The Health Pulse: In life sciences, change is hard but worth it when it comes to digital transformation.

On this episode, Greg chats with SAS EMEA life sciences sales director Jonathan Riches about digital transformation in pharma. Jonathan argues that while buzzword technology like artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning get a lot of attention, it’s really culture that determines an organization’s success with digital transformation. Why? The life sciences industry is highly regulated by necessity, and many pharmaceutical companies have been around for one hundred or more years. So, while change is challenging for any organization, it is especially challenging for pharma. According to Jonathan, life sciences organizations must back up their analytics evolution with ample training, empowerment around individual growth and C-level commitment to data-driven decision making. For 20 years or more, pharma has been using analytics and statistics to prove the efficacy and safety of drugs in order to obtain regulatory approval. There is now recognition that analytics can glean much deeper insights throughout the pharmaceutical life cycle. This kind of evolution requires significant change-management. Jonathan advises pharmaceutical companies to design data and analytics platforms for the business challenges they need to solve.