Pharma giant Novartis has signed Shyft, a Medidata Solutions subsidiary, to help strengthen its digital solutions to aid the launch of new therapies targeted for the European market.
As part of the agreement, Shyft will provide Novartis with its Strata data platform that manages third-party and proprietary commercial data sources and the Lumen insights platform that delivers analytics for "next best actions" for commercial teams, Medidata said.
The partnership between Novartis and Shyft comes from an existing collaboration between Novartis and Medidata, which has been supporting the pharma’s clinical trials and commercialization programs.
“Medidata and Shyft have come together in a way that allows us to share data and insights seamlessly across our clinical development and commercial teams,” Bertrand Bodson, Novartis’ chief digital officer, said in a statement. “We are committed to reimagining medicine with data and digital, and this technology helps us do that by supporting our pharma sales reps with intelligence-driven ‘next-best-action’ so they can make the 100,000 interactions they have with HCPs (healthcare providers) every day as personalized and meaningful as possible.”
Earlier this year, Novartis announced an executive shake-up as part of the company’s efforts to strengthen its digital presence and tighten its ethics and compliance efforts in the wake of a series of global scandals. As part of that move, Bodson—the company’s first chief digital officer—was elevated to the executive committee, reporting directly to the Novartis’ chief executive.
That move came on the heels of a deal with Pear Therapeutics to develop software applications that could go to the FDA for approval and link with prescription drugs as a way to help support value-based pricing with payers. Novartis has said one of its top goals is to use tech to improve the overall way it does business.