If 2020 was about accelerating digital transformation in the Life Sciences industry, 2021 embedded those changes while revealing the weaknesses and opportunities in the new environment. So, what’s going to happen in 2022?
In a previous blog, I wrote that the focus on operational excellence and innovation during the COVID-19 pandemic endures. And that means we need to get much better at something where we’ve traditionally been poor at — reaping the full value of our data.
IDC estimates that on average, approximately 270 GB of Healthcare and Life Sciences data will be created for every person in the world. That’s an amazing resource if it can be handled properly. , that can unleash the power digital technologies such as and , should be top of every Life Science CIOs agenda in 2022.
Here are five Life Sciences trends for 2022, for which releasing the power of data will be vital.
Patient-centricity
Patient-centered care, which involves patients in the development of services and care and supports them to take an active role in their health – is now a key way to personalize treatment and improve individual outcomes. For Life Sciences, this involves refocusing from the disease and treatment efficacy to healthcare consumers and their needs. In the year ahead, companies must continue to turn data from all sources into a single view of the patient to tailor and deliver an end-to-end digital experience for each patient.
Decentralized clinical trials
In June 2021, a survey found that around half of sponsor organizations in the U.S. reported using decentralized clinical trial activities. The move to decentralized trials will be driven by new digital technologies, but there needs to be transparency and security in the information gathered and shared. Everyone, especially patients, must be able to trust data and understand how to use it. In 2022, organizations involved in the clinical trial ecosystem will increasingly turn to solutions such as OpenText Clinical Data Intelligence for Life Sciences to efficiently capture data from all available sources, and add classification and categorization so it can be effectively stored, searched and retrieved by people who need it.
Intelligent automation
The combination of digital process automation, AI and machine learning and content services is beginning to become the game changer it promised to be. A recent survey found that 83% of Life Sciences respondents said they were using some form of automation in R&D. However, adoption in other areas still lags significantly. I believe 2022 will see intelligent automation become more prevalent, especially in areas such as manufacturing, quality and commercialization.
Tech transfer
Triggered by COVID-19, half of new business value created in the global Life Sciences market by 2026 will be driven by cloud-based digital ecosystems, says IDC. There’s no doubt that we’ve seen an expansion of partnerships and outsourcing relationships where manufacturers work more closely with CDMOs/CROs and competitors. As this trend gains steam, there must be a renewed focus on tech transfer. It must be fast, efficient and secure for everyone involved. To meet accelerated product development cycles, for example, tech and knowledge transfer can’t take weeks or months. Data must be integrated and harmonized to flow between many different systems in these ecosystems.
SAP S4/HANA migration
Companies have been slow to make the transition to SAP S4/HANA, often citing lack of a business case as the major reason. Emerging from the pandemic, Life Sciences companies can no longer say this. Creating a single, central digital core provides the best foundation for accelerating digital transformation to drive operational agility, innovation and collaboration. Moving from on-premise to the cloud or coordinating multiple ERP instances is only one challenge involved in the migration. Delivering an integrated information management platform to support the core ERP functionality and integrate with other enterprise applications will be an equally important activity as programs progress through 2022.
The benefits of digital transformation can’t be achieved without releasing the value in data. Enterprise data platforms are still in their infancy, but Gartner says they’re coming fast, and many of the tools are already in place. I believe 2022 will be the year that Life Sciences organizations really do start to be data driven.
If you’d like to learn more about the services that OpenText delivers to the Life Science sector, please visit our website.
