Hi, everyone! Welcome to a new episode of Pharma Insights.
My name is Juliana Kreisel and I will be one of your hosts for today.
As you may know,
Pharma Insights is a talk show created by Platforce
with the aim to connect, network and exchange ideas
from the pharma industry from all over the world.
Today we will explore how to use AI to enhance Commercial Excellence.
Our panel of experts will disclose some key points regarding these new tools
such as how is AI changing our go-to market pharma,
and what will happen with omni channel.
This episode will not be only moderated by me,
I'm going to invite my colleague Stefan Repin to the stage.
Hello, Stef. How are you doing?
Hey! I'm doing great.
It's finally a good weather here in Budapest, where I'm at.
and we have the show today
and I'm really stoked about the guests we have.
It's like all superstars, you know?
So just let's introduce the other superstars.
Sure sure. Then our first guest
for today is Florent Edouard. Hello! How are you doing today?
Hello! I'm good.
I'm in the Netherlands and it's not warm, as usual
Hahaha I love it!
So, guys, don't go there!
If you're looking for warm weather, then it's not your option.
Then I would like to introduce
our second guest for today Manuel Mitola.
Hello, Manuel! How are you doing?
Hello, Juliana. Hi, Stefan. Hi, everyone!
So all's good from my side.
I mean, actually I'm from Italy and today, I don't want to brag, but the weather is great.
So... haha I'm very glad to be here.
Great! So, you heard: go to Italy, don't go to Netherlands.
Yeah, for food and for weather.
There you go! And last but not least, we have Marco Andre. Hello, Marco!
How are you doing today?
Hi, everyone! Don't come to Switzerland. Summer hasn't arrived here yet.
I believe winter is coming here.
So, guys, we do not only bring you information about the pharma industry
but we also bring weather reports from all over the world.
So, you know, just take our advice and go to Italy ha ha ha
Ok, before we start I want to remind our audience
that we would love to hear from you
so please leave your comments and questions
below in the comment section
and we will bring it up here to the panel.
also I want to let you know that we would love to hear from you
in terms of what topics do you want to hear after
so my friend, my colleague, and social media guru Malén D'Urso will be on the comments.
So, she's going to drop the form, you can fill it out,
and we will plan our next topics regarding your thoughts.
So, without any further delay I would love start this talk show
with this incredible panel. Stef, how are you feeling today?
Yes, I'm feeling great!
In fact, we have so many topics to start with
and we have just discussed this, before we started the webinar of ours,
that we want to go more into commercial AI
when it relates to GTM, go to market,
and since Marco was the one to bring it on, maybe he should start it on haha
I'm thinking... I'm thinking, well,
you have AI now, right?
So I was reading this book about the go to market strategy
and I was thinking about AI at the same time.
How can AI help you with your go-to-market strategy?
But when it comes to pharma,
we just mentioned that for example
when you do a research on Google, you don't get much outcome nowadays
but for example with tools like Perplexity
when you're looking for your ICP, ideal client persona,
it can give you like a way more, and a better outcome
than Google coule ever give you, you know?
and that, you know, if you have your ideal customer persona,
that's already the beginning of your go-to-market strategy.
But you have many other things to incorporate there
So my question is: what's a part of...
What's a basic part of the go-to-Market strategy for pharma
when it comes to, well, particularly pharma?
What are the building blocks nowadays when it comes to AI?
Anyone can take the question.
I just, so when I need go-to-market,
I know this conversation me and Manuel had last week.
Literally the best way to think about go-to-market is
where the market is going?
And where the market is going, if you think about HCPs nowadays
we have reports that they're using these technologies to get answers
much faster and much better. Patients the same.
So if we think about the immediacy, and the speed
and how they're using these tools to get those answers
It's unlikely that will go to other sources
so I always give this example
a lot of us having the industry HCP portals,
which need to be gated, which people need to put a password
need to look for the information,
need to download some information, and scan for it.
Will HCPs in six months, in one year actually be using that?
It's like any of us when we started to use
desktop, and then we pivoted to mobile
How many hours a day do we spend in mobile versus desktop?
So that's the first thing I think we should look at.
It's how we adapt our strategy based on
where the behavior of our cost... in this case our HCP and our patient is going.
I think I would even take it earlier than that,
I think I'm very lucky in the world of commercial excellence
in a sense that you know when joined Grünenthal in 2018,
I was able to completely shape the whole commercial excellence organization.
The only thing I got was the people
like there were people, there was no structure, no mission, no vision.
and one of the things we have established very early in comx,
is that we need to be the ones
who are going to drive the creation of the insights.
in the organization, specifically around the go-to-Market model
so right now for instance I got a beautiful asset
that we want to launch
in a specific therapeutic area
and the key question is
which physician do we need to talk to?
because they have the patients that will benefit from this treatment
and that's going to generate
the right Revenue stream for the company.
And this is really for me the starting point
where AI can help us.
And for instance if you take just an example from the US
you got the claims data, which are
billions of rows of prescription by individual in the US,
which is data that you can access.
The only way to manipulate that data,
to identify where those patients
are being treated along their patient journey
is to use AI models
and once you got that, you can then know where those patients
are being treated and you can
interact with the customers at that point in time
where they will be facing a patient.
And that's opening completely new grounds
in terms of possibility to be
to be accurate, to be relevant
with the physician and with the patient
so really for me it starts you know at the beginning
and then all along the commercial journey
AI is going to reshape the way we do commercial excellence.
Yeah, if I may add, Florent,
a couple of items let's say
came to my mind where you and Marco were speaking.
The first one is related to the the speed
because I think that when it comes with AI,
this is an element that
is going to be changed massively.
We were speaking before
how much time do you need to do that?
how much time do you need to get an Insight from the data?
so on, so I think speed also from our side,
let's say from the pharmaceutical industry,
if we were thinking about a go-to marketing strategy
with a certain lifespan in the past
now we are I think shortening it.
so that's one key element.
The other key element that it is let's say close
also to my own experience.
I have been working into the Omni Channel marketing field
for more than eight years and
and I think we have been always saying
you know, right channel,
right customer, right target, right timing,
and so on, we have been always hearing
this kind of thing I don't know how many times.
I think that
I mean to be honest we never went there
we never really went there but I think
that AI maybe will be and is the
thing that taking the data from multiple sources,
having the power of the
instilling Insight from this multisource data
maybe will be finally
able to enable a true Omni channel so
I would also say that maybe
the Omni Channel as is today
will also stop existing somehow
it will be a completely different and new thing so
in my mind I have these two things top of my mind.
Yeah, I agree. I'm totally with you
and one on the speed
like you know
it's not impossible to imagine tomorrow
that we will be able to monitor in real time the social media
to detect adverse event and address them in real time as well.
Today if you tell that to
the people in the company,
everyone's going to tell you you're completely nuts.
I mean, that's going to cost us a fortune,
and we don't even know if that data is accurate,
but with good AI models,
we are not that far away from being able to monitor that
and from the Omni Channel standpoint, it's the same thing.
The good old days we were segmenting customer
on potential and adoption
and they had to be in the right box
high potential and high adoption or you had to move them there
That was very rudimentary,
but that was better than nothing.
Today with the tools that we have
with the capture of all the omni channel interactions,
we can segment customers on 200 and plus dimensions
and delivering really One to One content interactions
and think that they really need in the format that they like.
So, yes, I'm totally with you.
Especially when they don't have the GDPR haha
Yeah, sorry, Marco.
And just on Omni Channel thinking about go to market
we might be facing a future in which there's no Omni Channel
we might be facing a future in which
each one of us interacts through only one
you know form of Jarvis or assistant
in which we will go through all of the other things
but actually we might be moving towards convergence.
and I think a lot of this is guess work,
because a lot of, as you said Florent,
there's the insights
and everything is moving at such a speed
but one thing is for sure
either on the applied AI side or generative AI side
our industry is going to have to be much faster
and how we create but also then
send to Market, that I have absolutely no doubt.
Sorry, you can go, Stef.
No, I saw that we have a question.
So I guess we all know Claude.
Claude Weddington, another influencer in the pharma space.
and Claude has a question, right?
So, Marco Andre on the spot, right?
Marco Andre, Novartis appears to have the most significant
patent cliff to overcome
considering those present in the conversation.
This is mainly due to the loss of exclusivity for Entresto
and the settlement-related patent cliff for Humira,
how active is the Novartis organization
leveraging AI for medical affairs excellence
in particular to combat the upcoming generics competition?
Yeah, we were discussing generics recently with Claude
and I think next year is going to be like
in two years there's going to be
like a ton of...
patents are coming... are expiring so
a ton of generics will flood the market so
this is I guess a question related to that.
So, Marco, the stage is yours.
Claude, good to see you. It's always a good excuse to go to Portugal.
There is definitely better weather than Switzerland. Always.
So, listen. Obviously I cannot comment directly on your question.
Because there are some things
I absolutely can't comment on in public.
I can... I'm sorry. I know that's not the answer you were looking for.
I think what I can tell you is
how I am thinking about generative AI
and what I'm doing in Novartis
and it has to do a bit with what Florent and Manuel
what we're talking about is
if we think about this
theme of generative AI 18 months ago
probably none of us
knew what it was. I didn't know for sure.
We always see this graph of
generative AI that chatGPT
took two months to get to 100 million users
but that's compared with other apps,
right, with like Uber
but the one stat I found
is that it took 37 years for electricity to get to half of US households
and smartphones it took 21 years.
ChatGPT took 10 months.
So I don't say this in a fluffy way that we need to be kind towards each other is
this is a massive earthquake.
My friend says this is the biggest
systemic technological change that any generation has gone through
So I think
even before we start thinking about
patent cliffs, and next developments
in medical, in applications in medical affairs
or commercial Excellence or R&D
there's a work to be done
and that's what I've been trying to do is
showing this to people,
showing it's not the implication of a video being done very quickly
it's not so much that the video is done so quickly.
It is the way you interact,
as Florent was mentioning earlier,
the way you interact with your agency, with your partners
and what you expect of them, and of your own teams
changes, so that's the work
I've been doing in Novartis.
First, talking with everyone that I can
to make them at the most senior level
to show them that this is not a fad
it's not going to go away and it's going to have massive impact
in whatever they do
so I know I'm not answering the question.
You're gonna understand why
but I wanted to give you a bit of my approach.
Then we have another question.
This is why people don't like pharma.
Guys, remember hahaha
ha ha ha
No one has said that you know having a patent cliff is a good problem
because that means you have a lot of revenue for now
so at least, you know, you should say that.
ha ha ha
And then we have another question:
Can you enlight us more on the best AI models that can be applied and how?
Who wants to tackle that?
Maybe I can.
Yeah, please!
Just to give my two cents here,
I am not let's say a developer
but I saw a study from the Stanford University
and also again the Stanford University has a website
where they are continuously testing the model
so I think the answer is
it depends on the task that you have to do
and basically you have different performances
for different, for different models.
I saw very good performances
generally speaking for Llama,
for example, I saw how to add
with the GPT and so on but it...
when you dive deep into the thing that
you have to do with the model then it is
then it is...
a different scenario, so it depends let's say
in short.
I would agree. I think it's difficult to
to say, you know, there is a winner per category
but depending on the problem that you have,
you will use a generative AI model
like GPT or Dall-e or whatever
If it's a compliance issue,
you may use another type of models
uh more NLP or you know image models
If you're talking about
you need to manipulate a lot of sales and market data
to understand where your market opportunities are
it's going to be sales predictive models.
I think there are really a lor of models.
The only thing for me is really
it depends also on how much money you have
and how many people
which means if you're a mid pharma company like us,
we don't have the luxury to have
tons of data scientists
manipulating and creating models and stuff like that.
So for instance when we go next best action,
we use models that, from partners
like Salesforce or others
because those guys can invest
in the tech and develop the model and stuff
and we can't afford that
I imagine that when you're on Novartis for instance
it's easier for you to build your own
personal model on your own data set
and be able to really protect your IP in that field.
I think it doesn't come cheap
the good models I think.
Can I add just on that, Florient
I think it might be good but I think
some of the decisions we need to make
and that's even outside the industry is
it might be the best
but it might mean not the most effective
so if I think about Bloomberg when they did the LLM
they were trying to protect their data
and I applaud them because they were trying to do that very early
and they spent $10 million dollars.
Nowadays you're going to chatGPT, you get a better answer.
I think a lot of the decisions we need to make is
exactly what we buy
like what we use, chatGPT, Co-pilot
what we build all on our own but then how we partner
how we get the best of
industry specific application, CRM for instance
and get our data
and I think the decisions to do one or the other or the other
will actually make or break
our companies in terms of going to market, so i just wanted to add that.
Yeah, thank you.
And another thing to consider just to close the loop also
is the fact that we can also use models
in combination, in parallel
and that's something that we can consider to..
Ok, we have another comment
from Jennifer, she says: Marco, good to see you.
haha I'm going to overlay the chat
so it's easier for us to see everything.
I don't know why... Oh there you go!
It says: Great to join this webinar today.
I would love to hear how the panel is seeing or planning for
use of gen AI in the context of
of Precision, Health. Oh sorry Precision Health
How we can identify patients with disease or with uncontrolled disease?
with the goal of getting optimal medicine to them
in time or earlier
and reducing healthcare cost?
So maybe that's a little bit
what I was alluding to when I was explaining
how we chose which physicians we go to based on the patient that they have
what you can do
and that's US only unfortunately,
we don't have that level of data yet in Europe.
So we need to find a way to get to the proxy level
but it's really literally
to understand okay
I've got my treatment
the patient who is probably going to be the most responsive
to that treatment has those characteristics
has been seeing those specialist,
has been seeing 10 doctors in the last five years,
has been on those type of treatments,
and has those you know characteristics
in terms of social demographics
with that you can really target
the right patients through the right HCP.
How do we get to that in Europe?
I don't know yet honestly.
It's a very complicated data set
that needs to be of high quality
what we can tell though is to give the doctors
descriptive of who those ideal patients are
so that they can detect them in their own patient pool.
But it has to be through a proxy
through the HCP.
Ok.
Just to add to that quickly
A lot of what we think
generative AI broad we think is only new tech applied to new data.
It's also new tech applied to old data.
And I think that's why we've been seing
incredible progress.
I think Precision medicine is one of the most
incredible areas where we're going to have more impact because
the new tech applied to old data is
not every big company has an army of data scientists
and now you can actually go
human what would be humanly impossible
you can apply the data and derive insights
from something that you've been having right now
So again, as Manuel you were saying,
theme of speed
and what you can identify in those things
it's something that generative AI enables.
Thank you for that. We have another question from Claude.
Jennifer, brilliant question.
I'll be curious to learn
how Novartis is leveraging data42
in the aspect to train AI models for
enhanced commercial excellence.
I think, Marco, that goes to you.
It's like Senate hearing of Novartis.
ha ha ha
I'm going to have to give you the same
the same answer, Claude.
There are some things I can't, I can't obviously answer.
to you or the public, or in private. I'm sorry.
Haha! No, it's perfectly fine.
Ok...
Which amendment is that, Marco?
Is it second amendment that you cannot incriminate yourself?
I'm not in US! I'm not in US!
ha ha
Yeah
So, now, Stef. Do we have a followup?
We shared the link that Manuel was talking about.
Stef was correct
that was Manuel for the Stanford University.
But that's okay.
Stef, can you?
do you have another question or another comment?
Yeah, so
in fact we do have a question from
Mr Adeel Siddiqui and his question is
how can AI...?
how AI can be implemented to do
to do segmentation and targeting for HCPs?
What is the role of commercial excellence
in segmentation targeting of HCP?
Again, how AI can Implement
to do segmentation and targeting of HCPs?
What is the role of commercial excellence
in segmentation and targeting of HCPs?
So well, for me, I mean
that's personal right?
Commercial Excellence
is there to give the rule in terms of
segmentation and targeting.
I mean if you want a neutral ground between medical, marketing, sales,
market access... That's in commercial excellence's land.
So that's the first thing.
The second thing is you need someone to process all that data
in a fair way and to decide "okay we need to apply this type of things"
and we need to get it implemented into the system.
Again you are now coming back to
the two dimensions before, and the more than 200 dimensions that we have
in the salesforce customer data platform today
it takes a lot of
steering
and that's an understatement
it takes a lot of steering to get
to each customer being profiled
willingly on 200 Dimensions
with high quality of data
and to maintain the data quality over time
so that your segmentation and targeting remains valid
so I really think it's on us.
For this one for me it's really in the commercial excellence and
my personal advice is
if someone comes to you saying
oh I got that beautiful algorithm that is a blackbox
and that's going to speed out a segmentation and targeting,
you press delete
and you send them to hell
because you need to own your segmentation and targeting.
Otherwise
you don't know your customers
and you don't know what you're doing, and you're just wasting your money.
I think one thing if I can add, Florent, just on that
I think it will be increasing...
again going back to the behaviours,
so if doctors as an example physicians are using
declaring their intentions
and for instance a GPT
so for instance there's this tonic app that I saw a presentation of
and they're actually almost a companion
and if those companies are not at certain point making that data available
how are we going to know how to segment them
if we don't know their intentions
so I think for us to your point is
what we do with the data but
how are we going to have access to that data
to know what are their behaviors and their intentions
that's going to be a challenge for us.
but I think a little bit to what, sorry,
I think it was Marcus
I think Marcus was saying we can only control
thanks to GDPR
only the customer that interacts willingly with us
and their data, that that's the only thing we can really control.
We have to make sure we do a good management of that
but in this case we can know
for the other ones I agree with you
there's no way we will know what's happening on GPT.
And from my side I fully agree with you
and I mean you have to own
let's say your segmentation and targeting, absolutely.
Maybe one thing that AI can
can help there
it's like it's an additional tool
and I think that
when it comes to segmentation and targeting
first of all it will be one let's say building block
for building the hyper personalization
also not only in terms of content creation but also
in terms of touch point flow generation
and another thing is that AI is very good in
finding let's say pattern, trends
that maybe from a human analyst standpoint
we are not able to see at first glance so
I see it is an additional tool
for the people working in Commercial Excellence.
Absolutely fine, I mean, I absolutely agree with you.
I would never say
Okay, push the button and
that's your segmentation and targeting
done by the algorithm.
I mean, if you come back historically
you know, why did we do it in two dimensions before?
because most people
live in two dimensions, you know.
Very few people like Stefan can live in three dimensions
with All Star Wars behind them, right?
I mean we usually live in two dimensions.
And that's why we simplified it this way
but now with the tools, the system
can create 300 500 600 segments
and manipulate them at the same time
doing differentiated campaigns to all those segments
and no one has to know exactly
which customers in which segment doesn't matter anymore.
Yeah.
Guys, we have another question.
Hi, everyone. I got one question.
Beyond lead scoring can AI predict...? Let me show the question.
Can AI predict the closability of a lead
allowing sales rep to prioritize their efforts?
I can take that one.
So one of the industries I always admired
and as a reference from in Pharma is the B2B
software as a service and I think they perfected this.
Three years ago,
Claude is going to be happy because this I can disclose.
Three years ago when I was in Sandos,
we started doing even before AI was a thing
a pilot project with the consent of HCPs
to record their conversations
and it was actually incredible because
the amount of data you could get from that,
the training that you could do,
the prediction of Adverse Events for instance
I mean Adverse Events is something quite serious, quite serious
that sometimes it doesn't even get
raised because it gets lost, right?
So all of the possibility that you can do that
what are the most asked questions?
how good it would be, we were testing some things at the time,
to go from... get the top 10 asked questions about a certain drug
in a certain market
and have it updated on a daily basis so
I think that is something that B2B has been doing it.
for a lot of time.
Obviously there's a lot of compliance, legal,
consents that we need to iron out
but I think we will all need to get used to
that having our calls recorded internally and externally
will just become the default
and from that I think there is incredible possibility
So I'm a big big fan of that.
Guys, anything? Someone else wants to add something?
Or we move to the next question? Manuel? Florent?
Yeah yeah. I totally align with Marco.
Yeah!
I would like to...
I think Marco is right when it comes to
AI and SaaS, in SaaS you really have to
use lead scoring models but
there is a very big problem with SaaS that
these lead score scoring models do not work.
And they do not work in any industry.
because they give you
they give you some predictions based on
let's say I'm watching this webinar with yo
and it says "okay I'll give you a score"
I don't know 15, right,
and the score of 15 means then
maybe I'll click on your website, on novartis.com, right? I'll go there.
And that will give me another five points.
And 20 points
I'm supposed to talk to a Medical Rep or sales rep
if you talk about business
and this is, you know, I might not be in the market to but this
The same comes for phama, like HCP can...
You have a personalized journey you know
Now I have a meeting with a medrep
and I'm going to go and research
through perplexity AI which we mentioned today
a certain drug for example
or for maybe a rare disease
that I'm encountering with my patiens but
the AI scoring model means that
by doing these actions which
basically me as a company I can score you know
I don't know what's happening back there.
It's a complete Black Box
but I know that you interacted with these points
and then I'm going to give you...
You have this touch points, I'm going to give you a score, and based on that
I'm going to presume that you are in the market for
for the drug or you're ready to
start getting samples and tests.
I think it's... We're not yet there
because a lot of it is
in the dark funnel which we cannot track
and...
I think Omni Channel solves that issue
where you don't have maybe in particular
that much pressure on the HCP to take a decision
in your favor because
your goal is to influence them
and not to score a sale right away, right?
so your goal is more to basically be
interface and help them out, make a
a good decision, make an informed decision
and not you know prescribe your drug for
for, you know, no matter if it's good for the patient or not.
I mean that's my 5 cents.
Well so
I think we are in, I agree with you,
not to score a sale, but we are in to make sure
that a patient that can benefit from our medicine
will have a chance to get onto that medicine
if he's the appropriate patient, right?
so that's something that you can know
like, you know, I used to work in respiratory, right?
When you launch your respiratory biologics
you know that only
a certain number of respiratory specialists
are going to adopt those biologics
the other ones will adopt them
maybe in seven years later
when it's going to be very mainstream on the market
with a lot of experience.
By detecting those early adopters
being able to train them on the product,
making them understand the science
and giving them all the element that they need
to detect the right patient
we allow that patient
that patient cohort
to go on the product
so that the physician can realize if that's a good therapeutic option
and that's what I would call
"closing the deal"
That's when we have done our job correctly.
Yeah, I like that because it doesn't need to be linear.
That's the point. It doesn't mean that lead scoring
is for you to make a sale
but lead scoring is for instance
if you get the top asked question, if certainly a client
is asking a lot of questions about your product,
let's take an example of B2B
is one either because he doesn't know
second because he's interested
So your job is not to just make a sale of something he doesn't have information on
is to get him or her the information that he needs.
So that he can do a better job
and then just to add on Florent's point
there's an incredible potential
for AI with patient endurance
incredible if you think about some of these things
a lot of these treatments don't work
because of patient endurance
all the things that you see in Nvidia nurse
if I could have someone remind me every day
some form of GPT
of how am I doing, monitoring with my Oura ring
how am I doing with...
imagine if it's a condition related to that
and reminding me I need to take my meds
I mean that is incredible for endurance so
good point on raising it, Florent,
because we shouldn't forget that part.
Thank you. We have a one question that was on the chat.
but it got...
We have a lot of questions actually, not one.
But the first question that we have is from Jennifer.
She said: one more question
or perhaps controversial topic
at the end of the day we need health decision makers
to accept and changed behavior
hcps, patients and policy markers,
Health Systems, governments, payers
how does industry
Pharma, data, aggregators, developers, etc
most efficiently support
fund and influence stakeholders?
Maybe I can start with this one because I was reading it
in the chat before and I think it is something really
interesting, it reminded me, let's say
some years ago when we were approaching
the digital channels let's say
first sales call, virtual sales calls,
emails, and so on
and I think when it comes to this
adoption of Technology, of course you have
have a curve
with the the early adopter and
from the early adopter to those who are let's say
very late into the adoption
from my perspective
and that's my personal opinion
I think that the
let's say, the AI Revolution will
will take place will happen and it will be not led
only by the Pharma industry so the HCP will be in the middle of
a product that he or she use into the clinical practice that maybe
are AI augmented so more and more people
from let's say consumer to professional will be
more and more used to work with the AI
and I think the key point for us as pharma industry
is to be ready
and to, let's say, be ready very very soon
in order to let's say
do not frustrate the early adopter that are of course
those who are accelerating an adoption of
a technology so I think that's
something important
of course there are all the other stakeholders
all around I think some of them will be faster,
some of the other,
especially I think about, for example,
the policy makers maybe they will be a a little bit slower
but I think it really...
It really depends stakeholder by stakeholder
in Europe I think we are in a good shape
let's say with the AI act and so on
So if I compare our environment to other countries
I think at least there is some
effort, some attention that is going
into the direction of giving a framework, giving a structure
but yeah that's what I...
what I think about the question, Jennifer.
Thank you for reasoning
because it's a very good topic.
Yeah, I think just on this topic I believe
science-based transparency
in phrma, that this is
what will make the real difference
I think the era of
the marketing and the bullshit
and the sales rep carpet bombing is over
and right now because the patients and the hcps will have access
to neutral AI models
that will give them briefings on the products,
on the disease, on the symptoms,
on absolutely everything
If you are not transparent, if you are not honest,
you will not be heard and that's a huge difference
versus the past and
products that are not actually
differentiated based on science
and make it transparent, those ones will fail.
You can launch it, you can spend billions
on marketing that stuff will not take off.
And that's a game changer for pharma.
We have another question for Florent.
Let me put it here.
It says: on the topic of unstructured data
how do you handle unstructured data enhancement
to enable quality recommendations
on whatever data sets you may have?
clinical, KOL/DOL, portal data or data that you may buy?
Wow! So... hahaha
In terms of unstructured data,
we've got multiple types of unstructured data
so we have unstructured data
like the historical data of the company
I would call them unstructured because they are all types and formats.
so those ones we are going to try to clean
document we are trying funnily enough
to use AI to be able to analyze them and tag them
using a very broad taxonomy
so that we can at least know what we have in house.
Then we've got, you know,
all the unstructured data that is coming back to our systems,
like you know the physician voice
voice of the customer, voice of the employee,
you know all that,
so for those ones as I said we don't have the means
and the capabilities to deploy
and create our own models so we're going to use
Salesforce, sentiment analysis, next best action,
and tools like that
to be able to analyze all that unstructured data
and get insights coming out of it
and then there is the unstructured data
for me the best example
is Twitter or X or you know
and those ones right now we don't touch
because otherwise we would be totally overloaded
you need I think to bite one size you know
after the other, just like not everything at the same time.
So we know it's suboptimal
but right now we're ready to try to
control and structure data internal
the external that is generated in our channels
and then we go to the external unstructured.
Okay.
Then we have another question.
I told you guys we had quite a few questions.
It says: how do you describe the implementation?
And do Pharma usually relies on
external agencies or it can be implemented inhouse?
I can take that.
Yeah, please!
I don't think there's a one size fits all in this case.
I think it needs to be
not only case by case but the situation
I think there there's three things that are really important is
decisions you need to make is right now
you need to rescale your entire organization,
like absolutely
in Pharma and outside of Pharma
so how are you going to rescale and going about it?
Some people may decide
we go every... We put everything on the agencies.
Right, okay.
Some others we bring everything in house
but if you bring everything in house
you need to make sure you have the right tools,
you need to build them, or buy them, or borrow them
and you need to train your people
and I think the training piece is
even before we start thinking about these things,
if we, and I put myself in that category,
if we don't really understand the impact that AI can have in the value chain
we can't be making those decisions.
So Florent knows I'm a big fan of the work he's been doing in Grünenthal,
because I feel as
it's not even as an industry,
we started focusing on the tech, on the data
in the use cases.
Guess what?
They're saying that generative is a flop
And it's not! It's like we didn't give the proper time
to train people.
When we moved from a calculator to excel,
we had to be trained and I think now is the same.
It's just a tool
so that's the thing, even before making those decisions,
we need to make people aware
of the implications of those decisions based on the tech that is used.
Those are my two cents.
And I fully agree, Marco,
I think you touched a very very important topic
that is the training and the re-skilling part
personally let's say I don't think
it would be let's say
for a pharma company
it would be the right move maybe from the very beginning to
do everything in house because of course
it is a fast-paced environment
so I think there are a lot of
players outside that are doing just the thing
and they are doing it very good so I think
a mix could be as usual
a good, let's say, a good solution
but pharma companies cannot
ignore the reskill need
because otherwise, and then starting from the business
because if we say "okay, AI is a an IT thing"
That's something that is
becoming a flop because people i
not able to use it, so you give an Excel
a software to a child
and of course it's not working.
It's something that is important.
To come back on the first part of the question,
even that's going to make me look like a Maverick,
I want to say that the implementation is
a fantastic moment.
It's super exciting.
It's not that often in my career
that I could go to a group and tell them
"there's a wave, 100 ft size wave,
that is going to land on us
and I need 20,30 people
who are going to be crazy enough to
with zero budget and no external support
are going to surf this wave together
and I had 20 to 30 ends raised
in the room, because it's super exciting
and if you take it, you know, with the learning eyes
and let's try and let's fail so
we have decided for instance that at the same time
we are going to implement agile at scale
so we are launching 15 Pilots
that we are running in an agile mode
so that we can kill very fast what should not survive
and we can move to the next pilot
but the people in it are doing it on top of their time
They are strapping the heart to find money
to fund the pilots
and they do it because they think
it's a game changer, so I would say
it's complicated but it's so fun
I would encourage everyone to try it.
Well, Carolina Quezada is saying
so she was responding to what Marco said
and she said: it's important to have fun
So, there you go, Florent haha
but I know Carolina
and yeah, it's true I mean
if you don't, I mean seriously,
we are doing a fantastic job.
We try to bring back the health to people and stuff like that.
That's a great mission.
But we are also human, we need to have fun!
If we don't have fun, we need to change
We go to the entertainment industry, or something like that.
You know? If it has to be boring from Monday to Friday,
then just don't do it.
And this is a way to create fun for all.
And if I can just
I've asked to put on the chat
there's actually an article from last week
which exactly says that
so we might sound a bit crazy yeah you know
have fun and play and everything
but actually you can see that managers
that have actually played with generative AI
and show people like they show examples to their people
the engagement and adoption
is 350% higher
so take a look at that because now there's data that actually proves
that the playful thing is not having fun
is actually way more effective.
Nice.
We have another question.
It says: so we're talking about commercial setting
do we need to be looking at proof of concept to use in trials 1st?
So first I don't know
but that's, so it's really interesting, you know.
When you go, so,
we are normally very siloed between R&D
and the people who are doing the clinical trials
and the people that are in commercial.
Like, you know, we are not supposed to be
working too much together
and in fact what we see
that those guys in R&D are moving very very fast
and they have been using
without anyone knowing it AI for years
to select and create molecules,
to select patients for the clinical trials, and to do that type of stuff
they are actually doing it
but because they are R&D people
and not commercial people, they don't make a big fuss about it
that's a big difference so we can be their first maker.
Interesting.
Do you guys, Manuel, Marco, do you have anything else to add?
No, from my side, I mean I fully agree with Florent
I do not have big experience on R&D.
Oh, please!
I got a question, it's not related to this,
I'd like to dwindle the topic a little bit so
we have
so, you know, we talk a lot about AI,
and how it helps us with a go-to-market strategies
so go-to-market strategy you have
part one is targeting the right doctors
and the patients
and the other part is like field enablement you know
so the question is how can AI help us with field enablement?
I'll let anyone start with this.
I can take a pass at it.
It is related with the question we were
having earlier on...
on lead scoring.
We will all, regardless of our function, need to up our game
because access to information
the barries to enter are super low
so there's this story I always tell of this of this lady
she went through 17 doctors
three years trying to diagnose her son
after she was getting desperate
she took all of the notes, the last exam, and in half an hour ChatGPT
she got diagnosed
so patients are going to become super patients,
HCPs are going to become super HCPs
which means in terms of field
will need to become super reps
we will need to know what they are looking for
what are their questions,
they're going to come way more informed so
what we were discussing earlier again
to your point, Stefan, is about
about the lead scoring, is not so much as we will need to be
ready to have interactions with them
because they will know way more
than they could know before
and AI will help us
not only generate documentation but gather insights,
gather notes, allow us to be more present, we always forget that.
People think I'm a romantic saying that AI will make us more human.
but if I'm in a conversation with Manuel
and if I'm focusing on taking notes and
getting action items, everything, I'm not fully present with him.
and I think that's how AI can help
tremendously on sales engagement.
Another thing to build on what you were saying, Marco,
I'm thinking of a practical example of
when it comes to field
so if you are for example entering
a new therapeutic area with a new compound
in an area that it is unknown for you
for the company of course
I think that AI can
play a crucial role in
let's say taking the data we all know
we can take the data from IQVIA for example
or from other service provide
like that
but I think the competitive advantage will be also the usage that we do
of the AI to do for example a field sizing,
a field force planning
done in a very laser focused way
because we all know that of course
let's say unfortunately or not
the access of the sales rep to the Physician is decreasing every year
so of course we have to
maximize as much as possible
the sales force if we want to leverage on this channel
and I think AI can really
help a lot as a tool.
It's just... I'm reacting also on the message from Chiara in the chat
The other day I was watching a movie
I can't recall unfortunately the movie
but there was someone, one of the people
people in the movie that was describing symptoms
and I was hearing that
I went on to chat GPT
and I was... you know what? okay those are the symptoms
what is a disease?
and chatgpt gave me the right disease, like same in the movie
So it's not a real life setting and stuff like that
but it shows how powerful those systems can be
and how much they are going to influence the patient
because then
before it was "okay, Dr Google is telling me that"
the doctors rapidly said "Dr Google is a donkey"
"so don't believe what Dr donkey says"
but tomorrow it's going to be Dr ChatGPT and by the way
Dr ChatGPT graduated as
a generalist in the UK
so don't believe it's a donkey
or you know UK donkey haha
but I think it's really really important we take that into account
in our go to market strategies
the patients will be educated by
the AIs tomorrow.
I definitely believe that.
We were having a discussion with my husband about something, I don't remember what it was
but I was feeling a little bit sick
and the first thing that he told me was "Don't Google it"
because, you know, usually you describe your symptoms
and there you go haha
but now that I know that chatgpt can actually
gave me what I have, then I have a new doctor haha
No, I'm kidding haha
I know that, and that's scary because
then you're wondering
okay those systems have been educated using data sets
what was it that data set?
if you're starting to touch the health of the people
did someone pollute
the data set intentionally?
so that the system is going to give the wrong answer to the patient
I mean, it can.
when you think the manipulation that can happen in that field
it's like literally very scary
so we need to be very careful and we need to educate our role I think
as trusted HealthCare Partners
is to educate the people on
how to use the system and what are the limits of those systems.
Well, yeah...
Please.
No, no, sorry, good ahead.
I know, like Chiara said: Indeed, Florent. Medical protocols will also improve
as well thanks to AI inquiring power and all patience insights gathered.
Yeah, totally.
And, Florent, you made me think about a question
that I received during another webinar
and I will not make any names
because of the question, but basically the question I received
was that: is there a way to make sure that the custom GPT
is going to recommend our drug instead of the competitor's one
after the patient asked for the symptoms?
I receive this question haha
ha ha yeah
Even that, but that's a reality, I mean a lot of people are saying
"You have SEO, right?"
You're going to start having some model of large language model optimization.
That's going to be a whole new...
So we also need to be ready for those disciplines,
new disciplines to emerge, because, yes, of course...
I just want to quickly comment if I can just on Jennifer's
how do we bridge R&D and commercial
and I would love to hear it
the biggest concern I have right now for the world and for the industry
is tech people
are not speaking enough to business
and business people are not being tech enough
I think we are in a very polarized world
I'm not going to lecture us on that, we know different reasons for that
but my biggest concern is that
if we in business don't try to become a bit more techy
if the techies don't start become a bit more business
if R&D doesn't go closer to commercial
if medical affairs doesn't go closer
to any other function
I think we're going to fail on bridging this.
So that bridging word
triggered a lot for me
and that's what we need to do, because I think if we do that
everyone is going to benefit
Pick the most skeptical person in your organization
go and have a coffee with them,
then we'll have, in complete denial of AI,
just have a conversation with them.
Thank you. We are two minutes away from ending this webinar.
So, guys,
do you have any closing comments for our audience?
I know you guys have a really really packed agenda today so
I want to be respectful of your time.
So, who wants to go first?
Manuel?
I can just...
Florent?
Sorry, maybe I will just...
because that's a link, I will just build on Marco's comment there.
Totally, our biggest enemy
is not external, it's not our competition,
it's not our biggest enemy is
our internal Silo mentality
where I take care of my stuff and I end it over to someone else.
Those are the walls we need to break
to create a united data platform
on which we can build our models
across function for the benefits of patients and HCPs
and that means, to Marco's point,
business , IT, everyone talking and working together.
Otherwise, we won't be successful
and that expands in my mind also to partners
like openAI, like Veeva, like IQVIA, like all others,
because they play a role in our ecosystem.
and that's for me the only way
we're going to maximize the positive impact of the AI wave.
So sorry, Manuel,
I just jumped in because
that was connected to what Marco was saying.
No, no problem! I mean
From my side, let's say, I think
first of all I fully agree with you both
for both points, from my side
I would like to close with
something that I'm also doing personally
that it is to learn also from other Industries
because of course our customers are also customers
from other kind of products
in way less regulated environment
meaning that they can have more speed, more agility
and so on, so from our side,
from a pharma standpoint
we could have the luxury let's say to learn
from those who already tested in a safe environment
so, learn also from the other industry.
Thank you! Marco, something to leave or...?
No, the last thing is just, as as Florent was saying,
we're all different. we're all from competitors
and we're all here being very open
with the fact that we all have the same challenges
and I think we need to do that way more if we want the industry to go forward.
So, thank you for inviting us.
And I really appreciate the open and candid conversation.
Thank you. Thank you, everyone. Thank you, audience.
And just to let you guys be
very calm and don't worry about me
I'm not going to use ChatGPT as my doctor
I will go to an actual doctor ha ha
So thank you all for being here.
Thank you to our audience. We hope you have a great rest of the week.
And I will see you all on our next "Pharma Insights"
So it's gonna be on the 27th of June.
27th of June, guys,
write it up, and very soon we're going to be starting a community
We're going to be giving you more information about that.
Thank you so much for being with us today.
I know it's hard.
The European Championship is starting.
A lot of games, you know.
Good luck to everyone!
Thank you very much! Thanks!
If you want good food and good weather, go to Italy.
I will see you all in our next "Pharma Insights".
Bye bye!