Join the dots or lose out, Syneos Health advises big pharma

Pharma companies need to rethink how they communicate and share information and insights within their own organisations, according to Syneos Health’s principal for real world and late phase development, Erwin De Cock. We spoke to him at the eyeforpharma conference in Barcelona to learn about the company’s Biopharmaceutical Acceleration Model, and the increasing importance of real-world evidence.It’s widely accepted across the pharma industry that there is a need to make organisations more agile and focused to be able to bring innovative products to patients in need.To achieve this goal, how can management better join their disparate business functions such as commercial operations and R&D that may well be outsourced, to make operations more efficient and get drugs to market faster?Erwin De Cock, principal for real world and late phase development at Syneos Health champions the company’s Biopharmaceutical Acceleration Model, an end-to-end concept that encourages cross-pollination across all functions throughout clinical and commercial.He told pharmaphorum at the eyeforpharma conference that the “slice and dice” model that is still so common across the industry needs to be revised in order to help decision making by improving communication across business functions working in silos.Instead, De Cock’s philosophy is focused on ensuring that various business functions improve communication around products in development with each other in order for the business to do better at achieving its strategic and commercial objectives.“It’s very much about getting people aligned internally by them talking to each other so that they all understand each other’s viewpoints and the data and evidence they want to see.While the separation between R&D/ clinical and commercial has been introduced historically in order to satisfy regulators, continuing to work in this way is holding back progress, he said.