PharmaVoice: Cognizant’s Vice President and Head of Life Sciences for North America and the UK Discusses the Benefits and Challenges of Data-Sharing

“Regulatory developments and technological innovation are opening up new opportunities for companies to use lifecycle collaborative management to bring together parts of the value chain that have traditionally been relatively distant from each other,” says Bhaskar Sambasivan about the benefits of data sharing.

“Collaboration will become increasingly important across the R&D/manufacturing interface,” he adds. “The interface between pharma and patient is becoming increasingly important for a number of strategic reasons. With fewer new molecules and blockbuster products left to be discovered and developed, companies have to turn more to optimizing the particular effects of existing molecules for individual patients and segments of patients. In parallel with the decline of the blockbuster drug, governments and healthcare payers are coming under immense pressure to contain costs. In the future, most medicines will be paid for on the basis of the results they deliver.”

Outlining the challenges of data sharing, Sambasivan says, “Because many factors influence outcomes, pharma companies will need to have more knowledge and understanding of how and why outcomes vary at the point of use and be able to use that insight to optimize drug characteristics to a patient’s therapeutic needs, whether that is through product formulations or delivery mechanisms, and to feed that information back into development, formulation and manufacturing.”

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