The pharmaceutical industry is at a turning point as it continues to embrace digital health, mature ecosystems, and new commercial models to drive innovation. The Pharma 2023 event, taking place from April 18-20 at CCIB, Barcelona, offers an ideal platform for exploring the convergence of these critical aspects of the industry’s future. The conversations will showcase how integrating digital health, commercial innovation, and ecosystem collaboration shapes how pharma companies engage with customers and deliver value to patients.

As a panellist at Pharma 2023, I will participate in two panel discussions that serve as excellent connections for innovating in pharma. However, the future also holds significant challenges. The industry needs to stabilise and develop new skills while defining emerging experiences around diagnostics, treatments and support. Your doctors are not expecting the same interactions, with patients, educated by many industries now and expecting a standard of customer experience in addition to an average of care. I have been advocating for the service transformation of the pharma industry for years, and I believe that unless organisations assign a P&L to a project, it will likely fail as a non-scalable venture.

My experience at Gedeon Richter, Ferring, and the various brands supported at Kainjoo has led me to believe that there is a new wave of innovative experiences that can be ignited by adopting an outside-in approach. This approach can help pharma companies better understand their customers’ evolving needs, which will drive the development of new strategies and business models to address these demands. It was shocking to see how local these discussions are, and the myth of building a digital health leader from within pharma is likely to be stressed by the day-to-day realities of running the business.