and addressing concerns. Virtual assistants can also help patients manage their medications, schedule appointments, and track their health data. 
  • Personalized patient interactions: AI can help pharma companies to create personalized patient experiences that are tailored to the individual needs and preferences of each patient. This can lead to improved patient satisfaction and adherence to treatment plans. 
  • Predictive analytics and market forecasting: AI can analyze historical data and current trends to predict future market demand for specific products or therapies. This information can help pharma companies make informed decisions about product development, marketing strategies, and resource allocation. 
  • Targeted drug discovery and development: AI is being used to accelerate the drug discovery and development process by identifying potential drug candidates, predicting clinical trial outcomes, and optimizing the design of new therapies. 

These point out, with the use of AI in pharmaceutical marketing, drug players can reap a rich harvest of several important benefits. Now, let me illustrate this point with some of both global and local examples of companies in this area, from available reports.

Global examples of how pharma companies are using AI in marketing:

As reported:

  • Novartis is using AI to personalize patient interactions and improve adherence to treatment plans. 
  • Pfizer is using AI to develop targeted advertising campaigns that reach the right patients with the right message.
  • Merck is using AI to identify new drug targets and accelerate the drug discovery process.
  • AstraZeneca is using AI to improve patient safety and reduce adverse drug events.

It is also gathering momentum within Indian healthcare industry:

As AI technology advances across the globe, we can expect to see more and more innovative applications of AI within different areas of the Indian healthcare industry, including pharma marketing. Encouragingly, several organization specific initiatives are now being reported on the use of even generative AI in the healthcare space. These include, as reported:

1.  Targeted advertising and audience segmentation in India: 

  • Sun Pharma is using AI to target its marketing campaigns to specific patient populations based on their demographics, medical history, and online behavior. This has helped the company to increase the reach and effectiveness of its marketing campaigns. For example, in 2023, Sun Pharma partnered with an AI startup to develop a new algorithm that can identify potential patients for its diabetes medication Lipaglyn. The algorithm uses data from patient electronic health records, social media, and wearable devices to create a profile of each patient. This information is then used to target Lipaglyn ads to patients who are most likely to benefit from the medication.
  • Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories is using AI to segment its patient audience based on their risk of developing certain diseases. This information is then used to develop targeted marketing campaigns that promote the company’s preventive healthcare products. Illustratively, in 2023, Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories launched a new marketing campaign for its cholesterol medication Ezetimibe. The campaign uses AI to target ads to patients who are at risk of developing heart disease. The AI algorithm uses data from patient demographics, medical history, and lifestyle factors to identify patients who are at high risk.

 2. Patient journey mapping and engagement:

  • Apollo Hospitals is using AI to track patient interactions with its brand and create personalized patient journeys. This includes providing patients with relevant information and support at each stage of their healthcare journey, from diagnosis to treatment to follow-up care. Even in In 2023, Apollo Hospitals launched a new patient engagement platform that uses AI to provide patients with personalized information and support throughout their healthcare journey. The platform includes a chatbot that can answer patient questions, a virtual assistant that can help patients schedule appointments, and a personalized health dashboard that tracks patient progress.  
  • Fortis Healthcare is using AI to develop chatbots that can answer patient questions and provide 24/7 customer support. This has helped the company to improve patient satisfaction and reduce call center costs. As reported, Fortis Healthcare’s 2023 AI initiatives demonstrate their commitment to leveraging technology for better patient care, efficient operations, and improved healthcare experience. By integrating AI across various departments and functions, they are paving the way for a more intelligent and personalized future of healthcare in India. 

4. Predictive analytics and market forecasting:

  • Cipla is using AI to predict future market demand for its products. This information is then used to optimize the company’s supply chain and production processes.
  • Lupin is using AI to forecast the potential success of new drug candidates in clinical trials. This information is then used to make informed decisions about which drugs to invest in further development.

5.  Drug discovery and development: 

  • Glenmark Pharmaceuticals is using AI to identify potential drug targets and design new therapies. This has helped the company to accelerate the drug discovery and development process.
  • Syngene International is a contract research organization (CRO) that uses AI to analyze preclinical data and predict clinical trial outcomes. This information is then used to help pharmaceutical companies make informed decisions about their clinical trial programs.

Conclusion:

Despite a plethora of pathbreaking and business performance enhancement opportunities that advanced application of AI offers, there are also some key challenges, which need to be effectively addressed by engaging with the Indian policy makers and the regulators. These areas include:

  • Data privacy: Pharma companies need to be careful to protect patient data when using AI. This includes obtaining patient consent for data collection and using anonymized data whenever possible.
  • Transparency: Pharma companies need to be transparent about how they are using AI in their marketing campaigns. This will help to build trust with patients and regulators.
  • Regulatory compliance: Pharma companies need to ensure that their use of AI complies with all applicable laws and regulations.

That said, regardless of these challenges – as I wrote on July 15, 2019, about the potential of disruptive impact of AI in Indian pharma marketing – such initiatives are fast gaining momentum.

Which is why, more often, an organizational growth strategy has now the scope to germinate beyond the human intelligence of marketers. In this scenario, I reckon, those pharma companies who will be capable enough to overcome these challenges, whatever it takes, to get the best of rapidly advancing technology of AI – will be better positioned to excel in the future.  

By: Tapan J. Ray

Disclaimer: The views/opinions expressed in this article are entirely my own, written in my individual and personal capacity. I do not represent any other person or organization for this opinion.

With Changing Customer Behavior Pharma To Leverage AI For Better Engagement

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More than 55 million doses of Coronavirus vaccines were administered in India, reportedly, at the beginning of the last week of March 2021, in what is the world’s biggest inoculation drive. Notably, amid this mega initiative, the news media simultaneously reported that ‘India is facing a second wave of coronavirus because it let its guard down too soon.’ I also reiterated in my article of November 16, 2020 that in the thick of ‘Covid Vaccine Challenges – Abidance To Defined Health Norms Stays As Lifeguard.’

From the pharmaceutical industry perspective – as I had written on July 06, 2020, in the midst of this pandemic, there appears to be a break in the clouds that pharma should effectively leverage. There isn’t an iota of doubt that Covid pandemic, for-all-practical-purposes, has propelled healthcare into a virtual world, primarily for survival of business, maintaining the continuity.

Most pharma players, especially in the sales and marketing domain, either were not or, were using e-marketing, in a selective way, as a key strategic tool in their brand prescription generation process. The pace of this shift in the digital space is now getting accelerated to more than neutralize the long-term impact of unprecedented business disruptions that overwhelmed the industry, last year.

Interestingly, a large number of pharma marketers weren’t focusing much beyond syndicated retail and prescription audit data, in the old normal. Whereas, to make digital strategies work effectively during rapidly changing customer behavior and business environment, ‘customer centricity’ is no longer an option today. It’s rather a key business success factor for effective customer engagement, in the prevailing environment. Thus, unlocking the ‘Herculean Power’ of targeted data of many types and genre, is a pre-requisite for acquiring deep insight in this area, while moving in this direction.

Alongside, comes the need to unleash the power of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to ensure pinpoint accuracy in targeted strategy formulation for the same. Well before Covid struck, I wrote on April 01, 2019 – ‘A New Pharma Marketing Combo That Places Patients At The Center of Business,’ flagging a slowly emerging need. Covid, unexpectedly, has provided a strong tailwind to it, increasing its urgency manifold in the new normal.

Consequently, pharma marketers should have, at least, a working knowledge in this area – such as ‘machine learning’ and other analytics-based processes of AI that can help them enormously. In this article I shall discuss, why it is so important for today’s astute pharma marketers to hone their knowledge in this area for making a strategic shift towards ‘real-life’ Patient-Centricity. No wonder, why top pharma leaders now consider this transformation so critical for pharma strategy formulators, to acquire a cutting-edge in the digital marketing warfare.

Patient needs aren’t really at the center of a business strategy, today:

Despite so much hype on patient-centricity – in a true sense, patient-expressed needs aren’t generally placed at the center of a business strategy, as on date, unlike most non-pharma companies. That pharma players, by and large, don’t have a robust online feedback mechanism in place to capture ‘patient-experience’ with medications – directly from patients, vindicates the point.

As I reiterated in my article of March 21, 2021: ‘Measuring patient-experience has always been an integral part, virtually of all types of sales and marketing using digital platforms. We experience it almost every day, such as, while buying a product through Amazon, buying grocery items through D-Mart, scheduling a doctor appointment through Practo, buying medicines through PharmEasy, or even for availing a service through Urban Company.’

Thus, patient-experience, in their own words, with prescribed medications, is generally expressed to the physician, if at all. The process, generally, doesn’t get extended to drug companies’ strategy formulators for taking a patient-centric amendment, wherever needed.

However, assuming that doctors would convey the same to concerned medical representatives, it becomes a third hand (patient-doctor-Rep-Company) feedback, with commensurate distortions in each verbal transfer of communications. The outcome of this strategic gap has been captured in several research studies.

Outcomes of absence of online direct ‘patient experience’ feedback system:

Let me elaborate this point by quoting an example from a contemporary research in this area. This study was conducted by DrugsDisclosed.com in August 2020 with a total of 3,346 patients all taking medicine on a daily basis – aged between 18 and 80. The key findings are as follows:

  • 72% of patients feel ignored by pharma companies.
  • 76% don’t trust advice from them.
  • 81% feel that drug players influence prescribing decisions.
  • 63% would like to give product feedback to directly to companies.
  • 69% find their medication effective.
  • 81% feel their medication is needed.
  • 77% feel confident with their medication.
  • 82% don’t feel bothered by side effects from their medicine.
  • 73% take the medicine as agreed with their doctor.
  • 74% feel that the benefits of their medication outweigh the disadvantages.

The study concluded – the above insights show the need for patients’ voices to be heard by the pharma companies. If medicines are to solve health problems for billions of people who need them, listening to real-life patient-experience with medication, is the key to unshackle the full potential of the world’s health systems. Thus, pharma companies need to directly listen to what patients experience and express with their medicines. It will help them earn customer-trust and greatness in business, while gaining new and important insights for performance excellence.

I hasten to add, although, this study was conducted among patients residing in the UK, Ireland and Denmark, the core issue, even in India, is unlikely to be much different from what appears above. This genre of pharma marketing approach would warrant extensive use of AI, much more in the coming days – than ever before.

The above genre of pharma marketing calls for extensive use of AI:

The above genre of pharma marketing calls for extensive use of AI, much more in the coming days than ever before. For example, as new generations of Covid vaccines will come – with some without the use of needles, like a nasal drop, machine learning tools may be necessary for pinpoint accuracy in market segmentation. I reckon, there will be many such areas, where those companies who would use AI to orchestrate a cohesive customer experience, will drive stronger differentiation, better customer access and higher sales impact.

In that process, creating opportunities and empowerment for deserving marketers to reap the benefits of AI based digital tools and systems, such as machine learning with human integration within sales and marketing, will be the need of the hour. Gaining actionable insights from this endeavor, marketers need to go whole hog to unleashing the power and value of AI for achieving business excellence. I wrote about it, even during pre-Covid days – on July 15, 2019. But, this approach has assumed much greater importance in the new normal, when innovative e-marketing is gaining momentum to gain a competitive edge. However, this would require more investment in AI than what it is today.

The process has accelerated during the Covid pandemic:

This has come out clearly in the results of McKinsey Global Survey 2020 on AI. The paper is titled – ‘The state of AI in 2020’ and was published on November 17, 2020. The findings of the study ‘suggest that organizations are using AI as a tool for generating value. Increasingly, that value is coming in the form of revenues.’

Although, the number of these companies is small, they are planning ‘to invest even more in AI in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and its acceleration of all things digital.’ The paper emphasizes that this could create a wider divide between AI leaders and the majority of companies who are still struggling to capitalize on the technology.

Pharma’s increasing use of AI during the pandemic:

The above trend gets reflected in the ‘AI In Pharma Global Market Report 2021: Covid-19 Growth And Change.’ The report underscores, the global AI in pharma market is expected to grow from $0.91 billion in 2020 to $5.94 billion in 2025 at a CAGR of 47%. The initial spurt in growth was mainly due to companies resuming their operations and adapting to the new normal while recovering from the COVID-19 impact, the report underscores.

Although, the number of pharma entrants in this space isn’t yet very many, major players includePfizer, Novartis, IBM Watson, Merck, AstraZeneca and Bayer. Gradually, some Indian drug companies are also testing water in this area, as discussed in the article – ‘The Increasing Use Of AI In The Pharmaceutical Industry,’ published by Forbes on December 26, 2020.

Conclusion:

“Patient-Centricity” emerging as a hallmark, fueled by rapidly changing expectations and behavior of pharma customers, especially doctors and patients. To be effective with such changes in market dynamics – capturing ‘patient experience’ with medication – directly from them – to the respective companies online, is a necessity today.

Most other industries involved in digital marketing are already doing so. Pharma companies while embracing e-marketing can’t just wish it away, any longer. Today, when digital marketing has commenced in the pharma industry, with accelerated speed – machine learning alongside the creative application of AI powered analytics, can immensely help gaining actionable insights on customers. These include customer experience, their perception and pattern of usage of brands, besides channel preferences, preferred contents for effective engagement.

Thus, the consequences of not directly listening to patients’ voice on structured digital platforms – supported by analytics, can be ignored at pharma marketer’s own peril. Many of them may not yet be able to fathom the depth of its potential, opportunities and possible roadblocks, or simply unable to figure out where to begin with and – how. Experts’ hand-holding will be pivotal for them in the transition phase of this endeavor. From this perspective, I reckon, to keep pace with fast-changing customer behavior, pharma marketers need directly listen to patients’ voice online. And based on which, develop customized strategies by leveraging AI – for more productive engagement with them.

By: Tapan J. Ray   

Disclaimer: The views/opinions expressed in this article are entirely my own, written in my individual and personal capacity. I do not represent any other person or organization for this opinion.

Fostering EQ For Pharma’s Excellence In The New Normal

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On February 25, 2021, one of the top Indian business daily flashed a headline – “It will be working from home, post-pandemic too at many top companies.” It wrote, companies like, Tata Steel, Philips, Infosys and Maruti Suzuki are evaluating job roles to permanently enable employees working from home, or remotely – even after the pandemic. This is just one example, out of many unique outcomes of last year’s disruptive business turbulence, causing a potential mental or emotional impact on many employees.

Virtually across industries, many such significant changes have taken place in several facets of businesses including traditional operational processes. As has been widely witnessed, many desk-bound office jobs – temporarily, partly or fully – shifted to remote working – almost overnight, as it were. Such a shift is being contemplated in several work-areas by a number of drug companies, as well.

For understandable reasons, another concurrent and instant demand surfaced for a critical hard skill – involving applications digital tools and platforms. This was mostly to ensure that key business communications and customer engagements, at least, keep ticking during the crisis, despite unprecedented initial headwinds.

However, sans a catalytic soft skill that helps address several current-environment specific several organizational needs, even applications of digital skills are unlikely to be able to leverage the full potential of digitalization. While navigating through today’s uncharted frontiers, where there are no footsteps to follow, the organization will need flexibility and resilience among leadership, ensuring employee adaptability to change, and creating a new climate of fostering creativity with digital technology.

Interestingly, this soft skill – ‘Emotional Intelligence’ – often referred as ‘Emotional Quotient’ or EQ, wasn’t discussed, as much, for various reasons. In this article, I shall deliberate, why this much-known soft skill is indispensable for business excellence in the new normal – from the pharma industry perspective.

EI/EQ in business isn’t a new idea, but more important now than ever before:

Peter Salovey and John D. Mayer coined the term ‘Emotional Intelligence (EI)’ in 1990 describing it as “a form of social intelligence that involves the ability to monitor one’s own and others’ feelings and emotions, to discriminate among them, and to use this information to guide one’s thinking and action”.

In 1995, Daniel Goleman in his book ‘Emotional Intelligence’ defined EI as the ability to:

  • Recognize, understand and manage our own emotions and,
  • Recognize, understand and influence the emotions of others.

In other words, ‘this means being aware that emotions can drive our behavior and impact people (positively and negatively) and learning how to manage those emotions – both our own and others.’The ability to manage emotions is measured through Emotional Quotient (EQ).

EQ – a cutting edge of excellence, especially in the new normal:

Much before the pandemic, in 2018, McKinsey & Company had projected that between 2016 and 2030, demand for people with high EQ would grow across all industries. Again, in May 2021, the Company reiterated: ‘To meet this challenge, companies should craft a talent strategy that develops employees’ critical digital and cognitive capabilities, their social and emotional skills, and their adaptability and resilience.’

However, with unprecedented changes in pharma business dynamics, the process has been further accelerated. EQ is now expected to be a cutting edge for performance excellence – in any organization. Hence, digital savviness may not be just enough in the new order for organizational turnaround aspirants. Sans people with high EQ, among both – the leadership and staff members, digital transformation alone may not be enough for commercial success.

Long ago, Daniel Goleman epitomized it in his article - ‘What Makes a Leader?’ This was published in the Harvard Business Review (HBR) in January 2004, where he wrote: ‘IQ and technical skills are important, but emotional intelligence is the sine qua non of leadership.’ This old advice assumes even greater importance, in the new normal. 

With emotions prevailing in workplaces, high EQ improves performance:

COVID pandemic has demonstrated to all, including highly tradition bound and slow to change – the pharma industry that the name of the game of survival, particularly when a crisis strikes as a bolt from blue, is quickly adapting to changes. A time came as ‘national lockdown’ started – when a sense of losing control and confusion, virtually engulfed the work environment, which is so necessary for livelihood. A key example of these changes include, a sudden shift from remote working, related to remaining engaged with customers.

Alongside, home life and work life got merged for many. New ways of remaining in touch with customers, sometimes gave rise to a sense of seclusion or alienation, causing mental or emotional stress. Many employees’ keen desire and expectation of the return of the old normal – in the same form, are causing more emotional complications with them.

A study by EQ training provider TalentSmart also found that emotional intelligence is responsible for 58% of one’s job performance. Thus, any pharma company’s ability to be in sync with all employees, at the emotional level, is one the key requirements to boost performance. It will determine the effectiveness of digital tools given to employees to deliver the deliverables. Further, as other studies established, ‘the ability to connect with people on an emotional level – is crucial to maintaining strong and resilient teams.’

Some telltale signs of low EQ in an organization:

Some common telltale signs of low EQ in an organization, were well captured in an article with Covid pandemic in the backdrop. This was published in Inside HR on September 01, 2020. The manifestations of low EQ include, when employees:

  • Don’t want to take responsibility for their own feelings, but blame others for those,
  • Let things build up and then blow up,
  • Often overreact to life’s minor events while struggling to remain in emotional control.
  • Lack empathy and compassion,
  • Tend not to consider others’ feelings before acting,
  • Lack self-awareness of their own emotions and the emotions of others around them.

Such signals, if not addressed promptly, can lead to a number of adverse business outcomes. Especially when, quick adaptation to fundamental changes in the business environment, business operations and key customer behavior, is the name of the game. People’s EQ in an organization, could often stand between business success and failure – in the new normal, more than ever before.

Conclusion:

As pharma industry has started navigating through the new normal with wide-scale application of digital technology, employees also need to keep pace with these changes, and come on board. In such a ‘never before’ situation, emotional needs of both internal and external customers are to be properly understood, and effectively addressed, just as the need for digitalization within the organization.

Notably, low or high EQ are not genetic, neither are these pre-implanted in the brain by God. EQ comes as one learns through ongoing experience in life, and also from the advices of elderly, interaction with peers, superiors and training by professionals. This is a lifelong process of learning, which is continuously honed through practice in real life situations. It’s not bizarre, at all, if EQ of an individual has changed before, during and after the pandemic. What really matters is fathoming, how is the employee EQ today, monitor it continuously, and help the individual as and when required – to help the organization.

Several studies have established high employee EQ as a stronger predictor of success, that helps strengthen hard skills like digitalization by helping to think more creatively while using the tech tools and platforms. Thus, amid unparalleled changes in business operations, customer behavior and the need for quick adaptation to digital technology, fostering employee EQ to encourage them committing to the corporate shared goal, is an imperative for pharma’s performance excellence - more than ever before.

By: Tapan J. Ray      

Disclaimer: The views/opinions expressed in this article are entirely my own, written in my individual and personal capacity. I do not represent any other person or organization for this opinion.

 

Pharma: ‘Digitalization’ Not A Panacea – A Basic Step For Giant Leaps

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The hype of ‘Digitalization’ in the pharma industry, virtually as a panacea, is palpable all around. It gives many a feel, directly or indirectly, that this one-time, resource-intensive, disruptive transformation would reap a rich harvest for a long time. In some way, good or bad, the sense of urgency underlying the hype, could possibly be akin to Y2K, that one witnessed before the turn of the new millennium.

Notwithstanding the current ballyhoo, the process of digitization in several Indian pharma companies began since quite some time and is now gathering wind in its wings. Several studies vindicating this point, were reported by the Indian media, as well. One such report of October 31, 2016 highlighted – even around 2013, a number of Indian drug players commenced adopting digitization. They mostly began with the use of modern technology for scientific detailing to doctors, often using algorithms for better insights into issues, like patient compliance. A similar trend was seen also in China, the report added.

Be that as it may, this article will explore whether or not ‘Digitalization’ is a panacea for all pharma business hurdles. Or, it is the backbone to build and maintain a patient-centric organization, with need-based subsequent giant technological leaps, for game changing sustainable outcomes. For better clarity of all, I shall dwell on this concept with AI as the next disruptive step, as it would play an increasingly critical role to be in sync with the customers of the fast-growing digital world.

Digitization is the bedrock to move forward with newer technologies:

That digitization is the backbone of AI adoption was brought out in the May 2019 paper by McKinsey Global Institute - titled, ‘Twenty-five years of digitization: Ten insights into how to play it right.’ It articulated, leveraging, and transitioning from, digital to new frontier technologies is an imperative, as several new frontier technologies are opening up, such as AI.  It also spotlighted that early digitization is the foundation of AI deployment.

Elaborating the point further, the article wrote: ‘70 percent of companies that generate 50 percent of their sales through digitization are already investing in one AI domain. The evidence suggests that incumbents that have adopted AI early and are savvy about deploying these technologies have experienced strong profit growth. In effect AI is a new, higher- performance type of digital technology that may boost the ability of firms to accelerate their digital performance.’

No doubt, several hundred AI use cases would provide evidence of widespread benefits to operations and profitability for AI adoption. However, from the drug industry perspective, the possible dilemmas that will be important to understand, what factors are prompting faster adoption of AI in pharma. Besides, how to make out – what type of use of AI is likely to be most effective for an organization.

Regardless of the dilemma, the AI buzz is gaining momentum:

The fervor around AI is now peaking up, more than ever before. Regardless of the general dilemma – ‘what type of use of AI is likely to be most effective for an organization.,’ several companies are working on AI application in various areas. In sales and marketing domain, these include, improving customer interactions, maximizing product launches, understanding patient insights. This was also corroborated in an article, published by ZS on July 24, 2019.

Why is the AI buzz increasing in pharma?

The above paper identifies 3 broad elements for rapid increase of AI buzz in the pharma industry, which I am paraphrasing as follows:

  • Data requirement for any meaningful business decision-making process has exploded, facilitated by increasing use of internet- based digital platforms.
  • With the increasing digitization of virtually anything in everyday life, paper-based processes are fast disappearing.
  • Realization of game changing impact of new AI algorithms with high degree of precision, on business.

As AI-based interventions are making a radical impact on everyday life, most pharma and biotech players are progressively getting convinced that it will eventually transform many critical areas of the business, despite a slow start.

AI can deliver much more than ever before, across pharma domains: 

AI has a great potential to meet critical requirements of almost all domains of the drug industry. For example: AI may be used to help a medical representative get top insights for his particular day’s or a week’s or a month’s call with doctors by sifting through all his daily reports for that period. Some companies are already moving into this direction. For example, Novartis, reportedly, has equipped sales representatives ‘with an AI service that suggests doctors to visit and subjects to talk up during their meetings.’

Similar AI-based cognitive insights may be obtained from the patient-collected data in the apps or other digital tools. Deep understanding of the process of thinking of important doctors and patients, would facilitate developing customized content for engagement with them, and thereby help achieve well-defined goals with precision.

There are instances of significant success with the use of AI in R&D, clinical trials, many areas of sales and marketing, including supply chains. Nevertheless, the general concern of sharing confidential patient information, often limits access to requisite data for use in AI solutions. Appropriate regulations are expected to address this apprehension, soon.

Big Pharma players are already in it:

The paper – ‘Artificial Intelligence in Life Sciences: The Formula for Pharma Success Across the Drug Lifecycle,’ published on December 05, 2018 by L.E.K Consulting, discussed this point in detail. It says, ‘each of the major pharma players is investing in the technology at some level.’

For example, pharma and biotech majors, such as Novartis, Roche, Pfizer, Merck, AstraZeneca, GlaxoSmithKline, Sanofi, AbbVie, Bristol-Myers Squibb and Johnson & Johnson, are either collaborating or acquired AI technologies to acquire a cutting-edge in business.

The paper also reiterates, developments in AI applications are occurring across the spectrum of pharma business, from target discovery to post-approval activities to automate processes, generate insights from large-scale data and support stakeholder engagement. Let me illustrate this point with an example below.

Example of use of AI for better patient compliance, improving sales and profit:

As highlighted in my article, published in this blog on May 20, 2019, effective use of AI for better patient compliance, can help improve concerned company’s both top and bottom lines. I mentioned there: ‘According to November 16, 2016 report, published by Capgemini and HealthPrize Technologies, globally, annual pharmaceutical revenue losses had increased from USD 564 billion in 2012 to USD 637 billion due to non-adherence to medications for chronic conditions. This works out to 59 percent of the USD 1.1 trillion in total global pharmaceutical revenue in 2015.’

Several reports vindicate that drug companies are making phenomenal progress in this area. Let me cite an example of achieving huge success to improve treatment adherence of patients during clinical trials. The September 26, 2016  Press Release of AiCure, an AI company that visually confirms medication ingestion on smartphones, announced that use of AiCure AI platform demonstrated 90 percent medication adherence in patients with schizophrenia, participating in Phase 2 of the AbbVie study.

Opportunity to make more effective drugs faster and at reduced cost:

Besides, drug discovery, clinical trials, patient monitoring, compliance monitoring – AI applications have been developed for marketing optimization, as well. As AI technology spreads its wings with a snowballing effect, taking a quantum leap in organizational effectiveness, productivity and outcomes will be a reality for many. Moreover, AI now offers a never before opportunity of making novel, more effective and safer drugs, faster and at much reduced cost.

Thus, I reckon, AI-based technology would be a basic requirement of the drug industry for effective operation with desirable business outcomes, in less than a decade. Its slow start as compared to many other industries, notwithstanding. Further, the pharma industry’s endeavor for a swift digital transformation – the backbone of AI adoption, as captured in recent surveys, also vindicates this belief. Other business realities are also generating a strong tailwind for this process.

Pharma’s swift digital transformation to create a solid base for AI:

The ‘White Paper’, titled ‘Use of Artificial Intelligence and Advanced Analytics in pharmaceuticals’ by FICCI captured this scenario quite well. It pointed out, two seismic shifts in the pharma business, namely, – reducing prices and demonstrating greater value from their therapies, along with a swing from treatment to prevention, diagnostics and cure – are prompting the industry for a holistic transformation of business.

Which is why, pharma players are exhibiting greater intent for ‘Digitalization’ of business, paving the way for quick adoption of different modern technologies, such as AI and advanced analytics. This fundamental shift will not only improve efficiencies and reduce costs, but also significantly help adapting to more patient centric business models. Yet, post digital transformation the key question that still remains to be addressed – how does an organization identify and focus on the right areas or ‘good problems’ for AI intervention, fetching game changing outcomes, on an ongoing basis.

Conclusion:

There could be many approaches to address this situation. However, according to ZS, building the capability and the muscle first for AI, and then looking for the problems, may not be a great idea. This could make a company, even post ‘Digitalization’, flounder with the right applications of AI technology. Thus, while venturing into AI intervention for watershed outcomes, the top priority of an organization will be to resolve this dilemma for precise identification of the right problems.

These areas may even include crucial bottlenecks in the business process, AI interventions for which, would lead to not just incremental benefits, but cutting-edge value creation, for a giant leap in an all-round performance. The name of the game is to start selectively with the right problems, evaluate the upshots of AI use, before scaling up and adding new areas. Ongoing value creation of such nature can’t be achieved just by one-time digital transformation, sans imbibing other disruptive technologies, proactively.

This, in my view, has to happen and is practically unavoidable, primarily driven by two key factors, as below:

The first one was the focal point of the ‘2018 Digital Savvy HCP Survey Report of Indegene.’ It found, the highest jump of digital adoption by healthcare practitioners (HCPs) was seen in 2018, compared to its similar surveys done from 2015 to 2017, signaling physicians’ fast-growing digital preference, as we move on.

The second one comes from an important ‘consumer behavioral perspective.’ and is specially in India. According to a report by the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) – with 451 million monthly active internet users at the end of financial year 2019, India is now second only to China in terms of internet users. More, importantly, the digital savvy customers are also using other disruptive technologies, mostly smartphone based.

Thus, disruptive digital transformation in pharma domains, including sales and marketing, is a necessary basic step. It will help companies being all-time ready to imbibe other leading-edge technologies, such as AI, for giant leaps to higher growth trajectories.

By: Tapan J. Ray

Disclaimer: The views/opinions expressed in this article are entirely my own, written in my individual and personal capacity. I do not represent any other person or organization for this opinion.

 

 

Pharma ‘Chatbots’: For Better Stakeholder Engagement

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The critical value of meaningful interaction and engagement with individual customers – responding to their specific needs, is fast drawing attention of many businesses, for sustainable performance excellence. The same is happening in the pharma industry, as well. Creative use of this process leveraging modern technological support systems, would also provide a unique scope of cutting-edge brand service differentiation, in well researched areas.

That, it is a very important focus area for the pharma players, is no-brainer. Nonetheless, what really matters most is the novelty in strategizing such interactions and engagements, especially with patients and doctors. I also wrote about it in my article, titled ‘Indian Pharma To Stay Ahead of Technology Curve,’ published in this blog on May 22, 2017. Over two years ago, I clearly indicated there that application of AI via digital tools, called ‘Chatbots’ – the shorter form of ‘Chat Robot’, is one of the ways that pharma may wish to explore this area.

Illustrating this point in that article, I mentioned that on March 05, 2017, a leading bank in India announced the launch of an AI-driven Chatbot named Eva, coined from the words Electronic Virtual Assistant (EVA), to add more value to their services for greater customer satisfaction. ‘According to reports, Eva is India’s first AI driven banking Chatbot that can answer millions of customer queries on its own, across multiple channels, immediately.’

In this article, I shall dwell on this interesting area, with a primary focus on pharma sales and marketing, and assess the progress made in this space, thus far, by several drug companies, including some Indian players. Let me start by recapitulating the basic function and purpose of ‘Chatbots’ in pharma.

Pharma ‘Chatbots’ – the function and purpose:

Simply speaking, pharma ‘Chatbots’ are also AI-powered, fully automated virtual assistants. Its basic function is to mimic one-to-one human conversation on particular areas, as desired by the user. Likewise, its basic purpose is to genuinely help and assist the customers who are in search of right answers to specific disease related questions, in a one-to-one conversational format, having a higher source-credibility.

In that process, ‘Chatbots’ can effectively satisfy the patients and doctors by providing them the required information, immediately. In tandem, pharma companies also reap a rich harvest, by developing not just a trust-based healthy relationship with them, but also in building a robust corporate brand – creating a long-term goodwill that competition would possibly envy.  

Effective customer satisfaction is an area that can’t be ignored:

In the digital age, a new type of general need is all pervasive, with its demand shooting north. This is the need to satisfy a voracious appetite among a large section of the population for all types of information, with effortless and prompt availability of the required details – as and when these come to one’s mind.

When such information need relates to health concern of a person, such as – available treatment options against affordability, or drug price comparisons – factoring in effectiveness, safety concern – exactly the same thing happens. Most individuals won’t have patience even to write an email and wait for an answer, even the wait is just for a short while.

In the current scenario, it will be interesting to fathom, how would a pharma company, generally, interact or engage with such patients, to further business and creating a possible long-time customer? Some companies have started responding to this need – effectively and efficiently, by providing easy access to information through ‘Chatbots’, created on advances AI platforms. But, such players are a few in number.

Can pharma also think of ‘Chatbots’, like ‘Siri’ or ‘Alexa’?

Today, several people are using standalone and branded Chatbot devices in everyday life, such as, Siri (Apple), Alexa (Amazon), Cortana (Microsoft) or Google Now (Android). Interestingly, many industries, including a few companies in pharma, have also started developing their own version of ‘Chatbot dialog application systems.’

Industry specific ‘Chatbots’ are designed to meet with some specific purpose of human communication, including a variety of customer interaction, information acquisition and engagement – by providing a range of customized services to the target group.’ ‘Siri’ or ‘Alexa’ or the likes, on the other hand, are all-purpose general Chatbots, though, for everyday use of individuals. Thus, the question that comes up, in which areas pharma companies can use Chatbots to add value to their interactions and engagements with patients, in general, and also doctors.

Where to use ‘Chatbots’ as a new pharma marketing channel?

Some of the findings on the application of ‘Chatbots’, especially in pharma sales and marketing, featured in the CMI Media publication in December, 2016. It found that drug companies have a unique scope to leverage this new sales and marketing – channel, by developing ‘Chatbots’ in the company represented therapy areas. Following are just a few most simple illustrations of possible types ‘Chatbots’ for interaction and engagement with patients, which can be designed in interesting ways:

  • That can answer all types of patient questions on specific diseases, educate them about the disease and available treatment options with details.
  • That allows patients or physicians to get all relevant information about the prescription drugs that they require to prescribe for patients to start treatment, including potential side effects, adverse events, tolerability, dosing, efficacy and costs, besides others.
  • Once a treatment option is chosen, a third kind of Chatbot can help with patient adherence to treatment, provide reminders when the treatment should be administered, explain how to properly dose and administer the treatment, and other relevant information.

Chatbots could also be useful for doctors and nurses:

As the above paper finds, ‘Chatbots have value for serving healthcare professionals as well, for example:

  • When, physicians and nurses want to understand the pathogenesis, pathophysiology, and/or progression of a specific disease in their patients.
  • Although, such content may also be available on disease state awareness sites, but branded Chatbots would make that content readily available in more of an FAQ format.
  • When health care professionals would like to get data around safety/toxicity, or information about dosing strengths, calculations, and titrations, while using specific brands.

Chatbots can also be effectively utilized by the drug manufacturer to gain deep insights into customer behavior across all touchpoints, to enhance end-to-end customer experience, as I wrote in this blog on July 02, 2018. The data created through this process, can also be put to strategic use to design unique brand offerings.

Need to chart this frontier with caution:

Pharma, being a highly regulated industry in every country of the world, with a varying degree, though, the ‘Chatbot’ development process should strictly conform to all ‘Dos’ and ‘Don’ts’, as prescribed by the regulators of each country. Each and every content of the ‘Chatbot’ should pass through intense, not just regulatory, but also legal and medical scrutiny. Yet another, critical redline that ‘Chatbots’ should never cross is the ‘privacy’ of any individual involved in the process.

Three critical areas to consider for pharma ‘Chatbots’:

Effective pharma ‘Chatbots’ are expected to get ticks on all three of the following critical boxes:

  • Meeting clearly defined unmet needs of patients in search of a health care solution or most suitable disease treatment options.
  • Brand value offerings should match or be very close to the targeted patients’ and doctors’ expectations.
  • Should facilitate achieving company’s business objectives in a quantifiable manner, directly or indirectly, as was planned in advance.

Pharma has made some progress in this area, even in India:

To facilitate more meaningful and deeper engagements with patients, some drug companies, including, in India, are using ‘Chatbots.’ Here, I shall give just three examples to drive home the point – two from outside India and one from India.

October 23, 2018 issue of the pharma letter reported, a study from DRG Digital Manhattan Research found, ‘Novo Nordisk and Sanofi brands rank best for the digital type 2 diabetes patient experience.’ The article wrote, about some pharma players ‘facilitating deeper engagement through the use of automated tools like Chatbots to triage inquiries and get patients the answers they need faster, and through interactive content like quizzes and questionnaires that pull patients in and help them navigate health decisions,’ as follows:

  • Novo Nordisk‘s diabetes website includes an automated Chat feature dubbed “Ask Sophia,” helping patients access disease and condition management information more quickly.
  • Likewise, Merck & Co‘s website for Januvia employs interactive quizzes to educate patients and caregivers.

Similarly, on November 23, 2018, a leading Indian business daily came with a headline, ‘Lupin launches first Chatbot for patients to know about their ailments.’ It further elaborated, the Chatbot named ‘ANYA’, is designed to provide medically verified information for health-related queries. The disease awareness bot aims to answer patient queries related to ailments,’ the report highlighted.

Chatbots – global market outlook:

According to the report, titled ‘Healthcare Chatbots – Global Market Outlook (2017-2026),’the Global Healthcare Chat bots market accounted for USD 97.46 million in 2017 and is expected to reach USD 618.54 million by 2026 growing at a CAGR of 22.8 percent.

The increasing demand for Chatbot ‘virtual health assistance’, is fueled primarily by the following two key growth drivers, the report added:

  • Increasing penetration of high-speed Internet.
  • Rising adoption of smart devices.

Conclusion:

With the steep increase of the usage of the Internet and smart phones, general demand to have greater access to customized information is also showing a sharp ascending trend, over a period of time. A general expectation of individuals is to get such information immediately and in a user-friendly way.

Encouraged by this trend, and after a reasonably thorough information gathering process, mainly from the cyberspace, many patients now want to more actively participate in their treatment decision making process with the doctors. This new development has a great relevance to drug companies, besides other health service providers. They get an opportunity to proactively interact and engage with patients in various innovative ways, responding to individual health needs and requirements, thereby boosting the sales revenue of the corporation.

The unique AI-driven technological platform of pharma ‘Chatbots’, is emerging as cutting-edge tools for more productive stakeholder engagement – so important for achieving business excellence in the digital world. The recent growth trajectory of ‘Chatbots’ in the health care space, vindicates this point.

By: Tapan J. Ray   

Disclaimer: The views/opinions expressed in this article are entirely my own, written in my individual and personal capacity. I do not represent any other person or organization for this opinion.

Disruptive Impact of AI on Pharma Sales And Marketing

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Artificial Intelligence (AI) that refers to the ability of machines to perform cognitive tasks like thinking, perceiving, learning, problem solving and decision making, is poised to disrupt our world. Initially conceived as a technology that could mimic human intelligence, AI has evolved in ways that far exceed its original conception. This was articulated in the June 2018 Discussion Paper, titled ‘National Strategy for Artificial Intelligence’ of NITI Aayog, India.

The paper further highlights: With intelligent machines enabling high-level cognitive processes like thinking, perceiving, learning, problem solving and decision making, coupled with advances in data collection and aggregation, analytics and computer processing power, AI’s capability has dramatically expanded. So is its game-changing utility in a growing number of fields to enhance productivity – dramatically.

I also expressed this need in my article, “Indian Pharma To Stay Ahead of The Technology Curve,” published in this Blog on May 22, 2017. Nevertheless, despite galloping progress of AI, a kind of ‘Ostrich Syndrome’ still prevails in some sections of the industry. This attitude, if continues, may catch many drug companies off-guard, with serious repercussions on business. In this article, I shall focus on the possible impact of AI on pharma business, specifically on pharma sales and marketing, instead of being prescriptive in my deliberation.

A disruptive impact on pharma value-chain:

Currently, only a few drug companies have embraced AI-driven technologies to transform pharma value-chain elements, across functional areas of the organization. However, in the next few years, effective adaptation of AI, in the true sense, will be the key success factors for any player – nurturing a burning desire to succeed, consistently. This was, again, an important conclusion of the 2019 FICCI Report titled, ‘Use of Artificial Intelligence and Advanced Analytics in pharmaceuticals.’

While explaining its rationale, the report emphasizes – catalyzed by an exciting range of new, disruptive technologies a paradigm shift is taking place, challenging the status quo with the traditional pharma business model. AI is in the process of disrupting this status quo, especially in the following two areas:

  • Increasing stakeholder pressure to reduce costs and demonstrate greater value of drugs,
  • Evolving swing from treatment to prevention, and patient-centric treatments.

Prompts a critical need to re-imagine the future:

These inevitable shifts prompt a critical need to re-imagine the future, for each drug manufacturer. However, the good news is, some of them, predominantly the global ones, have started making sizeable investments on AI. On a deeper scrutiny, the FICCI paper finds that applications of AI are mostly taking place in the new drug discovery and the supply chain area.

Besides individual company initiatives in the R&D area, important collaborative arrangements on AI with academia, have also been announced, such as, ‘Machine Learning for Pharmaceutical Discovery and Synthesis Consortium (MLPDS). This is a collaboration between the pharma/ biotech industries and the departments of Chemical Engineering, Chemistry, and Computer Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

MLPDS is expected to facilitate the design of useful software for the automation of small molecule discovery and synthesis. As on July 02, 2019, reportedly, ‘33 Pharma Companies Using Artificial Intelligence in Drug Discovery.’That said,let me hasten to add that some companies are also testing the water, with all seriousness, in pharma sales and marketing functions. So, the AI wave is fast catching up, driving the drug industry to chart uncharted frontiers. In this scenario, would there be any scope of survival for laggards?

Should it happen faster in pharma sales and marketing, as well?

In my view, the answer is an emphatic ‘Yes.’ This is primarily because, the disruptive impact of AI won’t be any less in pharma sales and marketing. It will, therefore, be prudent for these professionals, not just to understand how AI works in their respective functions, but also the ways to effectively use various AI platforms and applications, to transform the traditional processes, fundamentally.

Moreover, when stakeholders, including patients, doctors, hospitals, health insurance companies and even governments, are directly or indirectly using a host of AI-enabled tools and applications for better outcomes, does pharma have any other option?

Areas in which the impact could be transformative:

The recent publication titled, ‘Boosting Pharmaceutical Sales and Marketing with Artificial Intelligence’ of ZS, analyzed this issue quite well. It emphasized, those functions in the drug industry where there exists a significant reliance on human functions, such as expertise and reasoning, the impact of AI can be transformative.

Sales and marketing are two such focus areas, besides other functions. Companies that use AI to orchestrate a cohesive customer experience, will drive stronger differentiation, better customer access and higher sales impact, the report highlighted. Thus, creating specific opportunities and requisite empowerment, are necessary for deserving people, to foster machine learning and human integration in sales and marketing. This, in turn, will help them gain insight into how to unleash the power and value of AI for achieving business excellence.

Some early adopters of AI in sales and marketing:

Recent reports indicate that some global pharma majors have started using AI in sales and marketing. Let me illustrate this point with two examples – Pfizer and Novartis.

In May 2017, Pfizer Australia, reportedly, adopted AI-powered digital analyst tool for sales and marketing decision making.This ‘What-if Simulator’, allows Pfizer to test and optimize a range of scenarios based on internal and external data sets. It helps simulate the impact of sales and marketing strategies, investigate assumptions and hypothesis difficult to test in the real world, and compare the outcome of various what-if scenarios in order to understand what’s contributing to business results. According to Pfizer, ‘the software will also help to understand deterministic and non-deterministic factors presented in its business operations, as well as see how variables within different questions impact one another’.

Another recent media report titled, ‘Novartis puts AI on the job to help reps say the right things to the right doctors,’ appeared in Fierce Pharma on January 09, 2019. It also confirms the keen interest of pharma in this area. Called “virtual assistant,”this application helps salespeople to make sure when they visit a specific doctor that they are talking about exactly what that doctor is absolutely interested in. “When you turn up at the right time with the right things to say, they’re more interested and put more value in it, and our people like the fact that AI is running in the background helping them plan their day,” Novartis official further elaborated.

Accept the dictum – ‘there is always enough room for improvement’:

Following this dictum, is the starting point for pharma marketers to seriously accept AI as a game changer in this industry, regardless of how successful the company is – in doing what they do, following the traditional business models. The core purpose of a drug company is to make sure that patients get what they want, in those disease areas where the company represents.

If a brand strategy is prepared based on research data collected a few months back, there could probably be a flaw in your strategy. This is because any recent offering to patients by a competitor, may have considerably changed what the patients want now. If a strategy is not based on virtually real-time information on what exactly the customers are looking for now, the result could be far from satisfactory.

The elements which are critical in creating ‘great brands,’ were nicely captured in the May 13, 2019 issue of Customer THINK on ‘AI in Digital Marketing.’ It articulated, ‘Great brands will be those that can think creatively, design effectively, and execute flawlessly to deliver seamless experiences woven together by machines and humans.  Using this approach, marketers and their marketing machines will stay gainfully employed.’ Thus, creative application of AI by astute pharma marketers will help achieving this goal.

Will AI ultimately replace pharma sales and marketing people?

This is a lurking fear in the minds of many. A related article appeared in the pharmaphorum on July 02, 2019, also wrote about a similar apprehension. The paper is titled, ‘Will AI make pharma marketers obsolete?’ It said: ‘Artificial intelligence, is sometimes seen as either a panacea or a destroyer – the fix for all humanity’s problems, or the apocalyptic scourge that will turn on us.’

I too reckon, AI can never replace people in pharma sales and marketing operations. This is because, there are two distinct elements in both these functions. One, the creative power of a professional that creates, develops, hones, and executes new ideas, strategies. It even decides how effectively AI can be used. The second element is the technological power behind AI. This can carry out a host of different very important, but routine and repetitive tasks – with a great amount of precision and virtually flawless. As the key sales and marketing professionals will need both, the AI can’t completelyreplace people in these two critical operational areas.

Some uses of AI in sales and marketing:

Eularis, in its ‘Blog, Comment & Insight’ of January 15, 2018, deliberated on this area. Just to give a feel of possible use of AI in different very important, but routine and repetitive tasks – with a great amount of precision, I am summarizing some of those points, as follows:

  • ‘Identification and Mapping’ of’ Key Opinion Leader (and up-and-coming Key Opinion Leader), which is constantly changing. Alongside, it can help scan and analyze all relevant journal articles, coming out each week, besides the same for ongoing clinical trials in the chosen field – flagging how changes and new additions can impact the KOL database.
  • Disease specific patient identification and physician targeting, especially in rare disease areas.
  • Helps identify individual preferences for content, channels and timing of information, that leads to allowing personalization at scale, and ensuring every customer is receiving what they want, when they want, and in the channel they want.
  • Facilitates utilizing the power of big data, AI tools and apps to identify which patients will cease adherence and how this can be addressed, thereby minimizing the loss of business for non-adherence.
  • Helps create custom messaging for sales reps to use for individual physicians based on what that physician needs at that particular moment in time.

Conclusion:

Use of AI-based technology in the pharma industry, basically means automated algorithms with the capability to perform all those tasks that are now being done mostly with heavy dependence on human intelligence. Thus, its possible use spans across almost all functional domains – from drug discovery, clinical development, supply chain and right up to sales and marketing.

Although, it is still challenging to figure out to what extent AI will transform the industry, one gets a strong signal that it is not just another ‘buzz word’ or a new kid on the block. The technology is surely spreading its roots across the health care space, pharma being an integral part of it. Which is why, according to ‘Executive Insight’ (Volume XX, Issue 60) of  L.E.K. Consulting, ‘all of the largest 10 pharmaceutical companies are investing in AI, and developments in applications are occurring across the spectrum of pharma business.’

In fine, to fathom the disruptive impact of AI on pharma business, I shall conclude by quoting from March 18, 2019issue of Healthcare Weekly. After a thorough analysis, the paper acknowledged thatAI is already redefining biotech and pharma. It concluded by stating, ‘ten years from now, pharma will simply look at artificial intelligence as a basic, every day, technology. The only question is how long pharma executive will wait till they jump on the wagon and leverage AI to improve their operational efficiency, outcomes and profits.’

By: Tapan J. Ray   

Disclaimer: The views/opinions expressed in this article are entirely my own, written in my individual and personal capacity. I do not represent any other person or organization for this opinion.

Leveraging Artificial Intelligence For Greater Patient-Centricity

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‘Artificial Intelligence (AI)’ – the science of simulation of intelligent behavior in computers, has the potential to leave a transformational impact on virtually everything that we see and feel around us. As many will know, the modern definition of AI is “the study and design of intelligent agents where an intelligent agent is a system that perceives its environment and takes actions which maximizes its chances of success.”

Let me begin with a couple of exciting examples on the application of AI for general use. One such is Siri the voice-activated computer in the iPhone that one can interact with as a personal assistant, every day. The other is the self-driving features with the predictive capabilities of Tesla cars; or even the well-hyped Google driver-less car. Alongside, Google is also in pursuit of creating AI with ‘imagination’ through its ‘DeepMind’. It develops algorithms that simulate the human ability to construct plans.

Pharma’s emergence in the AI space:

The unfathomable potential of AI is being slowly recognized in the healthcare arena, as well, including pharma industry. It’s gradual emergence in the space of ‘intelligent learning’, often called ‘machine learning’, ushers in a new paradigm of learning from a vast pool of highly credible real-time data. Innovative applications of this process can fetch a game changing business performance. Its scope spans right across the pharma value chain – from Drug Discovery, including Precision Medicine; Clinical Trials; Pharmacovigilance; Supply Chain Management, and right up-to Sales and Marketing.

Pharma’s emergence in the AI space is quite evident from Reuters report of July 3, 2017. It wrote that GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) has inked a new USD 43 million deal with Exscientia to help streamline the company’s drug discovery process by leveraging AI. With this deal in place, Exscientia will allow GSK to search for drug candidates for up to 10 disease-related targets. GSK will provide research funding and make this payment, if pre-clinical milestones are met.

Again, on July 27, 2017, Insilico Medicine – a Baltimore-based leader in AI, focusing on drug discovery and biomarker development, announced a similar agreement with the biotechnology player Juvenescence AI Limited. According to this agreement, Juvenescence AI will develop the first compounds generated by Insilico’s AI techniques, such as Generative Adversarial Networks in order to generate novel compounds with desired pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic properties.

Several other pharmaceutical giants, including Merck & Co, Johnson & Johnson and Sanofi are also exploring the potential of AI for streamlining the drug discovery process. It would help them to significantly improving upon the hit-and-miss business of finding new medicines, as Reuters highlighted.  Eventually, these applications of AI may be placed right at the front-line of pharma business – in search of new drugs.

I have already discussed in this blog – the ‘Relevance of AI in creative pharma marketing’ on October 31, 2016. In this article, I shall mainly focus on leveraging AI in health care for greater patient-centricity, which is emerging as one of the prime requirements for excellence in the pharma business.

Imbibing patient-centricity is no longer an option:

In an article published in this blog on the above subject, I wrote that: ‘providing adequate knowledge, skills and related services to people effectively, making them understand various disease management and alternative treatment measures, thereby facilitating them to be an integral part of their health care related interventions, for better health outcomes, are no longer options for pharma companies.’

The craft of being ‘patient-centric’, therefore, assumes the importance of a cutting-edge  of pharma business for sustainable performance.

What exactly is ‘patient-centricity’?

BMJ Innovations – a peer reviewed online journal, in an article titled, ‘Defining patient centricity with patients for patients and caregivers: a collaborative endeavor’, published on March 24, 2017, defines ‘patient-centricity’ as: “Putting the patient first in an open and sustained engagement of patient to respectfully and compassionately achieve the best experience and outcome for that person and their family.”

Thus, to deliver the best experience, and treatment outcomes to patients, their participation and engagement, especially with the doctors, hospitals and the drug companies assume significant importance.

The June 2017 ‘Discussion Paper’ of McKinsey Global Institute, titled ‘Artificial Intelligence the Next Digital Frontier’ also captured this emerging scenario, succinctly. Recognizing that health care is a promising market for AI, the paper highlighted the enormous potential in its ability. The power of which can draw inferences by recognizing patterns in large volumes of patient histories, medical images, epidemiological statistics, and other data.

Thus, AI has the potential to help doctors improve their diagnoses, forecast the spread of diseases, and customize treatments. Combined with health care digitization, AI can also allow providers to monitor or diagnose patients remotely, as well as transform the way we treat the chronic diseases that account for a large share of health care budgets, the paper underscored. This poses the obvious question: what exactly AI can possibly do in the space of health care?

What can AI do for health care?

In a nutshell, the application of AI or ‘machine learning’ system in health care generally uses algorithms and software to approximate human cognition in the analysis of relevant, yet complex scientific and medical data. In-depth study and interpretation of these in a holistic way would be of immense use in many areas. For example, to understand the relationships between prevention or treatment processes and outcomes, or various debilitating conditions affecting people with the advancement of age, to name just a few.

This necessitates the generation of a huge pool of relevant and credible data from multiple sources, storing and analyzing them meaningfully, and then garnering the capabilities of ‘machine learning’ with the application of AI. Such a process helps in zeroing-in to a series of complex, interdependent strategic actions to go for the gold, in terms of business results. Using conventional methods, as exist today, other than imbibing AI or ‘machine learning’, may indeed be a Herculean task, as it were, to achieve the same.

Invaluable business insights thus acquired need to be shared, across the various different functions of a company, for greater patient-centricity within the organization.

Moving from ‘patient-engagement’ to ‘patient-centricity’:

While making a significant move from just ‘patient engagement’ to being ‘patient centric’, one-size-fits-all strategy is unlikely to yield the desired results. The process of gathering adequate knowledge and understanding of any individual’s disease management skills, which mostly depend on complex multi-factorial, interrelated and combinatorial algorithms, will be a challenging task, otherwise.

Thereafter, comes the need to deliver such knowledge-based value offerings to target patients for better health outcomes, which won’t be easy, either, in the prevailing environment.

Considering these, AI seems to have an immense potential in this area. Some global pharma players are also realizing it. For example, GSK is reportedly engaged with IBM’s Watson in the development of AI-enabled interactive digital Apps for its cold and flu medication to provide relevant information to patients.

Conclusion:

Patient-centricity would soon be the name of the game for pharma business excellence. However, to be truly patient-centric, especially in the sales and marketing operations, pharma players would require to source, process and analyze a huge volume of relevant data in several important areas. These include, target patients, target doctors, environmental dynamics, demographic variations, regulatory requirements, current practices, competitive activities, to name a few.

In this strategic business process, AI or ‘machine learning’ will help accurately mapping the ongoing dynamics and trends in virtually all critical areas. It will help ferret out the nuances of turning around the competitive tide, if any, and that too with immaculate precision. In that sense, AI is likely to emerge as a game changer in imbibing patient-centricity, in the real sense. Consequently, it carries a promise of delivering significantly better outcomes, yielding higher financial returns, alongside.

Although, some concerns on AI are being expressed by several eminent experts, it is generally believed that on the balance of probability, it’s crucial potential benefits far outweigh the anticipated risks. In my view, this holds good even for the pharma industry, especially while leveraging AI for greater patient-centricity, better disease prevention, and more desirable treatment outcomes – improving the quality of life of many, significantly.

By: Tapan J. Ray 

Disclaimer: The views/opinions expressed in this article are entirely my own, written in my individual and personal capacity. I do not represent any other person or organization for this opinion.

 

Indian Pharma To Stay Ahead of The Technology Curve

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In the ever-changing business environment, many industrial sectors have now started leveraging different cutting-edge technological platforms to improve overall strategic and operational effectiveness, keeping a sharp focus on better stakeholder engagement for greater customer satisfaction.

These companies have accepted the inevitability of a paradigm shift in the algorithm of the traditional business process. It has dawned on them that it may not be possible to be in the pole position by tweaking the existing process with multiple incremental changes – a time is just right now to take a quantum leap in this direction. Placing the company ahead of the technology curve to acquire the critical X-factor in outperforming the competition is going to be the new mantra. This is likely to happen even in the sales and marketing domains, much sooner than one can possibly imagine, as the marketplace becomes increasingly tougher.

Moving closer to this direction, Artificial Intelligence (AI) based digital tools, I reckon, is likely to be one of the key game changers. The term AI was coined in 1956 by John McCarthy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and is usually defined as the science of making computers do things that require intelligence when done by humans. AI helps to ferret out critical answers to many real-life issues and gain a competitive edge in business management, by creating and then effectively analyzing a huge pool of real life data.

AI is the fulcrum of business operations for several leading companies of the world, such as, Apple, Amazon and Uber. It has already started replacing human intelligence in a number key business operations in various industries. As a widely-known Indian business leader recently said, anything that can go digital will go digital. This wave is unstoppable in this modern era.

In this article, I shall restrict the scope of discussion to the application of AI in pharma sales and marketing.

A recent illustration from India:

The application of AI via a digital tool, called Chatbot – the short form of ‘Chat Robot’, is one of the ways in this direction. It is a complex computer program that simulates human conversation, or chat, through auditory or textual methods. Various industries have now started developing the Chatbot dialog application systems for a specialized purpose of human communication, including a variety of customer interaction, information acquisition and providing a range of customized services to the target group.

To illustrate the above point, let me draw upon a recent example from the banking sector of India. On March 05, 2017, a leading bank in India announced the launch of an AI-driven Chatbot named Eva, coined from the words Electronic Virtual Assistant (EVA), to add more value to their services for greater customer satisfaction.

According to reports, Eva is India’s first AI driven banking Chatbot that can answer millions of customer queries on its own, across multiple channels, immediately. It assimilates knowledge from thousands of sources and provide answers in a simple to understand language format in under 0.4 seconds. This is a good example of taking a quantum leap in improving operational efficiency by delighting the new generation of customers. “Within the first few days of its launch, Eva has answered over 100,000 queries from thousands of customers from 17 countries across the globe” – the bank reportedly claimed.

To do routine services more efficiently with a customer-centric approach, this AI-based  Bank OnChat combines a disruptive technology platform for a human-like conversation, powered by AI, and the Bank’s deep domain expertise and long acquired insight of banking related customers. Earlier this year, for a similar customer-oriented initiative using AI and Robotics technologies, the same bank launched an interactive  humanoid called Intelligent Robotic Assistant or IRA.

Although, these are just illustrations in the Indian context, an important question that surfaces: if these can happen in the banking industry, why not in the pharma sector of India?

Resisting changes versus finding innovative means to overcome challenges:

Coming back to the pharma industry, we all are aware that this knowledge sector, over the last four and a half decades in India, has been navigating through umpteen challenges, none of which has been easy, by any measure.

Nevertheless, as compared to the past, I notice a palpable difference today. Significantly more number of shrill voices with fierce resistance to changes are now outnumbering the out of box mindset, desire and efforts to still thrive, by overcoming those critical challenges. Since the formative years of the Indian pharma industry, it has been successfully overcoming the challenges of change, which are unavoidable though.

Such kind of indomitable ‘animal spirit’ within many leaders of the Indian pharma industry, created today’s national pharma behemoths like, Sun Pharma, Lupin, Cadila, Dr. Reddy’s, Alkem and many others. They are thriving despite continuation of immensely challenging business environment and tough socioeconomic demand in the country. By the way, the second richest person in India is from the Indian pharma industry and grew from a scratch, during this very period.

Making creative changes help, moaning doesn’t:

While facing the newer sets of challenges today, many industry greenhorns, I reckon, need to spend more quality time to effectively overcome these turbulences – provided of course they possess the requisite mindset, knowledge and other wherewithal.

Acquiring new insight through modern technological platforms, such as AI, will pay a rich dividend. Better customer engagement and relationship management with new genres of AI tools, furnishing stimulating and modern web-based content with personalized access, would help achieve the desired strategic goals in the changing paradigm – but just moaning won’t, surely.

A few global pharma players are now fathoming the scope and depth of this area, most others are still not sure about its usefulness for customer engagement and interactions, and commensurate real-life data requirements for AI related analytics.

A predictable pattern of a series of unpredictable challenges and developments:

According to Eularis, integrating AI based analytics with a pharma product offerings can provide substantial benefits including, among others, the following:

  • Identification of both tangible and intangible enhanced value proposition
  • Enhanced competitor differentiation
  • Optimal resource allocation for maximum market share gain, revenue and profit
  • Ability to see which levers to pull to maximize growth
  • Customizing sales and marketing messaging for greater customer engagement
  • Automation of sales and marketing messages and channels.

In my view, while moving in this direction, AI based analytics are now far more reliable than any human analysis of the humongous volume of different kinds of data. Doing so is sometimes beyond the capacity of any conventional computers that a marketing professional generally uses for this purpose. The prime requirement, therefore, is not just huge volume of data per se, but good quality of a decent volume of data, that a state of the art analytics would be able to meaningfully deliver to meet specific requirements of pharma marketers for creating a cutting-edge marketing strategy.

This will be an absolute necessity in the complexity of an evolving new paradigm in the cyberspace. In a similar context, as I wrote even earlier, any such technology-driven changes would usually follow a predictable pattern of a series of unpredictable challenges and developments in the business environment, which has already commenced in the pharma industry.

The Market:

According to an April 2013 article, published by the McKinsey  Global Institute, applying big-data strategies to better inform decision making could generate up to US$100 billion in value annually only across the US health care system, by optimizing innovation, improving the efficiency of research and clinical trials, and building new tools for physicians, consumers, insurers, and regulators to meeting the promise of more individualized approaches.

Mandatory generic prescriptions won’t make pharma marketing less important:

Even if the much talked about mandatory prescription in generic names comes to fruition, the new paradigm won’t make pharma marketing less important. This would, however, be more about providing patient-centric, credible and tangible disease management or treatment solutions or both, rather than just selling a drug giving a trade name to it.

Thus, the need for interaction with physicians by the pharma players, besides some additional new target groups, would continue to remain important. Nonetheless, the message – mostly its form, substantive content, the targeting process and the usage of various tools for delivery of the same, would undergo substantive modifications. These changes would generally be prompted by fresh thinking, together with a fresh pair of eyes and mind, in the prevailing business environment, at any given point of time, well supported by data and tested with state of art analytics. The depth and gravity of environmental changes may also hasten the process of digital transformation of pharma sales and marketing, in various ways.

Those who are still trying harder to milk the traditional prescription demand generation process to the extent possible, despite its lesser and lesser yield, would need to introspect now, if they are able to. The time, and the prevailing pharma business environment probably demands jettisoning the conventional mindset faster, and search for the best-suited and most innovative modern tools to hit the bull’s eye. The young pharma professionals with a ‘can do’ spirit to effectively navigate through the strong headwind, are likely to emerge as early winners – provided of course their seniors and diehard ‘trainers’ don’t block their required elbow space.

‘Virtual Representatives’:

Deploying ‘Virtual Representatives (VR)’, well- supported by analytics for key target customers that QuintilesIMS is recommending, could be one among several other important examples in this area. VRs are appropriately equipped to take any doctor’s call online, for any product or related information, at any time the physicians find convenient – during or after their busy practicing hours.

The ‘push-pull’ balance between the doctors and the pharma players for such engagements can also be appropriately configured, and that too at a fraction of the current cost incurred to for similar purpose. This process and the technology used will be quite close to Chatbot, that has recently been introduced by an Indian bank, as illustrated above.

In conclusion:

Despite the rapidly changing business environment, pressing socioeconomic demands and a national dream for ‘Digital India’, the pharma industry hasn’t demonstrated any significant appetite for a change in the process of doing the business in the country. Individual players, by and large, have remained mostly consistent in strictly adhering to much tried processes and tools, though in their multiple permutations and combinations, especially in the domain of sales and marketing.

Other industries, like banking – also facing different types of tough challenges, are making efforts to stay ahead of the technology curve for operational excellence and greater consumer satisfaction. Fast scaling up of digital applications, such as Chatbots, Humanoids and the likes, vindicate this point.

Notwithstanding the availability of a large gamut of cutting-edge technological platforms, such as those based on AI, most players within the pharma industry continue to be rather slow in adopting these important and innovative resources. Could it be due to dearth of requisite talent, especially in pharma sales and marketing leadership within the industry? Well, many may argue so – some may also feel otherwise. Nevertheless, finding the right answer for a slow response of pharma in this domain still remains elusive.

That said, amid a gradually shifting paradigm, Indian pharma companies may wish to consider imbibing innovative technological interventions, such as, AI-based digital applications in sales and marketing. This has a great potential to successfully sail through many uncertainties, not just the latest one. It would also help changing the traditional ball game with a flexible, multitasking and contemporary one – right from conceptualizing – to charting out a customer-centric sales and marketing strategy – and then its immaculate execution, catapulting the company to a new and fascinating growth orbit altogether. Thus, staying ahead of the technology curve by the Indian pharma players, assumes critical importance for a long-term business sustainability, more than ever before.

By: Tapan J. Ray   

Disclaimer: The views/opinions expressed in this article are entirely my own, written in my individual and personal capacity. I do not represent any other person or organization for this opinion.