Opinion Toward the realization of "Pharma as a Service What is required of the pharmaceutical industry in data-driven healthcare

Printable PDF

The Office of Pharmaceutical Industry Research Takayuki Sasaki, Senior Researcher

Introduction

In the previous issue, the author introduced the importance of "open data" in data-driven healthcare and the role of the pharmaceutical industry in the health data ^economy1). 1) When looking at the pharmaceutical industry from the perspective that data is the source of value in a data-driven society, the question arises as to what kind of data can be provided and what kind of value can the pharmaceutical industry provide as a service industry. In the age of digitalization, what connects medical and healthcare services is unquestionably data. We have pointed out that the pharmaceutical industry, which until now has been a "data user" receiving data such as clinical data, receipt data, and information on adverse drug reactions, must also consider its role as a data provider in order to provide further value in healthcare.

What kind of value can the pharmaceutical industry as a service industry provide? In this paper, we would like to consider what kind of "as a Service" the pharmaceutical industry can provide, taking into account what other industries are aiming for in their "as a Service" activities.

As a Service" in Other Industries

(1) Mobility as a Service

The term "as a Service" first became known in Japan in 2008, when the software industry began offering "SaaS" (Software as a Service) via the Internet, making necessary functions available as a service in necessary quantities. In 2008, the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) established "SLA (Service Level Agreement) Guidelines for SaaS," which provides guidelines on matters to be agreed upon in advance between users and service providers and on desirable service levels ^.2) The term "SaaS" seems to have become widespread over the past 10 years.

In recent years, the term "as a Service" has been increasingly seen in various industries. For example, the concept of "MaaS (Mobility as a Service)" is beginning to be used in the mobility-related industry. According to Hiroki of the National Institute for Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism Policy, MaaS is a new service that is still in the process of development, and even in other countries where it has been developed, there is currently no set definition of it. This is a new concept of ^" mobility.) The JBIC also introduced Swedish researchers' classification of levels of integration, starting with the level of multi-mode transportation proposals and provision of pricing information, followed by integration of reservations and payments, and integration of means other than public transportation, with the highest level, Level 4, being policy ^{integration4)}. As the level of integration becomes more sophisticated, it is envisioned that there will be linkages with other industries such as retail, lodging, medical care/welfare, and tourism, real-time optimization such as demand dispersion from congested routes and traffic guidance through pricing, as well as bus route reorganization, urban planning, infrastructure development, and incentive measures based on the collection of human flow data. The following are envisioned.

Of course, the precondition for providing such services is the collection and integration of all kinds of data related to mobility. What is important here is that by sharing and integrating various data, we are aiming not only for the benefit of the companies involved and the convenience of consumers, but also for the revitalization of surrounding industries and the creation of value that is highly beneficial to the public interest.

(2) Platform and data provider perspectives in the private insurance industry

Before going into the main topic, I would like to introduce one more example of an industry that is regulated by the authorities, but is in the process of transforming itself into a "data-driven service industry": private insurance.

However, the deregulation of the Insurance Business Law (insurance group regulation, mutual company regulation, insurance product regulation, insurance solicitation regulation, and asset management regulation), which has progressed in stages over the past 10 years since 2006, has made it possible to create a variety of business models5). ^5). Along with these deregulations, the environment is changing, with increased payment opportunities due to emerging health issues, the advent of a less "what if" society such as the development of automated driving, and the sharing economy and customer-driven risk response. An increasing number of companies have begun to take advantage of the characteristics of digital tools (especially constant connectivity and, moreover, the acquisition of touchpoints) to build data collection/provision platforms and offer their platforms to other sectors.

For example, Ping An Insurance (China), the world's number one private insurance company by market capitalization, is a company that is also attracting attention for Ping An Good Doctor, an online medical care application offered by a subsidiary it established in 2014. Ping An Good Doctor is an app that offers 24-hour online consultations, hospital and lab appointments, remote medical care, and home delivery of prescription drugs all in one place; in September 2019, according to the company, it had 300 million users, with an average of 650,000 consultations per day and 62.7 million monthly active users ⁽⁶⁾. more than 3,000 hospitals and more than 10,000 pharmacies are collaborating with the company, and including partner hospitals, more than 3,000 physicians are involved in online medical care, and the introduction of AI medical interviews here has made it possible to provide medical care at a speed five times faster than ^before7). Thus, in addition to being a uniquely superior online medical treatment application, Ping An Medical Life is also involved in online shopping for pharmaceuticals, supplements, health foods, and medical equipment through e-commerce (Health mall), which reportedly accounts for more than half of its ^sales8). In other words, by utilizing digital tools to acquire customer touch points and building a platform that leads them to e-commerce, it can be said that they are combining multiple monetization models and providing value to their customers (examinees) in a composite manner.

As examples from Japan, we would like to highlight the efforts of SOMPO Holdings and Sumitomo Life Insurance.

In 2019, SOMPO Holdings announced the establishment of a joint company (Palantir Technologies Japan Corporation) with Palantir Technologies of the United States to develop a big data analysis software platform ^business9). As introduced in Figure 2, SOMPO's digital strategy is one of the main pillars of its medium-term management plan, which calls for strengthening customer contact points through its digital strategy and becoming a service industry with digital responsiveness as its core ^{competence10)}. SOMPO is the first Japanese insurance company to establish a digital strategy center in Israel, and has begun demonstration experiments with startups to develop AI-based health ^services11).

In addition, Sumitomo Life Insurance began offering "Vitality," a health-enhancing insurance policy, in ^201812). Vitality" is an insurance service provided by Discovery, a U.S.-based company that utilizes behavioral economics theory to change individual behavior based on behavioral data from approximately 10 million subscribers. In order to keep premiums low and earn "rewards," Vitality participants are required to provide a variety of data, including exercise data, online checkup data, health checkup data, and prevention-related behaviors. The scheme requires participants to provide a variety of data, including exercise data, online checkup data, health checkup data, and prevention-related behaviors. For Sumitomo Life Insurance, the provision of Vitality has the advantage of expanding touch points that were previously limited to "at the time of contract," "in case of emergency," "at the time of payment," etc. In addition, now that the environment for collecting consumer data is in place, Sumitomo Life Insurance has gained a foundation for proposing new value to customers by utilizing that data. This is a good example of how some private insurance companies are using the data to offer new value to their customers.

Thus, some private insurers are in the process of building and exploring new services other than the provision of insurance by utilizing/gaining touchpoints with their customers. At the heart of this is a variety of customer data obtained from touchpoints, and the idea of a data economy in which data is circulated to various industries as a data provider to make it viable as a business can be read.

Concept of Pharma as a Service

What kind of services can the pharmaceutical industry provide as a service provider? The term "Pharma as a Service" was introduced abruptly at the beginning of this report, but we would like to flesh out the image a bit more.

(1) Utilization of human and physical assets

The value chain of the pharmaceutical industry is shown in Figure 3. In other words, there is a series of steps in the value chain, starting with drug discovery research, followed by non-clinical and clinical trials, regulatory filings and approvals, and then product launch, followed by post-marketing safety studies. The first possible service to be provided is the utilization by other industries of the human and physical assets that support these value chains. For example, manufacturing facilities and ancillary equipment could be provided to other industries (assuming, of course, that both the pharmaceutical industry and the industry receiving the facilities comply with each other's regulations), and MRs' touch points with physicians could be utilized for marketing and information provision opportunities in industries other than pharmaceuticals. In a broader sense, the contribution of digital medicine and medication management devices to patient management by medical professionals may also be considered a service that utilizes "products" such as pharmaceuticals.

However, it should be noted that such services already exist and are not necessarily services from the perspective of value creation through data circulation.

(2) Integrity and trust

Another possible perspective is to utilize the "integrity" behind the value chain in other industries. The pharmaceutical industry, which is highly public interest, has a long history of developing "philanthropy" in terms of regulatory science, risk/benefit balance, data science and high-quality evidence, quality management system, supply chain to fulfill supply obligations, and appropriate information provision to stakeholders. The "Philosophy" has been nurtured in terms of risk/benefit balance, data science, quality evidence, quality management system, supply chain to fulfill supply chain obligations, and appropriate information provision to stakeholders, and has been documented and institutionalized as ^GXP13) in all value chains, and has taken root as an industrial culture through regular education and training. In other words, "integrity" as a "sustained will to ensure reliability backed by integrity, honesty, and intelligence" can be described as one of the characteristics of the pharmaceutical industry.

On the other hand, today's society is inundated with solutions and information that do not necessarily benefit consumers or lead them to make bad decisions, such as healthcare products with questionable claims of efficacy, deep ^fakes14), and the emergence of unbiased AI. In recent years, FAT in AI ^ethics15), ¹⁶⁾ (Fairness, Accountability, Transparency. Fairness, Accountability, Transparency), Data Free Flow with ^Trust17), evidence-based digital ^health18), platform provision (Trust) is precisely what is attracting attention and discussion, as consumers are demanding "trust" (Trust) in terms of (1) business ^{requirements19)} for companies The pharmaceutical industry, which has placed integrity at the core of its industry, may be able to leverage its strengths to address these issues, for example, in terms of "formulating and disseminating regulations/guidelines for the spread of sound digital health" and "handling data based on trust (trust), It is also becoming a social role for us to do so.

(3) Digital utilization and data provision

From a different perspective, the combination of different industrial technologies, especially digital technology and the strengths of the pharmaceutical industry, could provide even higher added value. For example, digital biomarkers have been actively discovered in recent years, which can be applied not only to treatment but also to preemptive intervention and prognostic evaluation, and can be deployed not only in pharmaceutical-centered medicine but also in healthcare solutions and other cross-industry services. The term "modality" is often used to refer to differences in devices and the molecular forms of pharmaceuticals, but from a broader perspective, it can be said that modalities such as "pharmaceuticals," "medical devices," and "digital health" exist within the medical and healthcare fields. From this perspective, it may be thought that value will be created in the future not by considering each modality separately, but by "intermodal" collaboration, that is, collaboration among various modalities through data.

Digital Therapeutics, which has been the focus of much attention recently, is not simply a digitalized version of treatment or an alternative to pharmaceuticals, but rather a digital tool that enhances connectivity between patients and physicians to provide high-quality medical care, or a touch point to utilize patient information for research. By viewing it as a digital tool, it will be possible to look beyond its role as a means of treatment and see it as material that can be considered for providing new value.

In terms of Society 5.020 ⁾ and data-driven healthcare, only when the pharmaceutical industry reaches this stage will it be able to move beyond the position of data user and assume the role of data provider. Although there may be some resistance to the expression "pharmaceutical companies doing business with data," in the future of data-driven medicine and healthcare, it is essential to circulate data based on trust and with compensation, and the pharmaceutical industry, which has served the public interest based on integrity, can be expected to play a part in this process. The pharmaceutical industry, which has been serving the public interest based on integrity , will be expected to play a role in this process.

Conclusion

In this paper, we briefly discuss what kind of value the pharmaceutical industry can provide to stakeholders when viewed as a service provider, taking into account perspectives on integrity and the development of a data-driven society. Especially in the data-driven healthcare that is expected to develop in the future, the pharmaceutical industry will be able to contribute to the realization of higher quality medical healthcare by providing data, and will be expected to play such a role. However, when services are provided apart from the common "thing" of pharmaceuticals, it would not be an exaggeration to say that the concept and the actual "thing" to be provided will exist as many times as there are pharmaceutical companies and related companies. In other words, in order to determine the customer value, service, and value proposition that the company should provide, it is important to go back to the fundamental reason for the company's existence and consider what kind of service is necessary for society from a bird's-eye viewpoint outside the pharmaceutical industry. Of course, we must not forget that it is the beneficiaries of medical care, stakeholders in the healthcare industry, and society as a whole that will evaluate the value of these services.

The pharmaceutical industry is an industry that can provide high added value by combining science, technology, and integrity into products. We must leverage our strengths to accurately identify the healthcare needs of the world as a whole, and to consider how we can contribute from the standpoint of a service provider. I hope that this kind of discussion will take place across the entire nation, without being restricted by conventional industrial frameworks.

Back to News List

TOP