#pharma cloud computing

Historically, pharma has been slow to adopt innovative technologies. Today, however, pharma companies are forced to seek out solutions that help optimize their complex processes and reduce their costs. Cloud computing is a highly attractive solution that offers a multitude of benefits without requiring a massive upfront investment.

The global cloud computing market is expected to reach $623.3 billion by 2023.

The trend is clear, cloud computing is on the rise. But what is cloud computing anyway? Tech companies define the term in different ways. Cloud computing is rather a model instead of a particular technology. Cloud computing has limitless potential as it allows pharmaceutical and life sciences companies of any size to access their IT-based services through the Internet.

Private Clouds

This data-storage environment is restricted to a single company for private use. It can be built within your company’s own data center or located off-site. The primary purpose of these types of clouds is to produce virtualized application, infrastructure, and communications services for internal use.

Public Clouds

The public cloud computing market alone generated over $130 billion in 20171. Third-party providers over the Internet offer these public clouds. These are available to anyone who wants to use or purchase them. Customers typically pay only for what they use, and the usage is measured by CPU cycles, storage, or bandwidth.

Hybrid Clouds

Hybrid clouds merge the benefits of public and private clouds. They enable companies to preserve confidential information in a private cloud, and at the same time, have access to a much wider choice of applications available in public clouds.

Community Clouds

Organizations in the same industry sometimes join together to share their resources and create community clouds. This type of cloud can be hosted internally or by third parties. Regardless of the form, cloud computing provides on-demand access at one or more of the following levels:

At the infrastructure level - infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS)

At the platform level - platform-as-a-service (PaaS)

At the application level - software-as-a-service (SaaS)

At the business process level - business process-as-a-service (BPaaS)

Benefits of Pharma Cloud Computing

Cloud computing offers a multitude of benefits to pharma companies. Some of the most significant advantages are:

1. Cost Savings

Taking your IT-dependent services into the cloud requires far less up-front investment than traditional IT models. If your company is still ”grounded” by old IT-systems, you have probably seen first-hand how expensive it is to maintain and manage them. Instead of investing large sums in the purchase of equipment and systems, you can realize immediate savings by tapping into the resources of your cloud computing service provider.

2 . Data Protection

Pharmaceutical companies spend a fortune on obtaining and maintaining quality data. The industry has a complex sales process that includes multiple players, such as manufacturers, healthcare providers, patients, and health insurance companies. Each step in the process, from manufacturing to filling a prescription, creates more data. Not only it is expensive to gain access to all this information, but it is also challenging to keep the data in a secure and safe location. Storing your data in the cloud allows you to do precisely that, with 24/7 access to it from anywhere in the world.

3. On-Demand Access

There is no need to request more storage space or additional time on the server. The service is continuously there and responsive to your needs, and available on any device that has a web browser.

Pharma companies have begun to realize that to stay competitive, they can no longer afford to conduct their business with traditional methods. A one-size-fits-all sales strategy no longer works!

Pricing pressures brought on by a plethora of healthcare reforms, intensifying competition, and a hostile regulatory environment have all contributed to the industry’s shrinking revenues.

To further complicate the situation, access to physicians has been progressively getting worse, making it far more complicated for pharma sales teams to get in front of HCPs and educate them in the process.

Approximately  50 percent of HCPs1  say they can imagine a world without sales reps. – BlueNovius

Industry analysts have pointed out that success in this rapidly changing environment is closely linked to the availability of high-quality, trusted data. Data is crucial to making better decisions and getting closer to customers.

Getting the right data in the hands of a well-trained sales teams can drastically improve pharma sales performance exponentially.