The biological and life sciences have seen revolutionary change in the last ten years.
Pharmaceutical, medical device, and biotech companies can quickly embrace cutting-edge technology to keep ahead of a constantly changing medical space, as demonstrated by the COVID-19 pandemic and the growth of telehealth.
Life sciences organizations are constantly developing new ideas to improve patients’ treatment.
Nevertheless, non-clinical departments frequently continue to be trapped in manual processes.
Many sales and marketing businesses have maintained the same manual data collection and sharing process over five years.
These teams would benefit from the same dedication to digital innovation as their clinical and research counterparts, optimizing revenue.
The primary expansion engine for all life science businesses is a comprehensive embrace of intelligent solutions.
What is Pharma Technology?
PharmTech, or pharmaceutical technology, applies different technologies and scientific knowledge to pharmacy, pharmacology, and the pharmaceutical industry.
It focuses on enhancing the process of drug formulation, dosing, and preparation, much like pharmaceutics.
Furthermore, it plays a crucial role in assessing, measuring, and optimizing several values and data, including but not limited to bioavailability, bulk density, hygroscopicity, stability analysis, solubilisation, and fabric crystallinity.
Pharma technology also addresses the tools, processes, and equipment needed to create, produce, transport, store, and administer pharmaceuticals. It also collaborates closely with medical technologies.
Examples of Pharma Technology
Pharmaceutical Digitalization
Unsupervised drug use and in-person trips to the pharmacy or doctor are gradually becoming outdated.
This can be attributed in large part to the convergence of smart gadgets, pervasive Internet access, simplified healthcare apps, and an array of digital services and goods.
Healthcare applications are one example; besides providing data at any given time, these apps can connect users with AI chatbots, physicians, nurses, and pharmaceutical companies.
Apps can also provide precise instructions on what medication to take, when, how often, and in what doses.
Additionally, apps or services can display a map of nearby hospitals that accept their insurance, free medical clinics, or pharmacies that supply a particular medication.
Pharmaceutical and communication technologies enabled pharmaceutics to go completely digital.
It has brought manufacturing facilities and pharmacies together, collaborating with healthcare providers, insurance companies, banks, and people.
Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning
Knowing how employment is being replaced by technology makes it clear that repetitive work with predictable patterns is what machine learning and artificial intelligence are good at.
Therefore, they are the best options for any data entry and management, mainly if the data is comprehensive, sensitive, secret, or requires on-demand access from anywhere.
It can be trained by experts to identify anomalies, record mistakes, examine inefficiencies, and stop misconduct.
Additionally, it is ideal for organizing and maximizing requests, consultations, and appointments, carrying out research and clinical studies, and providing medication prescriptions and diagnostics.
It is beneficial when there is a chance of conflicts or negative consequences that people could miss.
Pharmaceutical IoT Devices
Microchips, RFID, and NFC chips are examples of Internet of Things (IoT) devices that the pharmaceutical business is increasingly using. They support supply chain uniformity in terms of equipment, workers, goods, and transit.
Another example is wearables that monitor blood pressure, oxygen levels, heart rate, and pulse.
Also, did you know that the FDA has approved patients to absorb microscopic sensors inserted into their medications?
The sensor tracks the medication’s effects and either retains the data or communicates with the patient and medical staff in real-time.
When nanotechnology is fully developed, these gadgets might live inside the body for an extensive time.
Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality
Patients’ perceptions of the world and their feelings will be entirely transformed by the use of VR and AR in pharmaceuticals.
Creating spaces that support communication or providing therapies for psychological disorders, chronic pain, or palliative care are obvious examples.
Medical and pharmaceutical personnel can receive excellent training in these settings.
The Impact of Technology on the Life Science Industry
The impact of technology on the pharmaceutical industry has been immense, transforming how health care is delivered and managed.
This digital transformation has boosted the industry, making essential services more accessible and efficient worldwide.
But how effective is this change? Let’s explore the advantages and disadvantages of tech in the pharmaceutical sector.
Advantages of Technology in the Life Science Industry
- Tech has boosted access to healthcare services, even in rural areas, through innovations like e-pharmacies and online consultations, improving lives across regions.
- Digital tools like e-prescriptions and E-Verification ensure medications are authenticated, reducing risk and preventing substance abuse.
- Technology has streamlined logistics by optimizing supply chain models, making medicine delivery faster and more efficient for health providers.
- The widespread availability of healthcare apps and online platforms gives patients access to vital information and enhances their discovery of nearby hospitals and medical facilities that accept their insurance.
- Tech integration allows real-time monitoring through Internet of Things (IoT) devices, improving patient care and medical management.
- Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) models provide advanced training for medical professionals, boosting drug research and development discovery.
Disadvantages of Technology in the Life Science Industry
- The impact of data breaches and privacy violations remains a concern when sensitive medical information is stored online.
- Without proper training, the workforce may struggle to adapt to new tech, which could hinder productivity and affairs.
- The high costs associated with adopting advanced tech can be a barrier for smaller companies, especially in the initial stages of implementation.
- Rural and underserved regions still face limited access to digital health resources, widening the healthcare gap.
- An overreliance on technology might reduce the hands-on skills of healthcare providers, affecting patient outcomes.
- The strict regulations in the pharmaceutical sector and limited funding can slow down the integration of new tech models.
Technology’s impact on the pharmaceutical industry is undeniably transformative, yet it presents challenges that must be carefully managed.
Pharmaceutical companies can leverage technology to boost services and improve global healthcare outcomes by understanding the opportunities and risks.
Applications of Pharmaceutical Technology
Let’s explore several areas where pharmaceutical technology dramatically helps. The following are the ways that pharmaceutical technology is used:
Cost Cutting and Commercialization
Several ways to cut expenses significantly include 3D printing, artificial intelligence, machine learning, automation, and data analysis.
These technologies are essential for simplifying the bureaucratic procedures associated with drug commercialization, from filing patent applications to dispensing medication. This increase in efficiency relieves policymakers and patients alike.
Safety and Ethics
Human and animal clinical testing is unethical. More ethical methods include implementing entirely “organs on chips” or “silico trials” technology. This full-fledged substitute mimics various physiological processes using chips and intricate mathematics.
It can compute temperature, hormones, bodily fluids, pathogens, electrolytes, hydration, circulation, and more.
It may then forecast how a drug, treatment, or particular product fits into variables and equations, i.e., how the body would react.
Another idea is to use artificial intelligence to create a patient’s digital genetic twin. It can then execute thousands of scenarios with the help of cloud computing and a sizable knowledge library.
Better yet, it keeps learning from every result until it determines the optimal path of action.
Pharmaceutical technologies conserve time and money while ensuring the safety of both humans and animals.
Transparency, Privacy, and Incentives
The advances in pharmaceutics will skyrocket if we can successfully implement blockchain technology.
Intellectual property, for instance, will still be enforceable, but owners won’t need to start with millions or billions of dollars.
Anyone from anywhere worldwide can sign up for the platform and contribute information and resources to advance research and development in return for a cut or other reward.
Every donor can be quickly followed, validated, and associated with their contribution—but only with permission.
Blockchain technology can prevent frequent scams, counterfeiting, and misuse in the pharmaceutical supply chain.
Apart from all these, Pharmaserv Life Science Product is a powerful software solution designed to elevate your pharmaceutical operations. By optimizing workflows, improving customer engagement, and increasing productivity, you can achieve your pharmaceutical conversation intelligence software objectives.
Features like better customer data management, real-time tracking enablement, and facilitated medical detailing can enhance sales performance and drive business growth.
The Influence of AI Technologies in Driving Life Science Sales
Life sciences businesses are adopting sales enablement technologies, data, systems, and processes to improve individual and team performance. Do these investments, though, indeed payoff?
The information appears to indicate otherwise. As per Forbes, the typical sales representative dedicates only 36% of their time to actual sales, and even more concerning, only 24.7% of sales representatives accomplish their goals.
Data-driven AI solutions have been widely implemented in sales and marketing operations within the pharmaceutical business.
AI algorithms can analyze demographic data, electronic medical records, and physician data to find trends, patterns, and insights that might assist salespeople in customizing their presentations and messaging to specific HCPs.
Pharmaserv AI optimizes pharmaceutical operations with AI-powered tools. Our AI analyses vast datasets and identifies trends and insights, enabling your sales team to schedule efficient appointments and tailor presentations to individual physicians.
As a result, interactions and campaigns for sales and marketing are more successful and increase client satisfaction and engagement.
Pharma sales agents frequently oversee a particular region and locate possible clients.
Artificial intelligence (AI) can assist sales teams in maximizing their territory management by examining data on physician referral networks, prescribing trends, and demographics.
Salespeople may effectively discover high-potential targets and prioritize their outreach efforts with this.
Strategies for Boosting Sales in Life Science Companies
Although tools, technologies, and data can improve performance, your team can only go so far with them.
If you want to see real progress from your sales team, it’s time to adopt a more comprehensive strategy.
Here are some strategies to improve the performance of your sales team.
Create a Coaching Culture
What does the term “coaching culture” mean? An essential component of how managers and leaders grow their teams is coaching.
It promotes performance, aligns objectives, and instills shared values. Intentional, on-the-spot sales coaching via peer-to-peer, bottom-up, and top-down methods is necessary.
Intentional Coaching
Planning and goal-setting are essential components of intentional coaching. It entails determining your success measures, setting your coaching objectives, and creating a strategy to reach them.
With the assistance of intentional coaching, the coaching process can be made more meaningful and in line with the company’s goals by targeting particular outcomes.
It also increases the likelihood that the coaching process will be successful by providing structure and accountability.
On-the-spot Coaching
Giving coaching advice and assistance as needed on the spot is known as “in-the-moment” coaching.
To assist salespeople in performing better, one watches conversations to determine areas that need work and gives them quick feedback and direction. On-the-spot tutoring facilitates immediate improvement.
It also allows salespeople to reflect on their errors, modify their strategy, and instantly improve.
Top-down, Bottom-up and Peer-to-peer Coaching
While coaching is frequently considered a top-down endeavor, peer-to-peer and bottom-up coaching are equally valuable.
Encouraging bottom-up coaching allows staff members to impart their unique knowledge and insights to managers, providing leaders with new insights and management abilities.
Peer-to-peer coaching is also essential because it establishes a culture of mutual learning and teamwork where team members may build their abilities together, learn from each other’s experiences, and exchange best practices in a collaborative and supportive atmosphere.
Implementing this inclusive and multidirectional coaching method can help organizations cultivate a culture of ongoing growth and development and empower each individual.
Reevaluate Your Systems
Your sales technology stack and procedures are hindering you if they are causing snags in the process, misunderstandings, and delays.
Processes and tools are designed to make the work and activities of your sales staff more efficient. However, it takes more than access to the newest technologies to ensure success.
The secret is operationalizing and maintaining the behaviors required to boost performance efficiently.
Here are some ways to help you get the most out of your systems and processes.
1. Provide Education and Training
Any technology can only be fully utilized by users who are thoroughly aware of its capabilities and limits and how to use it most effectively for efficiency and productivity. Learning is best absorbed when needed and integrated into the workflow to maximize information retention.
2. Track and Apply the Right Data
Tracking and applying accurate data to make well-informed decisions, optimizing tactics, and spur growth is imperative. This involves locating, monitoring, and utilizing the most pertinent and useful information.
3. Connect leading and lagging indicators
While lagging indicators are historical measures that offer a retrospective view of past performance, leading indicators are predictive metrics that assist in forecasting future performance.
Leading and trailing indicators are related in that they complement one another to provide a comprehensive view of performance.
Leading indicators highlight the organisation’s situation and areas needing development.
Conversely, lagging indicators demonstrate the organisation’s historical performance and offer a standard by which to gauge future development.
Other Sales Enablement Strategies for Life Sciences Sales Teams
1. Establish a Self-Serve Sales Content Library with Items Representatives Will Use
Reps are empowered with simple access to the content they need to engage buyers through a self-serve sales content library.
This library should be well-organised, searchable, and brimming with pertinent, high-quality content that answers customers’ frequently asked concerns and pain areas.
White papers, product brochures, case studies, and regulatory compliance documents are valuable information.
2. Help Reps Meet Buyer Preferences and Increase Sales by using DSRs
Digital Sales Rooms (DSRs) are safe virtual environments where vendors may exchange information, interact with purchasers, and work together on solutions.
These rooms offer a central location for all sales-related communications, which facilitates access to buyer information and tracking representative engagement.
Additionally, DSRs provide data to sales representatives so they may comprehend buyer behavior and modify their approach accordingly.
Conclusion
Pharma technology is revolutionizing the life sciences industry, helping companies innovate and improve patient care through digital solutions like AI, machine learning, and IoT.
These tools optimize sales strategies by analyzing data, targeting high-potential clients, and enhancing customer engagement.
PharmaServ’s Field Service Management Software and CoPilot e-Detailing Software further support pharma sales teams by automating tasks, managing territories, and delivering personalized presentations to healthcare professionals, ultimately increasing sales success.
Adopting these technologies is crucial for growth and efficiency in the pharmaceutical sector.
Life sciences sales teams must stay ahead of the curve as B2B and B2C purchasing habits change more.
By using these digital sales enablement tactics, you can ensure that your sales representatives not only satisfy but surpass the needs of today’s knowledgeable and self-reliant consumers.
If your sales representatives have access to the appropriate enablement resources and a well-coordinated strategy, they can accomplish unprecedented success and forge closer, more meaningful bonds with their customers.
