How are Biotech Firms Using Mobile Technologies?

Mobile technologies have transformed so many industries by making the supply chain more efficient, communication and collaboration faster, and marketing more effective. The field of biotechnology is no exception. Many business leaders in biotech have recognized the enormous capacity of mobile technologies to affect positive change for patients, doctors, and companies. Read on to learn how biotech firms are using mobile technologies every day.

Clinical Trials

Clinical trials are vital for determining whether a drug or product can cure a disease or condition, or at least improve patients’ quality of life. However, the process is far from perfect. Some of the complaints leveled at the way clinical trials are conducted currently are that they’re too long, too bureaucratic and not efficient.

The Clinical Trials Transformation Initiative (CTTI) hopes to change that. One of CTTI’s programs is its mobile clinical trials program. The goal of this program is to increase the use of mobile technologies in clinical trials to enhance test result collection and adverse effects reporting, reduce costs, and improve patient outcomes.

Improving Data Collection and Patient Monitoring

Thanks to mobile technology, healthcare providers, researchers, and patients can gather data faster and monitor diseases and health conditions. Many devices are now equipped with sensors that transmit information to mobile devices.

For example, the Senseonics glucose monitor implant has a transmitter that works with a mobile application. It sends data on a patient’s glucose levels throughout the day to the person’s smartphone or tablet. The app alerts patients to abnormally high or low glucose levels and gives them a sense of their glucose trends and patterns. Being able to monitor their own glucose levels on a device they use frequently empowers patients to make consistently healthy choices.

Mobile apps don’t have to be connected to a device in order to help patients monitor their health. AstraZeneca and the National Cancer Institute recently recruited a French mobile application developer to design a companion app for women undergoing treatment for ovarian cancer. The app allows patients to report side effects such as hypertension and diarrhea. Doctors will automatically be notified of the reports, and can work with patients to manage them so that these women complete their treatment and recover.

Marketing

Mobile technology has also impacted the field of marketing, especially as it pertains to biotechnology. Biotech firms rely on marketing reps to sell their products to healthcare providers, and mobile technologies can make that process easier and faster.

Marketing with the aid of mobile technologies can increase message impact, recall, and brand preference, according to Nancy Phelan, head of customer engagement for Bristol-Myers Squibb. Mobile technology need not replace face-to-face communication completely; reps can bring tablets to meetings with healthcare providers to digitally display marketing materials.