Three opportunities for the healthcare and pharma industry

Demographic shifts and the rise of tech-led competition are applying pressure to the costs and margins of the world of healthcare and pharmaceuticals, while regulatory scrutiny rises as watchdogs look to clamp down on poor service provision. Joaquim Grau, a Manager at Spanish management consultancy Alfa Consulting, sat with Consultancy.eu to discuss three trends enabling the healthcare industry to find ways to improve.New age communication According to Grau, in an age of social networks, apps and other digital communications mediums, healthcare providers now can tap into more communication channels to make the patient’s journey better. Doctors, patients and other health professionals can now use these avenues to stay informed, interact or even settle doubts. A rational use of apps by companies allows for the selection of messages tailored to each profile, before sending them using the most relevant channels in each case.“As a result, it is possible to increase the impact of the actions we carry out while reducing the cost of the campaigns,” Grau explained. “However, it is important to keep an eye on the privacy of patients... We must not forget that this is a sector with many restrictions and compliance limitations that also apply to the online world.”As a result, online marketing actions can only be directed to the consumer in non-prescription medicines (OTC). Therefore, many habitual strategies in social networks for non-OTC products are discarded.Faced with this complex and changing environment, new and innovative organisational models are merging. Grau stated that this is especially the case for those that are more agile, they are able to quickly adapt to emerging opportunities and threats.Agile is making big impact in healthcare and pharmaceuticals, hastening decision making in operations and ultimately empowering people to improve the ways they work. It also helps to make more innovative business processes, able to tap into changing customer demand, and reducing the go-to-market time of products and services.