Navigating healthcare’s new world: principles for future planning

by Paul Lindsay

2 min read

May 9, 2019 12:00:00 AM

This year’s #EyeforPharma conference opened with ‘5 Bold Predictions for Pharma’.

But what do the thought provoking predictions mean for pharma company teams facing these challenges?

The 5 predictions, for what comes next, were:

Pharma will become irrelevant - innovative companies will be able to get together to produce a digital value chain, or platform, able to launch and commercialise drugs, without the need for the scale or experience of a large pharma entity.
The fastest growing healthcare company isn’t a healthcare company - nobody would be surprised if one of the large technology companies becomes the fastest growing entity in healthcare within three years. But will it be Apple, Google or Amazon?
Pharma companies will realise they ‘can’t have sex with their cousins’ - as animals do, companies should look for more diverse partners in order to generate new DNA.
Prevention becomes unpreventable - Preventative care will bring a much larger portion of the current 7.6 billion humans into pharma’s customer base. It’s time to move our industry away from sick-care and towards healthcare.
The first patient-created medicine will arrive - it will soon be possible for patients to design and develop their own medicine through uploading of their own personal data and simulating treatments using a digital twin.

Source: EyeForPharma Opening Keynote, Barcelona 2019

Whether these become reality or not, they confirm our beliefs that marketeers need new skills.

Beyond marketing, here are some things that we believe pharma companies will need to do well to survive in the evolving world of healthcare:

Future Orientated Leadership

Leadership is about doing the right thing, and particularly so in pharma, where patient health is at stake. To do the right thing for the future of patient health, pharma companies need future focussed leaders throughout the business, who can predict and navigate the healthcare revolution, so that future business can thrive.

Behaviour Change

We believe that nothing changes unless behaviour changes. Pharma needs to identify the new customer (or internal) behaviours needed to bring about change and create a plan to make it happen. These plans are likely to include innovating beyond the Brand and harnessing disruptive technology to drive growth.

Partnering

Pharma will only meet future healthcare needs through collaboration. The number and diversity of partners that pharma need to collaborate with will increase; as well as regulators, payers and patient groups, pharma now needs to consider how to partner (or compete) with external innovators to produce a digital value chain, or platform to launch and commercialise drugs.

AI technology correctly diagnosed conditions in 81 percent of patients, compared to a 72 percent average for accurate diagnoses among real physicians over a five-year period.

At EyeforPharma, we saw an industry aspiring to address the healthcare challenges facing society, and whole heartedly agree with the theme of the conference, ‘Medicine is Just the Beginning’. The next step is for individual companies to map how they can thrive in healthcare’s new world.

Over the past 3 years, we’ve helped a number of healthcare brand teams develop and launch products by tapping into trends.

We’d love to know your predictions for pharma and how to thrive in the future, please comment below or feel free to get in touch.