<p>Did you ever imagine that the Healthcare industry would follow the travel, banking and insurance model of ubiquity? Well, let's just say necessity drove innovation. The $250 billion dollars spends on sales and marketing by the pharmaceuticals industry is now breaking down for the want of more effective channels to engage with the doctors. The key metric here is the time spent per doctor per medical rep and on demand engagement. The approach is shifting from pure marketing to relationship building leveraging the power of multi channel technology.<br><br>Let us take a deeper dive into the digital transformation story of the pharmaceuticals industry. And let's start with China, where it happened closest to India - the opportunity for millennium growth as well as the rules of the Big game in the form of compliance.<br><br>Much as the industry loosely qualifies digital transformation as a simplistic provision of technology platforms and services for enterprise communication and convergence, each country presents its own unique challenges. China, for example, has grown 22% CAGR from 2003 to 2013. Of this, the pharmaceuticals market in China is estimated at $100 billion approx., with a double digital growth over the last 7-8 years. However, the returns from new product launches haven't grown proportionately. Global MNCs face challenges at two levels:<br><br>" Access / coverage - Sales force covers only 17-18% of the 2 million doctor population and are looking at various ways to cover rest of the huge uncovered doctor base<br>" Governments crackdown on doctors and pharma on compliance and ethical marketing has reduced access and raised questions around quality of access. Pricing is under pressure.<br><br>Short-term digital alternatives such as tele-reps, broad market representatives, digital promotions, are only incremental and not sustainable. There are emerging intermediaries, doctors' behavior is unpredictable, and B2B channels have specific requirements of longevity, stickiness and finally, scalability. Layer this with the complexity of healthcare spending and regulations for each city in China and investments for thousands of primary and secondary care hospitals in the offing. The outcome is an overwhelming deluge of behavioural trends from each disease vertical in each hospital in every city that needs to be examined for developing the right protocols for better patient outcomes being the overriding goal. And this is just the picture in one country.<br><br><img alt="" src="http://bw-image.s3.amazonaws.com/pharmaceuticals-lrg.jpg" style="width: 589px; height: 383px;"><br><br>Here is an illustration of a paradigm shift from the traditional feet on the ground sales rep model to an enterprise wide multi channel deployment for on- demand information service to doctors. What this requires is a long -term view of doctors relationships and capability of managing tailor made approved scientific content. Three core steps -<br><br>" Deliver enterprise-level multi-channel doctor engagement platforms , tele-detailing centres , channel usage analytics and multiple format content to set up access beyond their present markets<br>" Set up amplification of reps with support channels for Big city - big hospitals reps where access is an issue due to compliance.<br>" Apply IP platforms like APTILON and Field central, Medical expertise, Analytics and business know how to set up algorithms and provide content to effectively engage better<br><br>Let's also look at the blurring boundaries between traditional research and development and commercial functions. The stakeholders of the healthcare industry have come to terms with usage of treatment and cost data for deriving better health outcomes. Sophisticated analytics offer decision -making tools to doctors and others in the care giving chain to reduce costs across the value chain.<br><br>Can horizontal IT companies deliver this capability? Is the game still in scale or in know-how and service? You can draw your own conclusions.<br><br><em>The author, Manish Gupta, is CEO, Indegene - a global healthcare solutions company</em></p>
