Health IT, Pharma, Startups

Business intelligence goes mobile for today’s pharma and medical device sales reps

We hear a lot about how big data has the potential to change the way […]

We hear a lot about how big data has the potential to change the way we deliver healthcare and enable care decisions that are grounded in evidence and care plans that are based on predictive analytics.

But data analysis plays a role on the business side of healthcare too and has for a long time. Companies like QlikView, Accenture, IMS and Trinity Pharma are using data to help drug and medical device companies make more informed decisions of their own. And this week, Trinity took that a step further by rolling out a mobile portal for its data analysis and reporting technology.

Life sciences companies already use the company’s platform to aggregate the sales performance and customer data they collect in one place, and look at it in a way that helps them better understand their market and identify business opportunities. Now, the mobile product, Agile M, gives sales reps, marketing teams and company executives access to those insights via their phones and tablets.

Zackary King, co-founder and senior vice president of Trinity, said it was a natural next step for the company. “From the business perspective, it’s necessary to add mobile as an option because of the way work flow is going,” he said. “Pharma has invested a huge amount of money into going mobile,” he added, and noted that about three-fourths of pharmaceutical sales reps today have iPads. Trinity says Agile M is the first mobile analytics platform made specifically for life sciences, although we count at least one other (IMS’ Mobile Insights).

A pharmaceutical sales representative, for example, might use the product to get a better idea of where and by whom a certain one of its drugs is being prescribed to better understand what kind of messaging it should be delivering to physicians, and which other physicians it should be targeting.

In order for that data to be useful, though, it must be presented in an intuitive way. “In typical analytics, you see numbers and bar graphs and pie graphs, but we’ve applied a Q&A type of logic to the analytics,” King said, to help companies answer questions about how they’re performing and who their customers are.

The ultimate goal, of course, is for companies to be able to make more informed business decisions at conferences, during meetings, or wherever they might be.

Waltham, Massachusetts-based Trinity is a spinoff of life sciences consulting firm Trinity Partners.

[Photo courtesy Trinity Pharma]

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