While the pharma industry hasn’t yet fully embraced the potential of digital health solutions, it’s become clear that a strong digital health strategy can play a pivotal role in achieving long-term success.
This presents a dilemma for pharma companies: whether to build, partner or buy, when it comes to creating and maintaining a digital health solution.
In this whitepaper, experts from S3 Connected Health, Takeda, Pfizer, and Novartis debate the merits of each option and what they might entail for a pharma company, discussing questions including:
Why have digital health solutions failed to deliver on the early promise demonstrated by digital transformation in other parts of the pharma lifecycle?
Pharma must commit to developing them in the same way as other industries – ensuring products are evolved to fit the market upon launch, and continually evolve and improve as consumers have come to expect. While pharma companies in general have an excellent record when it comes to long-term commitment to developing pharmacological medicine, it’s imperative that the commitment to digital health solutions doesn’t waver. The pharmaceutical industry must ensure digital health solutions are not treated as a tactic, and instead, viewed as an integral to driving value and central to long-term strategic intent.
Are there challenges around effective product management?
The successful development of a digital health solution begins with the right approach implemented from the start. For that to happen, a decision must be made between adopting a product-based model, or a project-based model. In a traditional project-centered model, teams form to complete specific tasks, focused on one element of a project.
This has been a common approach in business for decades, but a shift has emerged in recent years, with companies choosing to operate in a product-based model instead, working from start to finish on the product as a whole, rather than centered on a specific area or element of an overall initiative.
Are expectations around timelines and return on investment realistic?
For digital health solutions, ‘short-termism’ is a prevalent industry problem. To solve it, pharma must commit to developing them in the same way as other industries – ensuring products are evolved to fit the market upon launch, and continually evolve and improve as consumers have come to expect.
A common misconception in pharma is that digital health solutions can be launched fast and generate major returns quickly. When it comes to technology, the challenge is most often not the build itself, but rather the change management required to bring the solution to the market, implementation, and planning to gain adoption and scale.
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