Life Sciences & Pharma Technology: Digital Transformation

Big tech has inserted itself into every aspect of our lives and is collecting user data on an unprecedented scale. This throws up some major challenges for pharmaceutical companies. Patients, health insurers and society in general expect ever more – from more personalised medicine to complementary digital health services, to outcome-based payment models (pay for performance). 

Zühlke offers both extensive expertise in the development of large B2C consumer platforms and more than 50 years of experience in the healthcare sector. We’re developing apps and devices for the next phase of personalised healthcare, and helping pharmaceutical companies position themselves to play a lead role in tomorrow’s digitalised healthcare system. 

Machine learning algorithms enable the development of exciting new products and services and well as improving therapy selection and process acceleration through the use of genetic or real-world data. In addition to our expertise in machine-learning algorithms, Zühlke also develops platforms to enable secure, legal use of anonymised health data – an important basis for research and development as well as a positive digital experience for patients. 

That requires trust between patients, researchers and the companies providing these solutions – which Zühlke achieves by giving patients complete control over their health data. To realise this, we bring together user-centric healthcare apps for patients, data security expertise, advanced machine-learning techniques like federated learning, and insights from the behavioural sciences.

Drugs sometimes have serious side effects that can be highly onerous for patients. Digital therapeutics (DTx) offer huge potential for addressing this problem, for example in areas such as mental health.

Zühlke can help you realise your digital healthcare ideas – from feasibility studies through to operation of your solution. The result is software as a medical device (SaMD) products capable of supplementing or even replacing existing therapies and diagnostic procedures. Enabling pharmaceutical companies to target new customer groups and develop completely new business and payment models (in Germany, for example, through digital health and digital care apps). 

And, in contrast to conventional drugs, bringing digital therapeutics to market is quick, simple and easily rolled out globally. We help you grasp this opportunity with secure, patient-centric apps that comply with exacting medical standards like IEC 62366-1.

In today’s healthcare, proving the efficacy of a new drug through clinical trials is no longer sufficient – you need to prove beyond doubt that it’s superior to existing treatments. As with outcome-based payment models (pay for performance), pharmaceutical companies are increasingly required to measure the benefits of a therapy in real time.

We can help you achieve this by, for example, developing smart sensors for measuring digital biomarkers. Our solutions are always based on established processes and subject to constant controls during development. We also help you exploit your harvested data – whether by developing and operating a full scale digital data platform, by using machine learning to extract valuable information from your captured data or by using user-friendly apps to add patient reported outcomes (PRO) to your data pool.

With overcomplicated registration processes and high drop-out rates, clinical trials are often inefficient and time-consuming. So much so that clinical trials can consume up to 50 percent of a pharmaceutical company’s R&D budget. By helping pharmaceutical companies identify suitable participants and making it easier for participants to take part in trials, digital technologies have the power to solve this problem. Zühlke’s GxP-compliant data platforms enable safe, reliable trials to be designed in the shortest possible time.

Using our AI expertise, we can help you extract key information from your harvested data. And we enhance the participant experience by offering attractive apps and user-friendly participant portals – bringing you closer to your patients, but also closer to doctors and other healthcare professionals. And we make sure our solutions meet the highest security standards, boosting trust in your company.