How is the shift toward digital health solutions transforming the pharmaceutical industry, and what challenges remain?

Jason Housley, Senior Director, Customer Strategy and Success, eClinical Solutions

Bringing new drugs to market requires efficiency in harnessing, organizing, and analyzing the increasing abundance of clinical data. New digital health solutions, including wearable devices, electronic health records (EHRs), apps, sensors, and numerous others, offer promising advancements and personalization for patients and sites, but are simultaneously adding complexity to clinical data management. (We must, however, ask ourselves, if this volume and diversity of digital data is actually adding the value anticipated.) Stakeholders cannot access the full benefit of digital data breakthroughs, unless that data can be integrated and utilized for meaningful insights. As cycle times continue to pressure drug development, the industry is experiencing challenges in connecting diverse and ubiquitous data efficiently.

Clinical data is a powerful asset, but modernizing our approach is necessary to accelerate drug development. To overcome this, implementing holistic data strategies and thoughtfully adopting technology, such as AI, is necessary. Innovating infrastructure and processes is paramount to widespread digital health adoption. Leaders should focus on the reexamination of existing workflows, embedding technology to connect people, attitudes to risk, data, and applications so that data insights can drive decision-making. Doing so may enable the long-coveted nirvana of leveraging the power of digital health solutions to optimize NCE breakthroughs at pace.

Jason Housley

Senior Director, Customer Strategy and Success, eClinical Solutions