Q&A: Connecting the dots along the pharma value chain

What have you done lately?

During my recent travels I’ve had the opportunity to exchange thoughts with senior healthcare and life sciences talent around the world. These talks underscore the challenge of identifying and connecting data to empower science and business. The itinerary hit key industry groups and events starting with #OHDSI in Bethesda, Washington, and then taking in travels across India with the Dutch Mission for Health, checking in at the excellent Pistoia Alliance meeting in Boston and on to the Globalize, Modernize and Transform at the ISPE annual meeting in Las Vegas, circled back via Bethesda for a “feet on the table” discussion with drug authorities, and finishing off in the UK with the Lab of the Future in Cambridge. The topics ranged across collaboration between healthcare and life sciences, the granularity of drug substances data and how the patient-driven value chain philosophy can tie it all together. Diverse topics, great conversations and one common denominator: data. Unfortunately, the data is loosely connected or not even connected at all.

All those great scientific minds, that passion to make healthcare better, still we are missing out on the full potential.

 

What can we do about it?

Health and life sciences industry can collaborate so much better and put all that data into a logical context of bringing a quality product to the right patient, on time and in the right place. Thus, connecting the dots along the patient-centric pharma value chain. Let’s look at how a molecule transforms into a drug product and how it reaches a patient. Data, particularly connected data, empowers every aspect of that journey and brings value daily. Global Value Web executes on transformational data services that contribute, at the core, to the value chain transformation. We have proved through a variety of services that these steps transform disconnected data into a better functioning and more productive state. This in function of drug product reaching patient. There’s no lack of technology nor data. There’s lack of context. Value chain context.

 

It’s industry leaders that can empower the industry scientists to become co-creators towards a patient centric pharma value chain

And what are some observations here?

One aspect is “control by data” and the drive towards a lean pharmaceutical-life sciences value chain. Increasing efficiency and effectiveness with focus on improved outcomes for patients, I believe, go hand in hand. Through my discussions, I realise so much more evangelist work is needed. There is a danger we remain stuck in a certain regulatory framework, and overall mindset, which some believe to be the only truth and that others are already bending towards the future. Another aspect is being trapped into a “data integrity” discussion, where data-integrity becomes the objective, rather than an outcome of an excellent orchestrated end-to-end patient value chain.

 

What’s the key takeaway from all this?

The industry is at the cusp of massive transformational change which requires us to bring way more drug product to a far more variable patient base. Faster. Thus, causing an explosion of data. It all becomes visible in the industry’s global value chain and the transformation of it; towards globally integrated collaboration, directly driven by the need of the patient, enabled by data.

 

And where are we in the process of transformation?

Making the switch from the old industries operating models to one single new health operating model may just be the transformational wave for the coming decade. We are now in the early days of that transformation.

 

Any closing thoughts?

Yes, I’d like to call upon industry leaders to empower their scientific and business talent to increase their focus on their data; name it, own it, improve it! Scientists need to be able to take responsibility for their own content in a digitized environment. Content becomes data.  Ask them to treat their data as pieces to a puzzle which represents a patient centric pharma value chain. Become co-creators.

My team and I are here to enable that. Working directly with the scientists and business process owners to get it in the right context. Driving true value.

www.global-value-web.com, louis.hendriks@global-value-web.com
+1 832 542 9844