OBJECTIVES

: Digital transformation is affecting all industries and the pharmaceutical sector is not an exception. To develop digital health technologies pharma and biotech companies often enter into collaboration with technology companies because beside the experience of rigorous clinical environment, it also requires strong technological know-how. The objective of this study was to identify recent trends in e-health solutions developed under collaborations engaging big pharma/biotech companies.

METHODS

: Top 10 largest pharmaceutical and biotech companies were identified based on the revenue generated in 2018. A hand-search with Google was conducted for each company combining company’s name and various keywords related to e-health. Identified media releases about collaboration between pharma/biotech and tech industry related to development of e-health technology were collected and analysed.

RESULTS

: Overall, 61 e-health activities were identified. Among 10 analysed companies Novartis was involved in the highest number of digital innovations (16 initiatives), followed by Pfizer (8 initiatives) and Roche (7 initiatives). The most dominant disease-specific areas were diabetes, oncology, and nervous system disorders, however significant part of solutions did not target any specific condition. E-health solutions were mainly considered by the companies in the following fields: new molecules discovery using advanced modelling techniques, collection of patient’s data for research purposes, patient’s personalized health tracking and monitoring of patient’s compliance. The analysis indicated a considerable interest in technologies using artificial intelligence (AI) since 1/3 of e-health solutions under development involved such technology.

CONCLUSIONS

: With the advent of digital transformation, pharma and biotech companies become increasingly involved in developing digital solutions. The field of advanced analytics, often involving AI, seems to capture the greatest interest, for both, early R&D purposes as well as real-life data analysis. Digital health technologies may become unavoidable tools in the future boosting fast development of new drugs and facilitating collection of clinical evidence pre- and post-launch supporting market access decision-making.