Breaking Down Silos: 7 Commercial Life Sciences Predictions for 2023

A unified view of the HCP will emerge from clinical to commercial

Rarely are organizations able to view HCP relationships holistically – across clinical, medical, and sales – or reap the benefits of creating a unified understanding of the customer. But rare diseases with small patient populations and complex therapies are blurring the traditional barriers between research, patient care, and thought leadership.

With these silos breaking down, biopharmas will have the opportunity to drive a more coordinated approach to HCP engagement using shared data and unified systems, while still maintaining compliance. Seamless data sharing between clinical teams and medical science liaisons, for example, could greatly influence clinical trial site selection and ensure more coordinated engagement. Leading companies will empower their teams to act quickly, compliantly, and with a unified view of the HCP.

Incentive compensation models will reward the right omnichannel behaviors

As access to HCPs rebounds from historic lows during the pandemic, building valued relationships and meeting customers on their terms with the right mix of in-person and digital tactics is essential. As Veeva Pulse data shows, the use of video as an additive channel to in-person can increase promotional response three times over in-person alone. This will force a shift in how companies think about incentive comp.

In 2023, omnichannel behaviors will directly influence incentive compensation models by correlating successful engagement data to successful sales outcomes. Companies will begin to shift away from the traditional sales target approach to a blended model that rewards the right rep behaviors that drive HCP engagement.

Traditional sales reporting will continue to be an important part of the incentive compensation strategy as a lagging indicator. Reliable, measurable omnichannel behaviors, such as the use of video to complement in-person engagement, will become leading indicators. Companies that adopt this blended model will be able to recognize performance gaps earlier and, for the first time, align incentives across the entire commercial ecosystem, including sales reps, key account managers, and medical science liaisons.

Content automation will deliver as AI fails to live up to the hype

Given the demand to deliver a steady stream of content to meet HCPs’ needs, pharma marketers must react, create, edit, and adapt quickly. While artificial intelligence (AI) has often been a go-to capability and will continue to help, the true content accelerator in 2023 will be automation.

Automation enables organizations to act fast without requiring high volumes of data — and it doesn’t come with the same risks associated with AI. Many teams are already leveraging automation using modular content to create content faster, review and approve quickly, and reuse content across channels. And technology like digital asset management (DAM), medical, legal, and regulatory review (MLR), and content authoring tools will help drive further acceleration.

As leading life sciences companies have discovered, the human touch still serves an essential and complementary role in the MLR process alongside automation. But organizations will continue to strike the right balance between automation and the domain expertise MLR teams bring to the table to ensure compliance.

Dynamic digital content will drive MLR, health authority collaboration

The pivot to modular content, personalization, and the expanding number of content channels are driving high volumes of submissions to global health authorities. The sheer amount of new dynamic content, including video, web, and CLM, requires a different way to review this content at speed and scale. In 2023, we anticipate more collaboration between MLR teams and health authorities to establish new guidelines for streamlining the submissions and approval process.

Changing these entrenched processes will take time because it’s such a fundamental shift in approach. For example, allowing one submission for 20 versions of an email to support personalization. And there will need to be more collaboration across geographies and authorities, including the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Office of Prescription Drug Promotion (OPDP).

With compliance at its core and the right tools, content teams will shift toward a new, more collaborative approach to working with health authorities. Establishing new guidelines and streamlined processes will usher in a new era of dynamic digital content review.

Marketing data will surpass health data as a leading signal for pharma advertisers

Connecting HCPs and patients to essential and timely education has long been the aim of pharma marketers. But reaching the right targets with the right message at the right time has been a challenge. Traditional marketing tactics have relied heavily on health data that, while valuable, creates a lagging signal. The use of prescription or diagnostic data, for example, means that opportunities to engage patients early in their healthcare journey have already passed.

Marketing trigger data will change this paradigm by connecting anonymized, aggregated data on patient visits to brand.com pages to follow-up HCP visits. Companies like Bayer are already using this type of patient engagement data to inform and enrich conversations with providers. And for rare diseases with small patient populations, this type of data can connect patients and HCPs more quickly, with tremendous upside.

As new triggers are developed, marketing data generated by patients will become an increasingly important signal for pharma marketers, in combination with traditional health data. By capturing engagement data at critical moments in a patient’s healthcare journey, trigger data will connect patients and HCPs with improved speed, relevance, and timeliness.

Medical will become the cornerstone connecting R&D and commercial

In 2023, medical affairs will tackle the challenge of how to operate as a strategic partner. The pandemic created urgency as HCPs, key opinion leaders (KOLs), and patients called upon medical affairs to provide scientific exchange in more convenient ways. But it involves implementing the appropriate processes, data, and tools. And more importantly, aligning on an outcome metric for medical affairs – one tied to scientific alignment – and operationalizing it.

Defining that KPI will be the first step in what will likely be a multiyear transformation, as it will depend on an end-to-end view across medical, commercial, and R&D. Medical’s existing data silos and the need for stronger data governance will add to the challenge. But we expect to see a more concerted effort across the industry to evolve medical’s role from a supporting function to a strategic partner.

Faster data access will drive greater patient-centricity

The life sciences industry has long shared a common goal to be more patient-centric. While good progress has been made, getting there requires a deeper understanding of the patient – especially with the boom of specialized and precision medicine.

Twelve months from now, biopharmas will have the strategy and capabilities to generate patient insights and act on them quickly. With better access to on-demand, accurate, timely data, integrated in a privacy-safe way, companies will be able to reduce trial duration and improve launch trajectories. Brands will understand earlier how they are performing in-market and be able to optimize and course correct accordingly. And a more informed view of patients will enable brands to activate and engage with HCPs in a more coordinated manner.