What Life Sciences Companies Lose by Ignoring AI-Powered Analytics

Today, life sciences teams are flooded with data. The recent pandemic accelerated the deluge by pushing everything online: meetings, client conversations, and casual dinners suddenly turned digital. These interactions could be captured and used to influence decisions at all levels if the interpreted data was correct. This highlighted a fundamental challenge: while data-based insights were technically available to everyone willing to wrangle with the current tools, accessing them wasn't always easy or practical. 

Most life sciences companies still rely on traditional analytics tools and analysts to uncover and deliver critical insights. As a result, analysts — and legacy solutions — face limitations. The dashboards they can create are limited, static, and hard to use. Hence, companies increasingly turn to domain-specific, augmented consumer solutions like WhizAI. These new solutions empower teams to make intelligent, data-driven decisions. They put the power of insights directly in the hands of business users. According to Gartner, this is precisely where the industry is heading. They predict that overall analytics adoption will increase from 35% to 50% and that vertical and domain-specific augmented solutions will drive the change. 

These considerations lead us to an important question: what do life sciences companies stand to lose if they don't add augmented consumer solutions to their operations? And how could those decisions affect their future competitive edge? To answer those questions, we need to examine the main challenges that stand in their way and what companies stand to gain when they overcome them. 

The key data-based challenge facing life sciences teams 

I had the pleasure to be a part of a great panel discussion on the data deluge in the life sciences industry recently with Manesh Naidu, the CMO of Althera, and Prem Naveen, a Digital, Data and Analytics Leader at Cognizant Life Sciences. During the discussion, Manesh summarized the challenge facing the industry perfectly:

"At the end of the day, the people who are closest to the business at the ground level… who are using data on a day-to-day basis to run the business are not necessarily as data-savvy as the analytics team. As a result, one of two things happen:

1. They bombard the analytics team with many questions because they want to understand what's going on in the business.

2. They ignore the data and operate by gut because the amount of information is tremendous, and they don't have easy access to it. "

The sheer amount of data available and the technical challenges — and time constraints — standing between business users and BI tools are leaving opportunities on the table. But it doesn't have to be that way. 

Manesh was a customer of WhizAI at a global Pharmaceutical company before he joined Althera, and he faced a similar challenge. Before switching to WhizAI, his company gave field teams standard spreadsheet reports. The reports were packed with data that tech-savvy users could query and analyze. However, the sheer volume of data, the technical skill required to use it properly, and the time it would take to run the analysis made it difficult to use. These challenges greatly limited the power and accuracy of the insights reps could get out in the field. 

That's why this global pharma "fed" the data to WhizAI. Now, instead of using spreadsheets, reps could text their questions using natural language and get an answer in seconds. They could simply ask WhizAI about competitive market share for a specific doctor, zip code, or city while out in the field, thus eliminating the barrier between users and data. Suddenly, instead of dealing with intensely complex spreadsheets, phone an analyst back at the home office for help, or rely on gut instinct, the information they needed was just one text away. 

The key advantages of augmented consumer solutions

Augmented consumer solutions evolved from augmented analytics solutions and are a shortcut to accurate insights. Unlike legacy tools, they're an extension of the user. Let's take a quick look at their key advantages and why they represent the future for agile, competitive life science businesses. 

• Augmented consumer solutions require minimal training to use effectively.

Like consumer solutions, they're built to be as intuitive as possible, thus making adoption extremely easy. As a result, companies that adopt solutions like WhizAI can use data points fast to gain a near-instant competitive advantage. 

For example, a large life sciences company team needed to talk to population decision-makers at hospitals and show them why they should switch. The reps wanted to show decision-makers exact issues with the current form of treatment to win hospital representatives over. The team dug into the deep data collected from hospitals' diagnosis code information given by Medicare and other providers to access those insights. (The team had loaded the data into WhizAI.) If they'd been using traditional BI, querying this data would have taken months. With WhizAI, reps could do this in real-time while sitting with the client. 

If the customer asked, "What's the rate of adverse events I see in OB-GYN procedures?" reps could type that question into WhizAI and instantly get a chart. This efficiency removed the friction from the interaction and helped build trust. Suddenly, the exchange didn't feel like a sale: it felt like a joined exercise in finding the best data-driven solution. 

• ‍Deliver fast, personalized insights. ‍

Augmented consumer solutions take data and turn it into usable insights. Another team at the large life sciences company I just mentioned provided a lot of support for customers, including devices and services. Because of this, reps didn't always know the exact level of service provided. They'd have to call customer service or dig through old dashboards to get that information. This process was time-consuming and pulled them away from critical tasks. 

With WhizAI, reps had direct access to the data and could instantly get responses, which saved everyone a lot of time. ‍

• ‍It gives every team key competitive advantages by eliminating data silos. ‍

Teams across your company can get insights from the same data sets. With augmented consumer platforms, teams that deeply understand the business can effectively access data they know very little. 

For example, a clinical trial team had to investigate sites before starting the clinical trials. The level of analysis on the sites tended to be a mix of guesswork and experience. But by giving them access to commercial diagnosis code data for specific hospitals, they could extrapolate the information they needed using WhizAI.

How augmented consumer solutions can change life sciences.

Augmented consumer solutions give every user the ability to get critical insights without any technical knowledge. They reduce the speed to insights, increase accuracy, and create a smooth, intuitive user experience, thus giving intelligent, business-savvy teams incredible freedom. It's time for any life sciences business not leveraging a platform like WhizAI to ask themselves: What do I stand to lose?

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