INDUSTRY INITIATIVES
Why Doctors Are Consulting Wikipedia And how Allergan, Pfizer, GSK and others are changing this By Patrick Retif, VP of IT, Global Commercial, Allergan and Paul Shawah, VP Commercial Cloud Strategy, Veeva Systems, President, Align Biopharma
Did you know more healthcare professionals (HCPs) get drug and treatment information from Google, Wikipedia, and other second-hand online sources than from life sciences companies? Today’s dramatic increase of new and more complex drugs has created a greater need for HCPs to receive more timely, tailored, concise information to treat patients. Yet it’s not easy for doctors to get what they need, because each life sciences company provides information digitally in a different way. Busy doctors are forced to spend an exorbitant amount of time logging in to various web sites and managing dozens of user names and passcodes. In today’s digital world where the expectation is for information to be at our fingertips, HCPs don’t have the time or inclination to wade through this sea of roadblocks in order to get critical information to help their patients. On the other hand, the source of such crucial information must be reliable.
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“I had to create a spreadsheet of 60 IDs.” A physician on Veeva’s HCP panel As the number of new drugs increases, so does the amount of information healthcare professionals require to facilitate patient engagement. There is significant potential for biopharmaceutical companies to use digital technology to inform HCPs on new or more complex treatments. But, until now, that hasn’t happened with the ease it requires. WHAT’S THE ANSWER? The answer—something you would think an IT genius should have created years ago—is to make it easier for doctors to get through
a streamlined vetting process so they can access data quickly. Finally, this is happening. A new initiative, Align Biopharma, has been founded by six of the largest global life sciences companies: Allergan, AstraZeneca, Biogen, GlaxoSmithKline, Novartis, and Pfizer, in cooperation with Veeva. Align Biopharma is a new industry standards initiative. For the first time, we are coming together to make it easier and faster for healthcare professionals to connect with the companies that provide the products and services. Align Biopharma is defining an identification and authentication standard to enable single sign-on for HCPs to access online content—including websites, portals, virtual events, or webinars—across all companies. Once the group
