According to financial expert Stewart Adkins, director of management consultancy firm Pharmaforensic Limited, the pharma industry is failing to realize the competitive advantage of commercial product data due to its reliance on third-parties.
“If you don’t have a good understanding of statistics, how are you in a good position to judge whether what is being offered to you actually meets the standards that you need to meet,” he told delegates at last week’s PGM Pharma Outsourcing & Partnership Global Congress 2017 Europe conference in London.
“I’m sad to say that in the vast majority of cases the pharmaceutical industry does not understand within the commercial area the statistics with which they are being sold.”
Competitive Advantage
While outsourcing data services may bring access to superior statistics and an external perspective, the negatives outweigh the benefits, especially for Big Pharma.
While the obvious danger of using a third-party is the potential for a data leak, Adkins said there are other less apparent problems which are often overlooked.
Outsourcing does not guarantee the data is correct, and may standardise results by ignoring regional differences and local nuances. Moreover, reports are often constructed based on the third-party’s concept of a pharma company’s needs.
“What you end up with is a constructed reality according to someone else, and then you’re judging and deciding what to do with your business based upon a report someone else is giving you on your own data,” he said. “The basis of competitive advantage is compromised because you’ve handed it to someone else.”
He did acknowledge data management is still often done in-house within the clinical development area, despite a general trend to outsource the trials themselves, as Big Pharma realise the significant competitive advantage, but commercial data is still a missed opportunity.
“The premise is data is – or should be – a core competence of the pharmaceutical industry within the commercial arena,” he said. “It’s important, key, and significant competitive advantage which you do not want to give away.”
Lack of talent
Adkins did show some sympathy towards Big Pharma, commenting firms are often forced to outsource due to “a massive lack of talent in data science.”
While few graduates are emerging in this field, even fewer hold all the skills necessary to “hit the sweet spot,” having computer skills, high levels or advanced statistic skills, and the business knowledge to be able to ask the right questions of the data that a pharma firm has.
He also blamed the universal use of Microsoft’s Excel, a spreadsheet programme he described as “totally unsuitable for professional statistical work.”
“Pharma data is very rich, very complex and it does not conform to the rules that allow you to use Excel,” yet 90% of commercial vendors’ data will be based on the programme.