2024’s Trends for Data, Analytics & AI in the Pharma Industry

A new year is beginning and many pharmaceutical companies are already implementing different action plans, whether to announce a new drug, gain a larger market share or remain competitive in an increasingly complex market.

Written by Emili Bonilla, Partner at SDG Group.

To support these initiatives, more and more companies are adopting a data-driven approach to make data part of their day-to-day operations and facilitate better decision-making across teams. The advancement of today’s technology, however, is so dizzying that it is often difficult to tell which new innovations may be key to defining a medium- or long-term data strategy.

To combat this issue, SDG Group publishes our annual "Data, Analytics & AI Trends", a report of the topics that will be relevant in the year ahead. The goal is to help companies decide which technologies to implement in their strategy to remain competitive in the market. The pharmaceutical industry can capitalize on this information to help drive growth well into 2024; below you can find an overview of how:

1. Hyper Automation of the Construction of Data Fabrics

Democratization of data thanks to the inclusion of AI in data transformation and data quality, governance, and categorization processes. This allows the different business units to have more reliable data and to be able to share it efficiently with the rest of the units.

2. The Gen AI Catalyst

Substantial improvements in processes such as content tagging, data structuring, or completion will make AI initiatives generally more reliable and easier to implement. In marketing, AI can be useful for personalized content and campaigns. AI-powered tools can analyze large volumes of data from a variety of sources, such as website interactions, social media, and purchase histories to uncover patterns, preferences, and predictive behaviors for each customer.

3. The New Transactional Analytics

Inclusion of information systems in the transactional systems themselves, putting special focus on all the IoT devices that the industry will see applied in both patients and sales forces.

4. Trustworthy & Admissible AI

The ability to be able to explain the results behind AI initiatives, as well as skills such as accuracy and accountability, will be key to having differential initiatives that add value.

5. Intelligence-Enriched Business Applications

In addition to the improvements in process automation mentioned in trend two, hyper-personalization creates differentiation from the competition. Organizations employing these technologies can see advancement in areas such as allocation of resources, experiences, content, and more.

6. AI-Enhanced ESG

AI initiatives to monitor indicators linked to ESG, which usually come from unstructured data such as sensors, images, or sustainability reports.

7. A New Dawn for Business Intelligence

Classic descriptive analytics gives way to predictive, prescriptive, and real-time initiatives that enable differentiation from the competition with data that extends classic business intelligence.

8. Modern Data Platforms

All initiatives linked to artificial intelligence require modern data platforms that enable data processing, model execution, or neural network training.

9. The Next Leap in Artificial Intelligence

AI initiatives now enable more than just recommendations or forecasts. By broadening their scope, we gain access to previously unimaginable data with multiple AI agents collaborating to solve problems and push existing boundaries.

More than 70% of our clients in the pharmaceutical sector have carried out some of these initiatives with AI solutions. As a result, we can say that these trends are not a random prediction but rather validated, mature concepts that have proven success despite their newness. 

2024 will be the year when many pharmaceutical companies take the leap to transform their business, and SDG Group is excited to accompany you in this journey towards growing with a new, innovative data strategy.

Translated from original article in Spanish on PM Farma, here.