As we usher in another year, there are clear signs indicating where the pharmaceutical industry will be focused in 2012. While each company will have its own specific goals, there are emerging indicators that they will focus on embracing innovative technology as an overarching theme. Pharma companies are ready to adapt and invest in solutions that increase their competitiveness.  Here are five noteworthy themes that will be a priority for life sciences companies in 2012.

Getting Lean

With healthcare spending cuts, a wave of patent expiries and increased regulation, the vast majority of pharma companies are looking for ways to do more with less. To achieve this business imperative, while remaining competitive, the industry will look to make significant investments in and leverage technology as opposed to the traditional focus on hiring. Of great importance will be solutions that yield new and unprecedented customer insights that allow more focused marketing with greater yields. Companies will make sizeable allocations in this area to adopt solutions that are nimble, adaptive, pharma-centric, and cost-effective, while delivering more value than legacy systems. People dependent processes and solutions will be replaced with SaaS based ones that can adapt to the ever changing pharma business model. In a time when pharma is scaling back there will be lessons to learn on how to run a lean organization – something they haven’t had to do in a long time.  

Going Mobile

We all know the numbers and they are staggering. There will be over 100 million smartphones in use in the US by 2015. Eighty percent of Fortune 500 companies are testing or deploying the iPhone and 65 percent are testing or deploying the iPad. Mobile devices are quickly becoming the leading method of accessing the Internet and will surpass desktop Internet use within 4 years. These devices are the fastest growing consumer product in history and the adoption curve for mobile Internet is identical to that of radio, TV and the original Internet. We are watching history unfold and this is just the beginning.

In the New Year, pharma will truly set its sights on mobile technology. Every company that is running pilots with multiple devices will officially roll-out one or two full scale projects - mostly iPads – in 2012. Pharma has embraced SaaS-based solutions as viable cost-effective alternatives to in-house systems. Couple this with unprecedented mobile demand and adoption from the end users and a workforce that is largely mobile - pharma is the perfect sector to benefit from the trend. The best use cases for mobile will still be tested in 2012 but any solution that enables faster decision making, better customer service, increased productivity and agility, and enhanced information consumption will be considered. However, this investment in tablets and iPads needs to go hand in hand with my next prediction…

Putting Data in the Driver Seat

To harness the true power of mobile, in 2012 organizations will make greater investments in data and analytics that emphasize customer insights. The amount of available data has exploded in the past five years, and pharma companies that put a high value on understanding their information will create stronger relationships with their customers and fare better in the market. The sources and complexity of data are increasing at a rapid pace with new categories emerging monthly. New companies have emerged that focus on packaging unique new sets of proprietary information that deliver new perspectives on customer and patient behavior across varied settings.

In 2012, social media data will create a new category of analytics to better understand customers/physician sentiment, influence and relationship with your company. Social data will also reshape our understanding of things like brand awareness, loyalty and campaign effectiveness. The conversations happening on social media are seemingly endless, but extremely valuable in generating a clearer understanding of the fluid market.

Focusing on the Physician

Payer dynamics have introduced a whole new level of prescribing influence but at the end of the day it is the physician who writes the prescription. Access to doctors is at an all-time low but that doesn’t mean interactions between a rep and doctors are not valuable. I’ve heard first-hand and read numerous doctors opinions that well versed reps help explain the mechanics of how their medications work and with this information doctors are able to prescribe more effectively and offer what they feel would be the best treatment protocol for a patient’s condition with the least adverse effects.

In 2012 there will be a renewed focus on physician profiling to better understand their prescribing influences that will result in a more value-added relationship between the doctor and the brand. Micro-targeting will address the individual physician, from both a quantitative and qualitative perspective and across multiple dimensions that will put an emphasis on the exchange of contextually relevant localized information. This will help reps transition to a more specialty role making themselves more valuable to physicians. Advances in technology and data will allow us to understand, map and quantify the influence and impact from your messaging and how and why it flows through the prescriber communities. Which brings me to my next prediction…

Unlock Value in Real-World Social Networks

The study of social network phenomena is an emerging trend that will add tremendous value to pharma. The work that thought leaders in the field like Professor Nicholas Christakis, of Harvard University; and Professor Deb Roy from the MIT Media Lab have published in the past year is ground-breaking. Both online and offline social networks can now be analyzed to measure real-time promotional response which results in vastly improved precision in mapping social ties and targeting key influencers. By mapping physician networks and communities, we can reveal how and where influence moves through communities of practice and exerts influence on physician treatment behaviors, such as prescribing. We can then track the flow of information in these networks by region, therapeutic area, and specialty. This type of micro-targeting has the potential to unlock hidden potential and value within the physician universe.

While 2012 will be a critical year for understanding what healthcare reform will mean for the pharma industry, it is certain that it will also be a transformational and potentially groundbreaking year.