Summary: Pharma CI 2023, Newark, New Jersey

OVERVIEW AND FLETCHER’S PARTICIPATION

In our 16th year, Fletcher continued supporting this cornerstone event as a key sponsor. Our session presentation: WoW! A Future-Focused Lens on Approaches for Competitive and Market Intelligence Professionals explored the ever-evolving Ways of Working, inclusive of emerging tools, tactics, platforms, and best practices, to help establish and ‘level up’ the results produced by CI and MI.

While AI drew a lot of attention, our focus was on developing a trusted and reliable body of subject expertise for primary data collection using innovative approaches to engage expert talent over the long term. Diversifying the pool of experts was emphasized to provide more comprehensive perspectives. Integration of subject matter experts (SMEs) into higher-level methodologies in competitive intelligence and market intelligence (CI/MI) was discussed as a priority. The goal is to move beyond simple data collection to gain deeper insights for clients.

A centralized information-sharing hub with a flexible interface was showcased as a means to enhance collaboration, enable faster, streamlined access to content, and improve visibility of the importance of the CI/MI functions across the enterprise.

KEY TOPICS OF INTEREST

As AI reigned as the prevailing conference theme, the range of topics in this category spanned drug discovery in the preclinical phase to its value in trends analysis and strategy in commercialization or later stages in a product’s life cycle.

Investing in AI processes: efficiencies in daily utility and limitations:

From a high-level view, at least 75% of the topics touched on AI in some shape or form. Some thoughts coming from many of those sessions:

  • Presenter and audience testimonials reveal that most recognize the efficiencies gained from leveraging AI, even to a cursory degree. Many cite time savings from routine activities, such that human resources may shift their time in favor of higher-level, analytical tasks. Also, many are impressed with the accelerated delivery of information and alerts, especially from secondary sources.
  • However, most agree to proceed cautiously, and that AI is not without its limitations. Beyond the current capabilities of AI, is the necessity to apply rigor in order to ensure the highest quality of data to round out insights while evaluating the need to go deeper or broader for more holistic responses. Because AI is still absent nuances, cultural differences, good judgment, and experiences/opinions, we found that most also agree on the need for human curation.

In addition to AI, another topic we found of high interest was the keynote delivery of the impacts of the Inflation Reduction Act.

Implications of the Inflation Reduction Act:

Three main goals of the IRA are stated: to expand patient access, to reform drug pricing and reimbursement, and to improve patient affordability.

The first area of interest lies in the elusiveness on how the government will handle price negotiations and what information they will consider in doing so. Next is how payers, HCPs, and patients are likely to respond. And finally, insofar as investment decisions, how pharma may create strategies around their own portfolio compositions, therapeutic areas, pricing models, and contracting approaches.

Doing business post-IRA will also consider how new products may be priced. Some speculate that they may be priced higher than ever before vs. established products. No doubt more drugs will be subject to future Medicare price negotiations, specifically targeting those successful in the Medicare space. That said, pharma investments will likely be front-loaded at the start of a drug’s product life cycle. Nonetheless, it will be more difficult to compete in Medicare moving forward.

Optimizing vendor-client relationships:

This topic continued to emerge in several executive boardroom and session tracks. Discussions largely centered on pharma client and vendor dynamics. We feel fortunate that the conference organizers will reserve these presentation slots to keep the dialogue open and productive between the service providers and pharma stakeholders.

CONCLUSION

The 2023 Pharma CI US venue continues to be relied upon as the proving ground for industry and service providers in the exchange of ideas, the latest techniques, trends, and breakthroughs.

Together, these approaches and resources guarantee that competitive and market intelligence is a highly trusted source, influencing many high-level strategic discussions and contributing to numerous critical decisions. Fletcher is prepared to confront the turning points in the dynamic global healthcare environment by providing simple, powerful, and insightful intelligence.

We provide our partners in the pharmaceutical, medical device, diagnostics, and healthcare technology industries with top-notch service. Contact us today to learn more about our range of professional consultancy services to Global Life Science organizations like yours.

Life Sciences – Fletcher – Global Competitive Insights