Infosys’ life sciences ecosystem powers its domain growth over the next two years

To say the life sciences market is becoming more competitive and challenging is stating the obvious. The lessons from the pandemic, the prevalence of chronic conditions, and expectations for more therapies at a lower cost will continue to pressure the industry. Consequently, life sciences enterprises will continue expanding, optimizing, and crafting differentiated ecosystems to address their multi-variate challenges. Suppliers and service providers will have to do the same and support life sciences enterprises’ path to value creation. One such service provider, Infosys, has been diligently and strategically creating an ecosystem that merits attention for its ability to deliver strategy through execution across the life sciences value chain.

Ecosystems can supercharge growth and value

Over the last few years, Infosys has made several acquisitions, bolstering its horizontal capabilities across the technology, commercialization, and experience spectrum. It has applied acquisitions such as Kaleidoscope Innovation, BASE life science, and WongDoody to several industry challenges, including in life sciences.

The combination of the acquired capabilities and native expertise with platform operations and IT services has helped Infosys craft a credible and differentiated ecosystem (see Exhibit 1) that positions its value at a new level for life sciences enterprises.

Exhibit 1: The Infosys ecosystem addresses strategy through execution for pharma and medtech

Source: HFS Research, 2024

In the summer of 2022, Infosys made its first life-sciences-specific acquisition in BASE life science, a leading technology and consulting firm with expertise across commercial, medical, digital marketing, clinical, regulatory, and quality, along with competency in implementing AI capabilities. BASE life science collaborates with leading software technology providers in the life sciences industry, such as Veeva, IQVIA, and Salesforce. Given the ever-changing science, methods, and regulations, the ability to bring subdomain expertise to advise and consult for pharma remains challenging. BASE life science has strong abilities in data migration, data engineering, business intelligence, advanced analytics, next-gen CRM capabilities, and AI.

Kaleidoscope Innovation has delivered medical and pharmaceutical product innovation for 15 years, ushering in human-centered design, cutting-edge technology, and regulatory compliance. It is well-positioned to drive innovation success in the life sciences sector. Kaleidoscope Innovation is taking medical engineering to a new level as it ushers drug delivery, medical device, diagnostic, and digital healthcare products to on-market success by leveraging a suite of wet labs, usability labs, precision prototyping, ad VR labs and its industry experts in regulatory and clinical affairs. Its domain expertise positions it to help medtech rapidly move from concept to design to prototype to product, driving speed to market. The company’s strategic advantage is further bolstered by the presence of a chief medical officer, ensuring a deep understanding of clinical needs and regulatory requirements.

Infosys’ SAP practice continues to expand its footprint as it develops co-branding a generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) offering and maintains a preferred partnership for cold-chain and temperature management solutions. Infosys is one of SAP’s strategic partners.

WongDoody’s expertise in experience design is in demand as pharma continues to crack the patient experience challenge. As more pharmaceutical companies explore direct-to-consumer models to engage in care management programs or distribute medications, designing the consumer experience will be critical to success. WongDoody has succeeded through its C2C paradigm, which delivers results from “conversation to creation.”

All the domain-specific capabilities are executed on the back of over 40 years of IT service execution experience delivered by a unique talent management program that Infosys is well known for.

The Bottom Line: Ecosystem efficacy will drive the next wave of enterprise growth, and the Infosys life sciences ecosystem is right there.

While most suppliers have created domain-specific ecosystems, they tend to be biased toward a handful of domain players, such as IQVIA or Veeva, and enterprise platforms and hyperscalers like AWS and Microsoft. Infosys has crafted its ecosystem by threading its capabilities portfolio, effectively leveraging its horizontal stack, and layering on its domain expertise. This nuanced approach will likely put the company on firm footing as it attempts to accelerate its growth.