Mainspring advises industry to embrace wireless handheld strategies
"The combination of enormous opportunity, frantic activity, and biased promotion makes it very difficult for companies to set strategic direction," said Mark Hernon, Vice President and General Manager of Mainspring's Industrial and Life Sciences practice. "However, we believe the trend toward the wireless-enabled physician the eMD is clear. The eMD will demand that all applications be available through a single handheld device, with continuing pressure to make those applications available any time and anywhere. Pharmaceutical companies, pharmacies and pharmacy benefit managers that fail to recognize this trend will find themselves at a distinct disadvantage."
"At the same time that the PC-based world seems to be coming up short, handheld devices, both Internet-enabled phones and personal digital assistants (PDAs) are becoming more common among physicians," continued Hernon. "With their ease-of-use and minimal disruption to MD workflow, handheld devices are poised to go where the PC never could. Physicians tend to be early adopters of technologies that meet their unique needs and handheld devices seem to be following the path of pagers and cell phones into the pockets of virtually all doctors."
According to Rob Glik, Manager in Mainspring's Industrial and Life Sciences practice, the best strategic approach for companies may be to actively drive new opportunities, creating a pipeline of handheld initiatives similar to their pipelines for new drugs.
"Several pharmaceutical companies have already set up a large number of partnerships and experiments," Glik said. "Ultimately, companies that are aggressively targeting handheld devices may gain both operational and financial rewards. In addition, active participants can create new services, either for the physicians themselves, or to enhance the communication between the physician and the patient."
"This new frontier brings a host of challenges from new partnering strategies and emerging standards to developing new offerings that complement core products," Hernon added. "We are encouraging companies to take a disciplined approach to creating a pipeline of initiatives suited to making big bets and actively managing their risks."