There’s a lot to be said about how our world has changed over the years. But recently, what’s arguably changed the most is the speed at which companies from across all sectors are adopting and incorporating new digital approaches to their businesses. As a result, it’s changing the expectations consumers have for the brands they interact with. For our industry specifically, it means that we no longer exist in a bubble – the experiences we create, the products we bring to market and the services we deliver are being compared against that of major leaders that exist outside of healthcare like Google and Amazon.
Referred to by some as “digital disruption”, this new change in expectation is reframing how we approach our use of digital tools and resources. In order to remain competitive, we have to get ahead of the curve. To help get us there, we’ve curated some of the top considerations life sciences brands must be mindful of to meet the new technology imperative re-shaping our industry:
Consideration #1: Take a Human-Centric Approach to the User Experience
One of the biggest benefits of going digital is the convenience of being able to access what you need, regardless of when you need it or where you are. But to keep up with the expectations consumers have, we have to meet them on their terms and be considerate of the user experience. By focusing on the elements of design thinking or human-centered design (empathy, define, iterate, prototype and test), we can leverage an approach that puts the customer first and considers their needs to come up with better solutions that add value to their lives, rather than creating more friction.
Consideration #2: Give Data New Meaning by Incorporating New Technologies
With all of the advancement we’ve seen in technology, it put new tools and resources into the hands of brands – machine learning and artificial intelligence are just a couple that have rapidly emerged in recent years. These powerful new technologies mean we have new approaches to streamlining our data in a way that adds additional value to our consumers. Moving from a more descriptive approach which focuses on what happened, we’re now able to get predictive or prescriptive with our analytics and speak to what will happen and/or what should be done. Analyzing our data in this way allows us to provide insights that can help consumers stay even more informed about their health journey.
Consideration #3: Keep a Pulse on Your Digital Health
Delivering products, services and therapies digitally allows us to be deeply connected to the patient journey and their health and wellness outcomes. To no surprise, this also can mean exposing their personal health data to even greater risk. While taking the leap into digital transformation can come with many benefits, it also means that creating the best cybersecurity and privacy protocols has to become table stakes. To protect their most sensitive information and retain the integrity of the business, the best brands are establishing dedicated teams to ensure that security practices are being embedded into all digital activities.
