Career postings are like little gold mines for competitive intelligence.
Recruiting departments of most firms are unaware how valuable job descriptions can be to their competitors. To entice the best candidates, all too often postings give away invaluable tidbits on the inside structure and workings of a company … who this job reports to, what is its geographic coverage, why it has been created. When pieced together with other intelligence on the company, it is sometimes amazing what you can understand about a company’s strategy and tactics.
Take AstraZeneca for example. We know that this big pharma has been involved in researching the benefits of Big Data for some years. In 2011, it announced a partnership with Healthcore to research Healthcore’s novel program to integrate data collected at retail pharmacies about individual patients and their prescription drug usage with Wellpoint’s transactional healthcare claims database. Wellpoint, who owns Healthcore, covers the lives of 35 million individuals and has massive volumes of data on drug usage, diagnostics and hospital visits, again at the individual patient level.
Wendy Diller of the Pink Sheet recently reported on this partnership and that it has already completed 22 research projects and 40 feasibility studies. It has looked at a number of markets that are strategically important to AZ, such as compliance in the asthma market, re-admission rates for acute coronary care patients and issues around biopolar disorders. However, little has been published and the success of this project is still unknown.
Is this program important competitively?
The answer has to be “Yes” if you are another pharma or biotech in any of the therapeutics market studied by AZ through this Big Data analysis partnership!
Why? Well, if AZ is seeing opportunities to better treat patients through Big Data, this could be a serious threat to you. AZ might be seeing better ways to position and message its existing drugs to physicians and patients, or unmet needs that it can fill by developing or acquiring very specific new drugs. And without having access to the same analysis, you are blind to these opportunities, which can all too quickly become threats.
A Deep-dive Into Specialty Pharma
A specialty drug is a class of prescription medications used to treat complex, chronic or rare medical conditions. Although this classification was originally intended to define the treatment of rare, also termed “orphan” diseases, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the US, more recently, specialty drugs have emerged as the cornerstone of treatment for chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.
But, is AZ seeing anything interesting?
Enter the recruiting department of AZ from stage right. They have recently posted a job ad for a Big Data Informatics Scientist that screams out success! (Maybe hiring success too as the posting is no longer active.) What degree of success is not known, but some degree of success, otherwise why would AZ go to the effort of creating a budget for such a job if they had not seen that Big Data analysis can deliver real value?
AZ in Waltham, MA, is looking for a “Sr. Principal Informatics Scientist – Big Data Analytics.” This “talented” individual will “drive the vision and strategy of Big Data Analytics in R&D and provide advanced hands on support to R&D activities across all therapeutics areas and phases of the drug discovery and development pipeline.” He will “drive and develop Big Data Analytics to a world-class level that creates competitive advantage for AstraZeneca.” He will use “multiple domains such as Pharmaceutical R&D data, clinical trials and health data, payer and claims data, patients’ data and business intelligence data” and will be the voice of AZ to “present to internal and external scientific communities on Big Data informatics solutions, best practices and scientific approaches, including external scientific publication.”
There would seem to be a very clear take home message for all pharma and biotechs, not just direct competitors of AZ.
You too should experiment with Big Data. And, you should do this now, before competitors like AZ gain too much of a competitive advantage in understanding how to exploit Big Data. As new datasets and analytical tools become available, Big Data analysis is an evolving skill and those companies that are at the cutting edge are most likely to be the one to reap the greatest rewards. You should also note that this AZ job is focused on assisting R&D and not in-market products. There is a message there, and where you should focus your efforts.
And, of course, there is other take home message … “make sure that your competitive intelligence group is looking out for unusual job ads by your direct competitors.” You never know what you will discover!
