Digitization, Health Outcomes, and Sustainability will drive Life Sciences future

HFS is pleased to announce the launch of a seminal study that will evaluate the role and evolution of service providers and their value to life sciences enterprises. This is a critical symbiosis of the best of two worlds coming together to improve human health outcomes and drive sustainability through the choice of digital solutions.

The world as we know it is in the middle of a once-in-a-century pandemic. The life sciences industry drives the treatments, therapeutics, and vaccines helping us combat the pandemic through collaboration with their service providers in technology, medicine, and other fields. Service providers remain critical to life sciences enterprises in helping with data analytics through artificial intelligence (AI), supply chain optimization, rapid manufacturing, regulatory management, and logistics. This crisis has been a clear and present example of how service providers work hand in hand with life sciences organizations to help develop, deliver, and maintain at a scale and pace never seen before in humankind.

Life sciences covers a broad spectrum of subsegments, including pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and medical devices, all in the pursuit of protecting and improving organism life. As such, the industry is rich in opportunity for ideas, innovation, and investment, aligning with service providers being a mainstay of the partnership and support construct and providing critical solutions and services.

The HFS 2021 Top 10 Life Sciences Service Providers report will reflect how service providers are meeting the technical, organizational, and strategic imperatives of their life sciences clients

HFS defines life sciences service providers as those that provide services across the life sciences value chain (see Exhibit 1) to pharmaceutical, biotechnology, medical devices, and other industry segments. The life sciences industry typically partners with service providers for various services, including clinical trial patient recruitment, engagement, and monitoring; clinical data management; inventory management; and sales and marketing.

HFS updated its life sciences value chain to reflect the regulatory function span the value chain, touching all major functions. In the Top 10 studies, the HFS analyst team will evaluate providers’ capabilities across the HFS life sciences services value chain based on their capabilities executing life sciences solutions and services, driving innovation to clients, alignment to HFS OneOffice, and the voice of the customer. Each of the criteria will carry a weighting of 25% as part of the evaluation framework.

We recognize that results matter, particularly so in industries related to health and healthcare. As such, HFS will go beyond capabilities and analyze “outcomes” across the evaluation framework.

Given the state of the planet and its accelerating climate change, HFS will, for the first time, concentrate on service providers’ sustainability philosophy and their investments to help slow or reverse climate change. We will also evaluate voice of the customer data about the importance of sustainability in provider selection.

Exhibit 1: HFS will evaluate service providers across the life sciences value chain

Source: HFS Research, 2021

HFS takes a 360-degree view, understanding demand generation, service provider actions, and the impact on consumers and our planet

HFS seeks to understand the various dimensions of demand from the life sciences industry, particularly as the industry accelerates its adoption of digital technologies in the wake of the pandemic. We will target the capabilities, engagement model, and outcomes that service providers are driving to meet the needs of their life sciences clients.

In the same vein, we will seek to understand the priorities that life sciences organizations are addressing with service provider solutions, impact health consumers, the ultimate end user in health and healthcare.

As we connect these dots, for the first time in 2021, HFS will shine a light on service provider capabilities and actions on climate change and sustainability. We believe that the success paradigm must include a sustainable planet.

The Bottom Line: The HFS 2021 Top 10 Life Sciences Service Providers report will help life sciences enterprises determine which service provider partners are best in class.

Disruption due to the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the adoption of new business models and techniques, enabled technologies for new use cases, framed success differently than just 18 months ago, and incited the need for more change. As we experience this radical evolution, it is important to recognize that we live in a global village where sustainable change and improvements require partnerships and collaboration. The HFS 2021 Top 10 Life Sciences Service Providers report will showcase leaders, their capabilities, the real successes they deliver, and what we should expect next.