Digital health solutions are transforming how pharma companies operate and engage with their stakeholders. However, the integration and successful deployment of these solutions require more than just innovative technology. For many pharma companies, the complexities of digital transformation require specialized knowledge and experience that may not be readily available in-house.
This is where digital health partners come into play, offering the strategic insight, technological capabilities, and go-to-market expertise needed to successfully navigate this evolving landscape.
What is a digital health partner?
A digital health partner is a specialized entity that collaborates with pharma companies to drive their digital health initiatives. These partners possess a deep understanding of the healthcare and technology sectors, enabling them to bridge the gap between them effectively. They are well-versed in this space's specific challenges and opportunities, such as navigating complex healthcare regulations, managing sensitive patient data, and seamlessly integrating established and emerging technologies into pharmaceutical processes.
Digital health partners work closely with pharma companies to gain insight into their unique needs, objectives, and challenges. They then tailor their services to help these companies achieve their digital goals, whether it's optimizing the R&D stage, improving their competitive differentiation, improving patient engagement to improve outcomes, supporting reimbursement, or developing new digital therapeutics. Essentially, they act as trusted collaborators, guiding pharma companies through every stage of their digital journey.
When should pharma companies engage a digital health partner?
Digital strategy development
The success of digital health initiatives depends on their seamless integration and alignment with a pharma company's broader strategic objectives. To truly unlock their potential, these initiatives should not be mere add-ons but rather core components of the company's overall goals. Pharma companies can benefit early on from bringing in a skilled digital health partner with the expertise to identify and demonstrate the value propositions of digital health initiatives and, through close collaboration with the pharma company, can pinpoint specific areas where these solutions will have the most impact and be strategically valuable. The partner helps the company prioritize these opportunities based on their potential to contribute to long-term success and develops a detailed roadmap that aligns digital health initiatives with business objectives.
Solution development and implementation
This task can be daunting for pharma companies, whose core expertise lies in drug development rather than digital health solutions. At this juncture, they must carefully consider their options: either invest in upskilling their already lean teams to handle solution development internally or engage a specialized partner with the technical expertise required.
Engaging a digital health partner offers several strategic advantages. By partnering with experts, pharma companies can free up internal resources to focus on what they do best—developing life-saving drugs and meeting the unmet needs of their stakeholders, while the partner handles the technical complexities of digital health solution development.
A significant benefit of working with a digital health partner is access to digital health platforms designed specifically for developing these solutions. These platforms dramatically reduce the time and effort required to bring digital health innovations to life, offering a more efficient and streamlined approach than building solutions from scratch. These platforms come with pre-built, customizable components that can be tailored to the specific needs of the patient, disease, or organization.
This approach accelerates the development process and significantly reduces the risks associated with creating digital health solutions. Instead of the costly and time-consuming process of building everything in-house, using a platform ensures that the foundational elements are already in place. The focus then shifts to customization and fine-tuning, allowing for a robust solution precisely aligned with patient, disease, and brand needs.
Scaling digital initiatives
Scaling a solution across the organization and/or expanding it into new markets and jurisdictions is complex, especially when dealing with varying regulatory requirements and the need for consistent performance across different regions. Digital health partners can help pharma companies manage this scaling process, especially if the solution has been built using their platform. These platforms are often designed with scalability in mind and have robust capabilities for managing and storing personal health data in compliance with diverse and ever-evolving data protection regulations. They can adapt to changes in legislation, ensuring that the solution remains compliant as it scales, regardless of the geographical location.
Moreover, platforms are designed for replication, enabling solutions to be easily extended across other business units within the organization. This means that once a digital health solution is successfully deployed in one area, it can be quickly adapted and implemented across the company’s broader product portfolio, reducing the innovation burden for each new solution.
The regulatory and compliance processes
Pharma is well-versed in navigating the stringent regulatory frameworks that govern their industry. Still, digital health solutions bring additional, rigorous requirements in areas such as data privacy and security and Software as a Medical Device (SaMD), and ensuring compliance with these regulations is a significant challenge.
Digital health partners ensure digital solutions are built with compliance in mind from the outset. Partners often have their own robust Quality Management Systems (QMS) designed to ensure that every aspect of the digital solution meets stringent regulatory standards, from initial design and development to deployment and post-market monitoring. By leveraging a partner’s QMS, pharma companies can streamline compliance processes, reducing the risk of costly regulatory setbacks.
In addition, partners’ deep understanding of regulatory requirements allows them to anticipate potential challenges and address them proactively, preventing delays that could arise from non-compliance. This speeds up the development process and minimizes the risk of having to backtrack or make costly revisions due to regulatory issues.
Key to skills to look for in a digital health partner
When selecting a digital health partner, the right mix of skills and expertise is crucial to ensure the success of digital health initiatives. The following skills should be at the top of the checklist when evaluating potential partners, as this is where the most value will be found:
Strategic alignment: A digital health partner should be able to guide pharma companies in aligning their digital initiatives with their broader business strategy. By providing a clear roadmap and setting realistic goals, these partners ensure that digital efforts contribute directly to the company’s overall objectives and achieve long-term success.
A robust digital health platform: This can significantly streamline the development process as a partner will clearly understand how to leverage their platform to build, scale, and iterate digital health solutions efficiently. This means they can use pre-built, customizable components to accelerate time-to-market while ensuring that the solutions are robust and adaptable to future needs.
Full end-to-end capabilities: As we've seen above, pharma may consider engaging a partner at several points in the digital health journey. Choosing a partner offering full end-to-end capabilities across the whole lifecycle reduces complexity, minimizes communication gaps, and maintains consistent quality and compliance, accelerating time-to-market and enhancing overall efficiency.
Flexibility, scalability, and agility: A partner should offer scalable solutions that can evolve as your organization’s needs change. They should be flexible and responsive, able to pivot quickly in response to new opportunities or challenges, and ready to support you in expanding your digital health initiatives across different markets or product lines.
Regulatory expertise: A deep understanding of the complex regulatory landscape is essential. A digital health partner should be well-versed in the regulations governing healthcare and local and international data privacy laws. They should also have experience navigating these regulations across different jurisdictions, ensuring that your solutions are compliant from the outset and throughout their lifecycle.
To learn more about how S3 Connected Health works with pharma companies to drive forward their digital health initiatives, get in touch with us today.
