I spent a fascinating day recently at the Cegedim Life Sciences Forum 2012 hosted by the incomparable Cegedim Relationship Management President, Angela Miccoli and attended by over 200 professionals and executives in commercial operations at life sciences companies. I was there to kick off the Forum with a discussion of HC's dramatcially changing landscape - - what we call The Third Place; healthcare anytime, anywhere the patient is, not just in the doctors' office and hospital.
The theme of the Forum was "Evolve, Innovate, Lead" and the focus was reframing the importance of innovation to include the transformation of Commercial Operations from selling product to engaging with customers. The epicenter of how health care is produced, delivered, consumed and paid for is moving to where the patient is and this rapid shift is being fueled by Big Data, ubiquitous technology and the empowered super consumer - - which includes the patient, his or her caregiver as well as the doctors (HCPs). Many of the executives I talk to "get this" intuitively but are slow to make dramatic changes to their successful commercial business models in an industry that has ten year selling cycles.
The big takeaway from the Cegedim Forum was the stark realtity of the pace of change and the realization that the Future is Now. The numbers are so compelling. First of all, 90% of all the data in the world has been created in the last 2 years, and is compounding annually. Â We learned that there are 285 terabytes of data in the Library of Congress compared to an estimate of 400+ Kterabytes of HC data roaming the digital world.
For the super consumer patient - - here is what is happening every 60 seconds in the digital space
And, based on research that Cegedim and others have undertaken in the US. here is an estimate of what is happening with HCPs as they get more engaged with social media as a key channel for learning, collaborating and healing.
"ePrescribers" are growing at a 50%+ rate
33% of HCPs are "no see" prescribers re: pharma sales forces
62% of HCPs own electronic tablets
adoption of electronic health records growing at a 50% rate
As eloquently stated by Todd Francis, Vice President, US Commercial Support and Enterprise Marketing at Sanofi Pharmaceuticals, the future for commercial operations strategy is to move beyond Customer Relationship Management (CRM) to Customer Engagement Management.  And this means being able to build an intimate, personal relationship with both the doctor and the health care consumer that contributes to their respective learning, personal and professional "practice management" and well being - - anytime, anywhere, anyhow.
