How an Augmented Consumer Platform for Life Sciences Creates Data-Driven Employees

A data explosion is occurring in life sciences. As enterprises integrate more third-party data sources, they expect data-driven employees to become their competitive advantage moving forward. The latter objective can be a challenge when analytics and BI dashboards can't keep up with the speed of business; however, an augmented consumer platform for life sciences can. 

Coined by Gartner in 2021, the term "augmented consumer" refers to business users and decision-makers having direct access to personalized, relevant insights to enhance their workflows, productivity, and performance. 

In the webinar, The Rise of the Augmented Consumer in Life Sciences: Shaping the Analytics and Business Intelligence Strategy, Rohit Vashisht, Co-Founder & CEO of WhizAI, commented, "It's for someone who needs information to do their jobs well but doesn't have 'analyst' in their job title."

 "An augmented consumer platform is for someone who needs information to do their jobs well but doesn't have 'analyst' in their job title."-Rohit Vashisht, Co-Founder & CEO, WhizAI.

Furthermore, the augmented consumer persona shows why user adoption with life sciences data analytics dashboards has been low for decades. "When you use Uber or a social app, do you think you're using software, or do you think you are just using a service?" Vashisht asked, "That's what analytics has to be. It's what this generation is used to." 

Jérôme Chabrillat, Associate Principal of ZS Associates, who also shared his insights on the webinar, commented, "The technology is here, and people are ready to embrace it. If they have a question, they go to Google. Sales reps want information at their fingertips." 

"The technology is here, and people are ready to embrace it. If they have a question, they go to Google. Sales reps want information at their fingertips." Jérôme Chabrillat, Associate Principal Business Intelligence 

The Technology that Powers Augmented Consumer Platforms for Life Sciences

Dashboards cannot provide immediate decision analytics. Data teams have to spend weeks creating reports, and ultimately, the sales reps have to spend hours combing through the information to draw any meaningful conclusions. Instead, augmented consumer platforms for life sciences are uniquely designed with advanced technologies to replace the dashboard as a unit of work with simply asking a question. They're powered by: 

Artificial intelligence (AI): 

AI allows the platform to quickly analyze billions of data points and identify trends and outliers to respond accurately to augmented consumers' questions. Platform designers must also train the AI model specifically for life sciences to understand what users are referring to, for example, when they use terms such as 4x4, 13x13, TRx, or NBRx in their questions.

Search and natural language query (NLQ): 

Augmented consumer platforms allow users to simply ask a question and get an answer, whether they type a query into a search bar or ask verbally via a voice interface. 

Content personalization and embedded interfaces: 

Because dashboards are time-consuming to create, they often attempt to meet the needs of a broad range of people across an organization. However, an augmented consumer platform for life sciences can deliver personalized life sciences intelligence to a user based on role, market, geography, or other parameters. Users receive contextual, ultra-relevant insights in the moment to help them perform more successfully. 

Natural language generation (NLG): 

‍An augmented consumer platform for life sciences doesn't require users to dig through reports for information. NLG gives the platform the ability to create easy-to-understand summaries, highlighting the most critical insights for the user. 

Phone interfaces: 

Augmented consumers need the ability to access insights anywhere, using smartphones and tablets and PCs and laptops. Phone interfaces enable the platform to deliver insights whenever users need them, even in a healthcare center lobby waiting for a meeting. 

The Path Toward Augmented Analytics 

Both Chabrillat and Vashisht commented that dashboards, which represent substantial investments and are fundamental to many internal processes, aren't going away soon. However, it is possible to use dashboards and an augmented consumer platform for life sciences side by side. 

Gartner predicts that by 2023, domain-specific augmented analytics solutions will drive overall analytics adoption from 35 percent to 50 percent. 

Vashisht explained that your organization might be ready to consider deploying an AI-driven analytics platform if:

• You've reached the limit of how much you can scale a dashboard solution
• You want to get more return for the investment you've made in acquiring data and building data warehouses 
• Your data science team wants a practical way to operationalize the algorithms they've built 

Based on a poll of webinar attendees, it appears that the majority of life sciences enterprises are ready to make a change. When asked if their teams can deliver tailored, dynamic, and personalized insights on time to business users, 68 percent responded, "It could be better." 

The webinar concluded with advice on how life sciences companies can deliver insights to the augmented consumer. Key takeaways include aligning insights with users' roles and teaching users how to use their new power to do their jobs more effectively. However, it begins by evaluating existing analytics and BI. 

The future is augmentation, not a replacement. "How can you complement existing analytics and BI dashboards, so they have more value to end-users?" Vashisht asked. 

Watch The Rise of the Augmented Consumer in Life Sciences: Shaping the Analytics and Business Intelligence Strategy on-demand and learn more.