Blue Star Infotech has noted that there would be a considerable increase in the adoption of SMAC (social, mobility, analytics and cloud) technologies in 2014 in the pharma industry. The key reason is that these technologies are compliant with the FDA regulations and can identify patterns in patient behaviour, and is therefore seen as an important tool for drug development.

The pharmaceutical industry has shown a gradual uptake in taking up enterprise technology in 2013, when it had taken incremental steps to implement SMAC. It is predicted that this trend of investment in SMAC will be accelerated in 2014, and in turn, would  pave the way for innovative solutions towards patient-centric and  customized healthcare delivery, Susmita Nandi, practice manager- BI & Analytics, Blue Star Infotech told Pharmabiz.

The potential of SMAC to enable the pharma industry bring innovative and cost-effective solutions is immense. For example, patient-groups and blog sites on the web provides huge data about patient behaviour, their unmet needs and quality of life pre and post therapy. In the pharmacovigilance area, the innovative audio and data mining techniques in social media may be able to predict a potential adverse drug reaction (ADR) before the actual outcome is declared, she added.

Telehealth is infused with healthcare delivery to patients with diseases like chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), chronic heart failure (CHF) and diabetes requiring continuous monitoring of vital signs, being at home. Many applications have evolved through the use of mobile technology, where the patients can monitor their own health by wearing them on their body like an accessory, or attach the chip as a patch. The data is transported to the diagnostic centre via telecom providers. The patients are provided with alerts of refilling prescription through the use of smart pills  which are chip embedded, which increases the compliance to therapy. Sales representatives are using e-detailing to reach the physicians, who can directly view the clinical attributes of the drug and differentiate it from the existing ones. This data is transferred from the company’s server onto the mobile device, carried by the Sales Rep.

The terabytes of data collected by the industry annually can be analyzed through analytics such as web analytics, big data, predictive modelling, and optimization. Predictive modelling is used to forecast clinical trials outcomes, avoid ADRs. Further analytics plays a role in launch sequencing, marketing spend analysis, sales force effectiveness which require large investments to maximize its potential.

Pharma companies are beginning to realize the cost saving potential as they go away from the CapEx platform to Cloud platform, which allows data sharing in real time. Some pharma majors have begun to enhance their customer relationship management (CRM) and Supply Chain Management to ensure operational efficiency and transparency. Adopting cloud technology boosts faster, informed decision making, avoiding unnecessary delays.

In 2014, as the pharma industry continues to adapt to the changed business model of providing customized, patient-centric healthcare, it will adopt SMAC enterprise to stay ahead of competition and help  innovate treatment protocol, said Nandi.