Pharma innovation is evolving to serve a new generation of more connected and informed patients. A new ecosystem of digital-first therapies, devices, platforms and data is emerging from fast-moving partnerships between the biggest pharma players and nimble tech start-ups.
Tomorrow’s Pharma leaders are looking two steps ahead – beyond their immediate digital tech innovation initiatives and towards the connected future of Ecosystem Innovation.
We can help you join them.
Pharma industry leaders are accelerating digital innovation – and they’re embracing new models of change to do it. Below, we zoom into digital pharma innovation in more detail and look at how Ecosystem Innovation is helping the industry overcome transformational challenges. We will also explore how Ecosystem Innovation allows you to get the most from both DHPs and AI in Pharma: fundamental building blocks for the industry’s future. Use the tool on the right to get a snapshot of each section. Or read on to get the full picture.
Explore moreAs the most successful Pharma innovators scale up towards full tech maturity, we’ve distilled six best-practice principles that set up innovation initiatives for long-term success. Ecosystem Innovation is a framework to accelerate digital maturity in pharma innovation initiatives.
Explore moreIsolated solutions in healthcare can’t meet new patient demands. Pharma’s patient-centric and outcome based future depends on an ecosystem of interconnected data sources, enabled by Digital Health Platforms.
Explore moreArtificial intelligence (AI) is one of the greatest potential sources of digital acceleration for pharma-tech partnerships. It’s already revolutionizing patient-centric innovation in non-clinical settings. But it also has huge potential in other areas.
Explore moreInnovation has always been the mechanism by which pharma companies like yours developed drugs and advanced therapies to improve patient outcomes.
But today’s patients are more informed, empowered and connected to their personal health journey. They want more than the solely drug-based treatments traditional research and development was built to serve.
Industry leaders are adding a new digital dimension to pharma innovation – supplementing traditional drug development with new connected treatments, devices, therapies and services built around individual and disease specific patient needs.
The very business of Pharma is changing - and tomorrow’s biggest winners will be the companies that think more like connected health providers rather than exclusively as drug developers.
That means pharma leaders are making digital innovation a core competency – by integrating established expertise with new thinking, in order to:
● Combine clinical expertise with new digital technology innovation in drug development.
● Balance digital acceleration with compliance, security and patient safety.
● Embed digital technologies in their portfolio to support patient-centricity.
● Develop a clear business case for digital health solutions built around patient needs.
● Explore new business opportunities through connected health solutions in collaboration with partners and startups.
Zühlke unites technology, business and user experience expertise to help players in highly regulated industries adopt and operationalize high-impact digital innovation.
For Pharma, we’ve developed a specific framework designed to transform the industry’s biggest digital innovation ideas into robust, compliant, and patient-centric solutions and services.
We call it Ecosystem Innovation.
Ecosystem Innovation is a framework to accelerate digital maturity in pharma innovation initiatives. Whether you’re looking to digitally enhance your existing offerings, or accelerate entirely new digital-first solutions, Ecosystem Innovation can help:
Connected, ecosystem-optimized digital initiatives are the fastest path for pharma-tech players to create high-value, future-proof, patient-first outcomes.
As the most successful pharma innovators scale up towards (full) tech maturity, we’ve distilled six best-practice principles that set up innovation initiatives for long-term success.
Pharma-tech frontrunners are using a new model for digital change. We call it Ecosystem Innovation – learn more in our ePaper.
The outcomes of Ecosystem Innovation
Ecosystem Innovation can accelerate your pharma-tech innovation success, by helping you:
The result? An innovation methodology that:
Digital Health Platforms are the bedrock for a future of more connected end-to-end patient experiences.
Isolated solutions in healthcare can’t meet new patient demands. Pharma’s patient-centric and outcome-based future depends on an ecosystem of interconnected data sources, enabled by Digital Health Platforms.
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“Advances in digital technology have opened the door to rapid adoption of connected, patient-centric innovation solutions. Digital health platforms are the pillar supporting this shift—and we are about to see their full potential.” Bardia M. Zanganeh, Health Practice Lead, Zühlke Group |
Most players in pharma recognize that DHPs are important – but many remain unaware of how much potential these platforms hold.
There’s a desire to move towards data-driven processes but a lack of understanding around how a unified platform and an overarching data strategy can accelerate innovation. Consequently, DHPs are seen as part of the far off strategic agenda and near-term progress is limited.[1]
The challenge is to reconcile a huge legacy IT infrastructure with new ecosystem demands. That’s why the key to acceleration towards the Digital Health Platform future is to start small and build smart.
But you need to explore and validate your opportunities before you can accelerate towards them – and that starts with assessing your current capability gaps against the features and restrictions of DHP vendors.
The obstacles – and how we can help you overcome them
Digital fragmentation – like disconnected systems and siloed patient data – is a major impediment to the connectivity that DHPs rely on.
The key to attack this fragmentation is to incorporate smaller digitization projects into a long-term and incremental platform strategy that breaks down your overall DHP vision into smaller manageable milestones.
Our approach
Our Connected Health service helps pharma companies identify and resolve the obstacles of digitization that impact long-term platform strategies.
With our interdisciplinary insight, we can highlight integration challenges – and opportunities – across organizational boundaries, allowing you to build towards a future of interconnected healthcare. Only once this integration layer is ready, will solutions which leverage the Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) create meaningful impact throughout the patient journey, from clinical trials through to treatment pathways.
Our deep experience working with IoMT coupled with our interdisciplinary market insight, allows us to translate future business models to fit product portfolio specifications, preempt future pain points for our clients, help them realize their goals, and reimagine their solution portfolio using smart connected devices.
This insight is the foundation of our Connected Health service.
A global medical company wanted to improve their products and offer new services by adding connectivity to their devices.
This meant they needed to make technology and architecture choices that ensured safety and security. Zühlke ran several workshops, performed a threat analysis, and provided a software, security, and system architecture proposal which resulted in a complete concept ready to be developed
Artificial intelligence (AI) is one of the greatest potential sources of digital acceleration for pharma-tech partnerships.
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“The biggest challenge in going from research prototype to real-world use of AI in Pharma is safety.” Gabriel Krummenacher, Lead Data Scientist at Zühlke Group |
It’s already revolutionizing patient-centric innovation in non-clinical settings. But it also has huge potential to:
Unfortunately, the path forward isn’t always clear. Patient (or clinical trial) ready AI-based solutions need to be developed within a strict regulatory framework.
Patient (or clinical trial) ready AI-based solutions need to be developed within a strict regulatory framework.
“How to build medical AI” dives into how you can leverage the best practices from machine learning and medical device development, to build patient-centric, robust, and compliant AI offerings.
The obstacles – and how we can help you overcome them
The potential for AI in clinical applications is self-evident. But there is still regulatory uncertainty around how to safely and securely leverage AI for cases using software as a Medical Device (SaMD).
Move too fast, or break too many things, and you’ll lose money, time, and worst of all – patient trust.
Look no further than the 2019 example – where a racial bias was found to infect a commonly used healthcare algorithm in the US – to see how damaging such mistakes can be. To help you avoid catastrophes like this, we developed five principles for applying AI in Pharma and life sciences, which you can read here.
These principles are based on our experience working with life science and pharmaceutical companies to bring AI-led solutions to market.
Our medical AI approach
The five principles also form the backbone of our Intelligent Health service which helps organizations develop compliant AI solutions for medical applications. Our solutions integrate with medical software for specific therapeutic areas and patient cohorts.
AVA Women wanted to enhance their fertility tracking bracelet so it could be used for other indications.
This meant their machine learning-based algorithm became a class IIb medical product and required clearance by a notified body. Zühlke provided consultation to AVA Women, helping them ensure their product development fulfilled the regulatory demands.
We are also helping pharma-tech partnerships build the data foundation to further enable AI – harnessing the emerging potential of Digital Health Platforms.
We love to connect directly with new pioneers, ready to make meaningful and informed strides into these emerging pharma markets.
So if you’re ready to enrich your innovation journey, let’s connect and talk about how we turn the unknown future into the strategic present.
Together with his team, Albert Frömel helps his clients improve health outcomes for patients, modernise work environments, and future-proof business models. As a Healthcare and Life Sciences Industry Lead in Austria, he helps find solutions to key digital challenges. He has years of experience working with leading national and international healthcare organisations.
Myles Davidson is an experienced leader for the digital transformation of companies and product innovation. Significant experience in driving business initiatives on a local and international level in a complex and rapidly changing environment. Myles is known as trusted advisor for clients at C- and board-level for strategic questions around business innovation and technology.
Bardia M. Zanganeh serves leading healthcare institutions on all technology agenda issues. His primary areas of focus include digital innovation, business model transformation and product innovation. He has a background in engineering, consulting and entrepreneurship and is a lecturer at the University of Applied Sciences in Business Administration in Zurich. He is driven by the positive impact of technology to reimagine healthcare for better patient outcomes.
Nicolas supports the Healthcare market unit at Zühlke Asia, focusing on innovative digital strategy and product development initiatives with global and local customers. Nicolas is passionate about helping clients connect the dots, bridging the gap from conceptualisation to implementation.
As an innovation partner, Jan-Philipp supports banks and other financial services companies in the development of data-driven business models and digital solutions and processes. He brings experience as a consultant from a technology and management consulting firm and thus extensive knowledge in the areas of Data, Machine Learning and Blockchain.
