Technology now offers pharma and med device marketers a mother lode of useful information to help them better connect with patients, physicians and really all healthcare stakeholders. Along with this info comes new, improved—and many more—marketing opportunities. But understanding and using this info (while improving ROI) can be quite challenging for marketers—and a huge responsibility.
That’s the consensus of our 2013 Brand Champions and Marketer of the Year who tackled the topic, Big Data: Making It Useful in Strategic Decision Making at the PM360 Brand Champion Circle of Excellence held last September just before our annual Trailblazer Awards Gala.
Kaye Kugler of Santarus may have said it best: “Data needs to go to those who can interpret it correctly.”
In fact, the need to correctly interpret the huge influx of available data is creating major shifts in how pharma and med device brand managers and marketers run operations. How? In a word: Partnerships.
Consider this quote from AstraZeneca’s Aurora Archer, 2013 Marketer of the Year: “I am very clear that I cannot do my job effectively without a strong IT partner,” she says. “That’s a shift because most IT organizations within pharma have not worked as business enablers.”
But just as in other areas of the pharma and med device industries, partnerships are now forming between marketers and external or internal IT out of that necessity to correctly understand Big Data—and avoid compliance, HIPAA and privacy issues, among others—and make it useful in a cost-effective way that contributes to ROI. According to our award recipients, there may still be a long way to go toward achieving these objectives, but marketers who have opted to leverage these partners are showing wins, as the story continues to evolve (click here to see what our Trailblazer Champs had to say).
While there’s no doubt that technology is advancing faster than many can even understand it—it keeps coming. For a 360° view of exactly what is changing and how rapidly—and the myriad of new opportunities for pharma and med device marketers to inform and engage their customers—don’t forget to check out our special annual supplement, the Digital Compendium.
Cheers!
