Every company in the life sciences industry wants to be a patient-centric organization, right? Patient-centricity in life sciences is one of the industry’s favorite catchphrases. It’s especially important in an age where almost anyone can get almost anything they want or need through the press of a button.Where it gets tricky, though, is the “how.”
Adapting to patient needs while keeping other stakeholders satisfied is a balancing act. Additionally, many organizations don’t have the time or resources to make a major digital shift. How can companies keep up with patient needs, satisfy other stakeholders and consumers, and maintain security, all while staying within the bounds of complex pharmacovigilance regulations?
While many organizations who do decide to transform may focus on consumer- and patient-facing technology, transforming internal operations and technologies can be just as effective, reducing time and resources spent, and speeding time to market for important medicines and devices.
Create more efficient processes.
Traditional processes and systems in life sciences cannot keep up with patient needs. From target selection to drug discovery, clinical development, manufacturing, and supply chain planning, life sciences companies need robust business apps that they can use to streamline and automate processes. The resulting efficiency and productivity gains are good for everyone, the company, the patients, and the stakeholders.
Take TissueTech, for example. To better match customer needs, TissueTech developed a more complex pricing structure based on tier systems and unit quantities. To better support its sales teams, TissueTech needed a made-to-order business application to make the new pricing model simple to implement.
The app had to use dynamic, complex, conditional logic, yet present options to sales people in a simple, elegant user interface that would eliminate errors and deliver accurate quotes to customers quickly and efficiently.
By partnering with Saasli, TissueTech used Skuid to create a completely custom CPQ experience that can accommodate complex pricing rules, aggregate data from multiple, disparate sources, and present all relevant information within a simple, easy-to-use interface.
The app works on any web browser, mobile device, or even a chatbot, and results in less errors and more accurate quotes for customers.
Comply with pharmacovigilance obligations.
One aspect of patient-centricity, patient safety, is built into the regulations that govern life sciences organizations through pharmacovigilance. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) defines pharmacovigilance as, “The science and activities relating to the detection, assessment, understanding and prevention of adverse effects or any other possible drug-related problem.”
While pharmacovigilance is necessary to ensure community safety, the effectiveness of a drug, and company credibility, it comes with myriad complex regulations that organizations must comply with in order to obtain and maintain the authority to sell their products.
These regulations require a robust strategy for operations, surveillance, and systems, plus airtight cybersecurity. With Skuid, organizations can more efficiently manage the processes that pharmacovigilance requires, and with the new Skuid Private Data Service (PDS), they can keep their on-premise data secure without affecting their ability to innovate quickly.
By simplifying the processes required to manage pharmacovigilance, without sacrificing security, companies in life sciences can spend their time doing the work that matters, serving patients, and satisfying stakeholders.
Maximize IT resources.
Even for life sciences organizations that have the funding available to embark on a digital transformation, allocation of resources and time constraints can still present challenges. Let’s return to the TissueTech example. TissueTech needed their new CPQ app completed within a couple months, and they knew that they couldn’t just purchase an off-the-shelf application because their pricing model and business needs were so unique.
Due to constrained IT resources and a very tight deadline, TissueTech also did not have the option to follow traditional development methods, which would have involved the lengthy process of writing, updating, and maintaining custom code. They also needed a system that required little to no maintenance. If the sales team needed to make changes, they didn’t want to have to get in line behind other projects in IT’s backlog.
With Skuid’s no-code development, however, Saasli and TissueTech completed the first version of the app in just one week. And just 6 weeks later, they went live with the completed CPQ application.Because they built the solution without writing thousands of lines of code, business users can maintain the app and implement changes on their own, without help from IT.
“We built the app with Skuid in less time that we had spent with another development firm just doing discovery,” said Ian Vargas, Director, Sales System & Customer Service at TissueTech. “Clearly, the simplicity of Skuid won us over, and now we can maintain the app ourselves. We needed a platform that would grow with us, and we’re already looking at future plans to use the Skuid Platform in other areas of the company.”
Interested in learning more about how TissueTech accomplished their transformation? Try Skuid today!
