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Pharmaceutical Innovation: Top Trends from the Appian User Group

Victoria Ebel, Appian
September 22, 2017

Last week I traveled to Sanofi headquarters in Bridgewater, NJ, for Appian's Pharma User Group meeting. It was a day filled with excellent discussion surrounding the current and future state of the life sciences industry.

After listening to presentations from customers as well as an engaging industry panel, I have gathered key points on how pharma is innovating and what organizations are most excited about going forward.

Innovation through Cloud

The pharmaceutical industry representatives present at the Appian user group discussed being faced with the challenge of digital transformation in life sciences. They had to deal with slow and fragmented processes, overwhelming compliance standards, ever-evolving regulations, and working with employees that were spread all around the world. They wanted integration across departments, and regions on a global scale, and so they are turning to the cloud.

Many shared stories of their transition to the cloud. The levels of cloud adoption varied among customers, some chose a more substantial move, while others only transferred some processes to the cloud. They all, however, expressed benefits of the cloud, at every level of adoption.

One customer explored how the cloud is accelerating drug development time, cutting cycle time from an average of 50-77 days to an average of 20-40 days. Another organization highlighted the benefits cloud based analytics had across R&D, ultimately improving patient outcomes. Every cloud implementation that was discussed mentioned faster time-to-market for drugs, and streamlined workloads for those developing them.

For more information on how the cloud can impact healthcare and life sciences innovation and cost efficiency, email victoria.ebel@appian.com to get on the advance list for our upcoming Cloudy with a Chance of Disruption ebook

Looking Ahead

In addition to a growing movement toward the cloud, here are other trends that are gaining momentum in the industry:

    • There is a heightened interest surrounding RPA, AI, and machine learning, and their ability to simplify and improve the drug development process

    • CROs are viewed as playing an increased role in delivering productivity and cost efficiency to clinical operations

    • Focus on patient centricity will drive innovations through the IoT. For example, the idea of a "satisfaction guaranteed machine" is no longer a futuristic one, with modern medical devices such as pacemakers with observability technology already becoming prevalent.

    • Digital Transformation initiatives are focusing on: mobile communication, delivering personalized medicine, engaging more fully with patients and physicians, using data to drive superior insight and decision making, and transforming business processes with real-time responsiveness.

With all of these exciting trends no longer in our distant future, it is easy to say that we are in the midst of an extremely innovative period for the life sciences industry.

I, for one, cannot wait to see what is in store for pharmaceuticals as both a professional and a patient. If you are an Appian pharma customer or partner, I invite you to engage further with your peers both online and in-person by joining the Appian Community Pharma User Group. I look forward to our future discussions.

Want to learn more about innovation in Life Sciences? Tune in to our Facebook Live series featuring Evjatar (Evi) Cohen, Appian's Life Sciences Global Practice Lead, on Tuesday, October 3rd at 10:30 am EST

 

Victoria Ebel