2024 PMSA Global Summit in New Delhi, India.

The views and opinions expressed in this article are solely my own and may not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of my employer or the Pharmaceutical Management Science Association (PMSA), where I volunteer.

Hello everyone!

I’ve recently returned from my first-ever trip to India, and it was a fantastic experience. The culture, hospitality, and food were simply unbeatable. We were fortunate enough to visit the Taj Mahal and other cultural sites, which added to the richness of the experience.

However, this trip held a special significance for me as a long-standing volunteer for the Pharmaceutical Management Science Association (PMSA) , as we hosted our first-ever PMSA Summit in India. For those who may not know, PMSA is a volunteer-based organization made up of individuals from various pharmaceutical companies. Our community includes advanced analysts, data scientists, and other professionals, all working together to create an environment of mutual learning and growth. We firmly believe that this collective effort has been advancing the pharma analytics since 1977.

Thus, our choice of India as the venue was driven by our commitment to making the conference globally accessible. With India’s growing influence, New Delhi was the perfect location. As of today, more than 20% of the companies in the Forbes 2000 have established their Global Capability Centers (GCCs) in India. Major Pharma giants like Lilly, AstraZeneca, GSK, Novartis, Merck, Sanofi, BMS, Roche, and others are making their mark in GCCs, with many focusing on Analytics and High Tech (Data Science, AI/ML). Looking back at the event, we can only wish that we had hosted the Summit sooner.

The Summit was a success, completely sold out, with over 120 attendees representing various companies. The agenda featured panel discussions on different topics including “Emerging Technologies and Their Impact on Pharma” and “Global Capability Centers: The Way Forward”. I was honored to participate in the panel discussion on “Key Factors for Successful Customer Experience Transformations”. It was a remarkable gathering of industry experts, and I’m thrilled to have been part of it.

During the Summit, several pivotal topics took center stage. With leaders from pharmaceutical companies and partners in attendance, we engaged in many insightful discussions on empowering organizations to harness AI to revolutionize pharmaceutical practices. A particularly inspiring talk was delivered by the keynote speaker, Nuray Yurt, Ph.D. , Head of Integrated Research and Forecasting at Merck. She explored the ever-evolving dynamics of markets and technology, emphasizing the importance of gaining a competitive edge through AI. Our keynote speaker Jaswinder Chadha , CEO of Axtria, shared his techniques for fostering a dynamic global team. Axtria’s remarkable growth over the last decade shows the effectiveness of these strategies.

Our keynote speaker, Pratap Khedkar , CEO of ZS, shared his vision for the future of AI in pharma, providing many real-life examples. He recounted a cautionary tale centered around the Choluteca Bridge in Honduras—an architectural marvel designed to span the Choluteca River. This robust structure was specifically engineered to withstand the destructive forces of hurricanes, and it indeed fulfilled its purpose. Yet, the team responsible for its construction failed to consider broader environmental changes. When a powerful storm struck, it dramatically altered the river’s course, creating a new channel that bypassed the bridge entirely. Consequently, this once vital connection point became a poignant symbol—a ‘Bridge to Nowhere’—highlighting the importance of anticipating and adapting to change.

In the context of the pharmaceutical industry, we must pose a critical question to ourselves: Are we constructing 'bridges' (in the form of data platforms, business processes, hiring practices, etc.) that, while structurally sound, risk becoming irrelevant as the 'river' of progress alters its course? This metaphor extends to us as professionals as well. Merely possessing a degree is not sufficient. The job market, industries, and technologies are in a constant state of evolution (take AI, for example). It is incumbent upon us to be proactive in updating our skills and knowledge to stay relevant.

AI will not replace humans; instead, humans empowered by AI will work on value-driven initiatives. The companies need talent due to the rapid AI development occurring both within manufacturers and their partners. The joke that many companies now have more AI "pilots" than United Airlines was good.

A few of the projects discussed (and believe me, there have been many more) include:

???????????? GenAI can be used on existing primary market research, analysts' reports, syndicated data, and other textual documents to summarize and uncover actionable insights. This could significantly reduce the time our team spends on analyses and enable us to discover insights more quickly and frequently.

???????????? In the realm of marketing, AI can be instrumental in personalizing content and campaigns. AI-powered tools can analyze large volumes of data from various sources, such as website interactions, social media, and purchase histories. This analysis can uncover patterns, preferences, and predictive behaviors for each customer.

???????????? The customer engagement model in the pharmaceutical industry is adapting to cater to the shifting needs of customers through Omnichannel and hyper-personalization strategies. However, there's still work to be done in this area before we can fully automate this process.

???????????? Content generation is another area where AI is making a significant impact, with 75% of new content projected to be based on AI-generated drafts. However, we need to ensure that compliance and legal guidelines are followed.

???????????? We can expect substantial improvements in processes such as content tagging and data structuring. These enhancements will make AI initiatives more reliable and easier to implement.

???????????? In customer service, AI agents are poised to become the first "person" a customer interacts with, routing only complex queries to human agents. We even humorously speculated about AI talking to AI in the future, for instance, when it comes to scheduling patient appointments.

?With so many pilots, many organizations are grappling with key challenges: how to productize, scale up, ensure explainability, and improve the efficiencies of AI products. This necessitates the creation of a productization framework that is agnostic of various therapeutic areas, aiding Data Science teams in building predictive models in less time. Many thanks to the teams from Novartis, MSD and Axtria for sharing their vision and some very practical approaches.

It also became clear during the Summit that enterprises are to realize productivity gains from AI.

• The Quantzig team shared their vision on how to build applications that seemed far-fetched just a few years ago. With Real-World Evidence (RWE) Analytics and Real-World Data (RWD) Integration, modularized with AI, they demonstrated how organizations can build end-to-end solutions in weeks by adopting a modular approach.
• The team from Fractal delivered an excellent presentation on Generative AI Tagging (GAIT), a tool that transforms unstructured data into organized and accessible information by automatically applying metadata. They helped us understand the importance of promotional content tagging, what hyper-personalization might look like, and how generative AI tagging can be implemented.
• The presentations from AstraZeneca revealed that RAG-powered LLMs enable a human-like conversational experience that makes it easier to extract the needed information from the documents. The performance comparison between RAG outputs and simple prompt engineering was very informative.
• From Tiger Analytics, we learned that foundational LLMs (open source: GPT2, BLOOM, LLaMa + Proprietary: GPT3/4, BARD, etc.) are trained on a vast amount of public data but lack the context of enterprise data (Claims, Formulary, HCP, Patient, R&D, other propriety and confidential data). Connected data foundations with a business knowledge store are pivotal for Gen AI model efficiency and solution scaling. Data quality remains one of the key challenges in contextualizing the LLM models. Thus, significant effort should be planned for extracting data of different types (charts, text, images, tables, etc.) and from different sources (tables, Excel, PPT, PDF, etc.).
• I also had the opportunity to share lessons learned on building a data ecosystem and navigating regulatory challenges. A proper AI governance framework with Responsible AI needs to be at the core.
• Thanks to the ZS team for presenting how AI-enabled marketing planning will help us generate individual insights and enable personalized communication planning for each customer.? While not all of the drivers and barriers to moving along the adoption journey are available at the HCP level, they can still integrate primary + secondary + cross-TA data to create an analytics-ready dataset. Does it hold a potential to move away from the segments to infer insights at the individual level? Exciting…
• The Genpact team delivered an excellent presentation on Transformative AI Approaches to HCP Communication. Optimization of email subject lines through GenAI and ML have shown to significantly increase open rates. They also proposed a framework to optimize for Click Through Rate with GenAI variations in content with review automation.
• The team from Lilly discussed the exploration of Market Mix Modelling to optimize resource allocation, while dealing with the challenges of limited data on a global scale. They also touched upon the adoption of probabilistic forecasting models, such as DeepAR. These models offer a promising solution to enhance forecasting accuracy and reduce risks in supply chain management.

So much to digest :)

Also special thanks to Karthikeyan Chidambaram , the Global Head of Data Assets Management at Roche Pharma and our keynote speaker, shared the story of how his organization achieved remarkable success by rolling out Insight-Driven CX Centers in India.

Another standout presentation was "A PhD and a Marketeer Walk Into a Bar" by Charlie Thompson . Charlie shared numerous professional tips on how Customer Experience (Cx) & Data Storytelling can help bridge the gap to deliver an exceptional meeting. He was also kind enough to share his recommended reading list:

• "Present Beyond Measure" by Lea Pica
• "Data Storytelling" by Brent Dykes
• "The Visual Display of Quantitative Information", "Envisioning Information", and "Visual Explanations" by Edward Tufte, who Charlie referred to as "the greatest ever"
• "The Back of the Napkin: Solving Problems and Selling Ideas with Pictures" by Dan Roam
• "Visualframeworks.com" by Dave Gray (in particular, the card pack/wall poster)

These resources are now on my reading list. After all, we must not deceive ourselves: while hard skills are important, soft skills such as empathy, resilience, and effective communication can be equally, if not more, important in the long run.

To conclude, I would like to extend my heartfelt thanks to the PMSA team for their support in making this initiative a success. Organizing this conference has been a humbling experience for me. I am grateful for the support and guidance provided by Nuray Yurt, Ph.D. , Igor Rudychev , and Vishal Chaudhary , who helped bring this event to India. I also appreciate the constant engagement of the entire PMSA Board, including Jing Jin , Tatiana Sorokina , Srihari Jaganathan , Mehul Shah , Nathan Wang , and Aditya Arabolu .

?I would also like to extend my sincere thanks to the teams in India, who took time out of their busy schedules to help us organize this event. This includes Neha Kumaar Garg , Apoorva Aggarwal , Mohit Sood , and Richa Hasija , to name a few.

Special thanks are also due to Stephanie Czuhajewski, MPH, CAE , Krystal Livingston, and Paul Scarnegie.

I hope everyone had a safe journey back home. I look forward to seeing you all at the Annual Conference in Denver, CO in May 2024.

Let's transform the future of Pharma together!

Nadia Tantsyura

PMSA Global Summit Chair