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COVID-19 was a wake-up call for pharma companies to assess the digital sophistication of their company and the potential to serve customised experiences to consumers. COVID-19 has intensified pre-existing developments in several ways: an expansion in the usage of clinical technologies and telemedicine; a drop in access to sales reps; an emphasis on patient experience; the pace of digital innovation through pharmaceutical companies.

These developments were brought into sharper focus by the pandemic and added a sense of urgency; but they were already, by it and wide, in motion. COVID-19 pressed the accelerator rather than applying the brakes on these movements.

It has also uncovered new ways to overhaul a static status quo and make drastic changes in fields that have not yet received similar focus: opportunities to facilitate telemedicine and a wider connected health ecosystem; a move towards a data-driven, tailored concierge approach for reps; deeper reaching simulated medical events; improved patient service services (PSPs) observing data-driven, personalized concierge approach

Although these methods may have been seen in the past in tiny pockets of activity, they are the latest developments influencing the future of the company enterprise. Now is the time for digital transformation to double. It has been thought about by the pharmaceutical industry for years, but today, it must come out of necessity, faster and more thoroughly than anybody expected or was ready for.

The COVID-19 should provide pharmaceutical manufacturers with a wake-up call to assess their own digital sophistication and willingness to represent clients who are tailored to show that they fully understand their requirements. A fair evaluation of the organization’s modern marketing sophistication and a focus of changes are required to meet the evolving demands and responsibilities of sales managers, HCPs, patients and careers.

Marketing leaders must understand how good their business is in three main drivers when making this assessment:

• Using data to support corporate and marketing strategy
• To build personal experience for customers
• Technology to meet consumer requirements

The combined sophistication of data, customer experience and applied technology demonstrates new marketing readiness for an organization; measures against and prioritizes its business objectives. When viewed in this way, it becomes clear where the potential of a business stands, and a course of rapid evolution can be drawn up.

Conclusion:

Even before 2020, there were old ways of commercializing pharmaceutical products with brands of blockbusters, traditional releases, clear campaign combinations and generous budgets. The pandemic of COVID-19 has exacerbated these improvements and brought in many of them, including patient adherence, revised HCP practices and vanishing sales reps access. Although customer experience has once evaluated effect on the range of personal sales and frequency, its impact and importance are affected today. Customers – patients as well as HCPs – expect importance and need it more than ever before. Modern marketing impacts consumers who have customised interactions that reflect understanding and sensitivity to their needs.

Digital patient interaction is among the top ways to create outstanding contact with patients in the new era of pharmaceuticals. Digital patient interaction, no longer a distant concept, is a fact for payers and clinicians who strive to build better patient interactions.

Here are some of the top reasons why digital patient engagement is important and why it will continue to be relevant in the times to come.

Patient expect digital patient engagement:

We exist in an instant age, whether we like it or not. Watching the new video, ordering lunch or getting directions to the closest bar can all be done from a tablet, and patients want their healthcare providers to have the same capability. When it turns out, 54 % of people choose to connect with their healthcare provider via their phones. In addition, to make decisions about their wellbeing, they use this knowledge. 79 % of patients are more likely to choose a healthcare provider that helps them to access their healthcare records online or by phone, according to study. 

There is an emerging healthcare advertising-millennials, and their demands are much greater because they are an internet-first generation. In reality, 60 per cent of millennials favour telehealth to office visits, according to Salesforce. Patients place greater focus on digital participation across the board, and any healthcare professionals who do not keep up are at risk of being drowned by the competition.

Best way to connect with millennial:

Millennials represent the largest demographic at the time of writing. Described as individuals between the ages of 21 and 37, they will continue to be the main demographic group until 2050, as older generations decrease in number. Using digital patient experience technology to connect with millennials is up to healthcare providers, since they have a number of distinguishing characteristics that set them apart from other generations. 

Digital era will help to improve health literacy:

The key explanation for the use of interactive patient engagement programmes is that patients want to remain informed about the course of their care. However, there is more to it-how can patients grasp strategies for digital patient interaction if they lack basic health literacy? One of the most convincing cases of digital patient engagement is that it can boost health literacy, offering a range of benefits, from patients, payers, providers, doctors, all the way to pharmaceutical firms, to any stakeholder.

Typically, people living in rural areas with limited access to health education and living conditions that are not optimal are the communities struggling with health literacy the most. Healthcare services should set up digital patient interaction platforms that make a difference in order to help these patients out. This is the perfect medium for digital patient interaction and improving health literacy, considering how widespread the use of smartphones is. Educating patients on their diagnosis, condition and recovery is one of the most cost-effective ways to increase health literacy. This can be done through posters, website pages, webinars, or videos of medical explanators. In particular, videos are a fantastic solution for explaining a lot of data in a very short period of time, so that patients can easily access it through their phones.

Pharma companies are stepping up:

Realizing that healthcare professionals will not take care of it on their own, several pharmaceutical firms have made efforts to develop resources for digital patient interaction that support patients and doctors. In other words, the value of digital engagement platforms has also been taken up by pharmaceutical firms, and they have double the benefits. Next, they optimise the health benefits of patients. Second, due to the available communication resources they can demonstrate to their patients, they make an impact with doctors, who are more likely to prescribe their products.

Demand for repurposed drugs to continue even after launch of COVID-19 vaccines: Experts

Experts says that the demand of repurposed drugs are important to continue even after the COVID 19 vaccines come to the Indian markets. The founder of the Pronto Consult, Dr. Hari Natarajan & Dr. Karishma Shah commented that ‘use of repurposed drugs is likely to be continued until the entire population is vaccinated or there is some other drug that would take care of it’.
https://www.expresspharma.in/covid19-updates/demand-for-repurposed-drugs-to-continue-even-after-launch-of-covid-19-vaccines-experts/

FDA Approves First Treatment for COVID-19

Veklury is the first treatment for COVID-19 to receive FDA approval. Only in a hospital or in a healthcare setting capable of providing acute care comparable to inpatient hospital care should Veklury be given.
https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/fda-approves-first-treatment-covid-19

A whole new challenge has been posed by Coronavirus; the industry is at a standing start in terms of a vaccine and needs to prepare more efficiently than ever, against particular constraints and obstacles. The capacity of the industry to articulate the innovations, challenges and opportunities it poses in multiple languages is almost as difficult as developing a vaccine itself. Yet pharmaceutical firms are working hard to find how they can partner successfully with each other and continue to create market momentum well into the future, as well as educating the media and public about how viable a vaccine is and when it may be available.

The pharmaceutical industry landscape looks very different than how it did at the beginning of the year, whether it is postponed conferences, simulated gatherings, distribution reps unable to visit their clients, or analysts needing to focus on tech to communicate with their team and other associations and institutes. Pharmaceutical firms are adapting to the rapid changes that emerge from changes in supply chains and the need to adapt business procedures during these extraordinary times.
Healthcare services have experienced convulsive changes and are now undergoing them. Let me focus on how the pharmaceutical industry has evolved and will evolve.

• Research & Development:
  Projects such as the EU-EFPIA public-private alliance with the IMI (Innovative Medicines Initiative) have paved the foundations for what we are seeing now: the old business model of the industry is being changed. Where there was once a cut-throat struggle to find, create and sell drugs, former competitors, such as vaccine manufacturers GlaxoSmithKline and Sanofi, who have joined forces to develop a safe and efficient coronavirus vaccine partnering through IMI ventures in this current scenario. This extraordinary focus on teamwork and cooperation goes straight around the board. From exchanging databases of validated therapies with researchers and others and seeing if the worst consequences of the current coronavirus can be mitigated, to having access to expertise, research results, development capacities and embracing risk sharing with the public sector.

• Clinical Trials & Regulations:
  The focus must change to decentralized / near-patient / site-less-trials on sites and investigators. We need patients not only to stop attending hospitals where they may be infected or where they “steal” services from those in need, we really need to catapult to a paradigm focused on demographic data to classify and attract patients. Recruitment may no longer rely on the capacity of doctors to remember and locate qualifying patients. There is a chance to change health science, then. Similarly, in an outbreak situation and when businesses have to collaborate on master protocols and platform trial designs, this pandemic will force a new approach to vaccine trials.

• Supply Chain & Resources:
  In the current situation, the Government of India should take crucial measures to eliminate the technological and financial obstacles that will spur the pharmaceutical industry to increase the production of APIs, thus reducing the pharmaceutical industry as a whole’s reliance on the Chinese market, which is heavily affected. Recently, the Indian government has taken applaudable measures by introducing an incentive package of 13.76 billion Indian Rupees (approximately $181 million) to encourage domestic production of essential starting materials, drug intermediates, APIs & medical devices.

• Shift to consumer centric:
  In this covid 19 scenario, consumer has become very sensitive to information. There is a need to serve the demand of information through digital tools. The increased use of digital technologies, telehealth, and app-based environments makes patient-level data more available. Hence, it important that patient-centered supply chains should understand how this need can be met. Major improvements in telemedicine, video conferencing, remote-working software, and clinical-decision-support tools have helped doctors to cope up with the fast spaced transformed evolution in the field of medical technology. Increased supply chain transparency and information will be required by consumers and patients, and this transition to telehealth and app-based environments will require a tech-enabled distribution model.

Therefore, we can say that the COVID-19 pandemic is transforming the nature of world order and control, forcing leaders around the world to rethink their strategies for business and development. India certainly stands to benefit from such a restructuring with its deep expertise in the manufacturing of medicines, highly trained scientists and technological advancement.

In this pandemic period, managing cash flow and strategizing growth factors is crucial. Here are few tips that I learnt from my experience and can help you in addressing covid19 financial issues.

Managing cash flow: The corporate world is in the grip of panic mode in the wake of deadly COVID19 outbreak and it has hampered the functioning of several sectors, including pharmaceuticals. Faced with uncertainty around when the pandemic will end, the pace of recovery is expected to be a long and painful one. This pandemic has made the entire world realize the need to reimagine their supply chains. The union government has already announced investments to incentivize production of APIs in India with a clarion call for “Atmanirbhar Bharat”. The rapidly spreading Corona virus has compelled companies to re-strategize their methodology of work by adopting innovative methods to keep the business going effectively and profitably.

The normal business jargon “cash is king” is just correct in the current scenario. Management of cash flow is the essence for company survival in this liquidity crisis time and the strategies are:

• Prioritise crucial payments such as salaries and contractual obligations and avoid statutory defaults and penalties.
• Focus on the cash-to-cash conversion cycle.
• Review debt retirement schedule and covenants.
• Incentivise debtors by offering discounts for earlier settlement of receivables.
• Revisit variable costs.
• Revisit capital investment plans and ensure your internal earnings are adequate to finance the CAPEX.
• Focus on inventory management.
• Review Forex exposure.
• Ensure that there is a robust review process of calculating financial loss due to supply chain risks.
• Ensure statutory dues and taxes payables are adhered to.
• Periodically checking the feasibility of the business model.
• Plan policies for next 3 months/ 9 months/ 18 months.

If we consider it as a 3-month problem, an instant halt on variable expenditures like hiring, marketing, travel, etc. can help. However, if the crisis continues for more than 9 months, company will have to reconfigure its business strategy to reduce the variable expenses, renegotiate fixed expenses (rent, salaries, equipment lease payments, etc.), and focus only on the crucial essentials for survival. It may be a good idea to revisit sales strategy – selling online versus in-person. Some serious reconsiderations would be required if the effect of the pandemic continues for 18 months or beyond. Businesses will need to strategize, communicate, and act with compassion. They would require a revision of sales revenue goals and product timelines along with a new operating plan.

Management will have to keep the communication transparent as much as possible with its investors and employees.
Few tips to stay connected and afloat during the shutdown:

1. Communicate transparently with your customers: Customers can empathize with companies facing a crisis, as long as the communication is transparent. Communicate with customers to understand their perception of the product/solution offered by you.

2. Maintaining healthy relationship with contracted parties: It would be helpful to give your vendors, suppliers, landlords’ etc. sufficient notice in case there is going to be any delay in payments so that they can also be prepared and there is no bitterness in this already difficult time.

3. Managing employees & related optimization: For large companies considering layoffs, the primary option should be to cut the salaries of the higher paid exec/employees and to retain people who can’t afford to lose their jobs.

4. Keep your team engaged: The team relies on the team leader to keep them updated about every development and it is the responsibility of the Team Leader to keep the team members engaged and stay connected with them through video conferencing tools like Zoom and Google Hangouts. It is very important to maintain high spirits within the team and understand the general mood within your remote workforce.

5. Communication to stakeholders: The Leader to have an honest conversation on the situation and its impact on your business with the entire leadership team. Any negative message should be delivered with utmost empathy along with transparent reasons. Entire world is coping up to this challenge so why can’t we? Let’s address impact of covid19 positively by applying our basic principles and execution by new digital ways. Stay safe!