Data Analytics Key in 2020 Pharmaceutical Industry Predictions

As data becomes readily available and digital tools present opportunities to optimize patient and consumer relationships, pharmaceutical companies will tap the technologies necessary to boost their output, according to IDC Health Insights.

In its Worldwide Health Industry 2020 Predictions report, IDC researchers outlined key innovations likely to take hold in a number of different healthcare sectors, including pharma. The next decade will be defined by healthcare data, consumer patterns, and the technologies needed to make sense of that.

"The 2020 worldwide health industry predictions highlight the evolution of healthcare and life science organizations in the race to becoming future enterprises," says Mutaz Shegewi, research director, IDC Health Insights, and one of the report’s authors.

"Future enterprises break away from traditional health industry practices by embracing digital transformation at scale. These digitally determined organizations organize around high-value, high-growth digital transformation use cases where reinvention becomes commonplace and operations are at hyperscale, hyperspeed, and hyperconnected."

Foremost, the report authors predicted that by 2021, 50 percent of pharmaceutical and biotech companies will use prescriptive analytics or artificial intelligence with IoT data, all to optimize the supply chain.

Pharmaceutical companies face challenges in supply chain management, considering the sensitive nature of their products. Certain drugs can be perishable, meaning drug safety and supply chain efficiency are dependent on understanding climate and location trends.

Looking shortly into the future, pharma and biotech companies will use track and trace and cold chain monitoring, both of which track location data for certain products, to monitor their supply chains.

“As IoT data in life science supply chains proliferates, the industry will leverage this data for actionable insights,” the report authors explained. “By combining environmental data like temperature and humidity with other important indicators such as GPS and time records, analytics software can provide a holistic view of supply chains.”

And from there, companies will be able to make optimal supply chain decisions. And by adhering to federal regulations and keeping data local, pharmaceutical companies can enhance their results.

In fact, the use of data is slated to have a significant impact on all aspects of the pharmaceutical industry. By 2022, IDC Health Insights predicts 30 percent of life science organizations will have achieved data excellence, or the concept of effectively using the right data at the right time.

Data excellence is “an endeavor to harmonize and treat data as an asset, with particular attention to data management and quality, toward enabling intelligent capabilities and inimitable differentiation,” the report authors explained. “The strive for data excellence in the health industry is a new yet challenging endeavor with widespread impact that supports human-machine collaboration.”

And for life sciences organizations, that’s going to mean leaning on the data gleaned from genomics and real-world evidence (RWE) efforts.

“In life sciences, access to new data (including genomics and RWE) and supporting regulatory guidance drive significant interest and investment in data excellence for both increased operational excellence and near-term revenue growth,” the report authors stated.

In the Asia/Pacific region, for example, life sciences companies are using wearables to track specific real-time participant data during clinical trials. This use of wearable data drives strategic insights and decision-making, the authors reported.

Technology will enhance not only company decision-making, but also work to address barriers to patient care. Thirty percent of pharmaceutical companies are slated to offer smartphone or smartwatch tools to improve medication adherence and patient engagement, the report noted.

Limited medication adherence has a significant impact on the healthcare industry, resulting in high healthcare spend and poor clinical outcomes. In the pharmaceutical industry, it also has a financial impact.

“For life science companies, treatment nonadherence contributes to lower drug sales and poor real-world outcomes, which may bring financial penalties as payers and governments are starting to focus on outcome-based pricing and reimbursement,” the report authors noted.

IDC recommends pharma companies deploying patient nudge technology adhere to certain regulatory requirements (HIPAA, for example), and partner with payers and providers to get the most out of the patient engagement opportunities.

Additionally, pharmaceutical companies should focus less on the financial gains to be had from patient nudge technology and more on patient adoption and outcomes. It will be hard for companies to determine if a rise in sales numbers is the result of better medication adherence. Understanding how and if patients use the nudge tools will be a better measure of success.

The IDC report touched on more than just the pharmaceutical industry, outlining the future of healthcare for payers and providers as well. Data and consumer engagement are of high priority for those industries, the report authors noted, all responding to a shift toward robust health IT use, more meaningful data, and consumer empowerment.