Thursday, 1 August 2013

Mastering Data Management in Pharmaceutical and Life Sciences


Oftentimes it has been stated that there are only two things that remains in and out with the system especially in healthcare domain that is data and patients. With the brief and sudden rise in the digitized resources in life sciences, healthcare and pharmaceutical domains, scientists and researchers all over the world find themselves at the focal point of both challenge as well as opportunity depicting to create the usable and beneficial information systems along with efficiently managing the flux and downpour of data. Recently while attending a SAS life sciences and health conference, the managing director John D. Halamka stated and shared his views about the role of IT in healthcare and life sciences verticals and how the databases are growing more and more beyond one such capacity to use them in a meaningful and relevant manner. Considering the fact that suppose there is no one else who can tackle the challenge, assume and conclude for a moment that we can and yes we will handle the data. It becomes out need of the hour and responsibility to take what is important and significant from that data and make it more purposeful and useful. That thing is called and well known as the ‘thinking data’ that is more accessible, coherent, useful, beneficial and for sure accurate and predictive.

At the prominence and cutting edge of that challenge, the critical issue lies in the data integration. Though there are many other strategies and approaches to consider and handle in a technical manner including data marts, data warehouses, federation etc. and the major focus shifted on contextualization and consolidation of the information.

A Brief about Master Data Management and Opportunities in it

Before we drill down more into the acumen of master data management as applied to life sciences, healthcare and pharmaceutical industry, let’s take a moment to think and talk about what exactly MDM is. Think of master data management as a way to manage reference data to get a clear and better idea and understand the context of our transactions. According to Ralph Kimball’s terminology, master data management solutions assist to consolidate and blend the facts with dimensions. Helping firms and enterprises by providing processes and procedures to collect, cleanse, summarize and augment the data efficiency and with sheer consistency, MDM provides apt governance and command in the ongoing maintenance and usage of data. Considering and thinking from the data perspective, the world of life sciences, health and pharmaceutical domain is frightening and alarming. With MDM pharma focused on research, drug discovery, manufacturing, operations, sales and marketing and more, there are many untold and indescribable examples of the same where firms have successfully and promisingly used data along with the technology to support decision making and preciseness. In healthcare industry, there is more complex situation in which payers, researchers, providers and patients having their advocates dealing in both public sector as well as government arena highlights the attributes and examples from health outcomes as well as clinical research of a wide range of users available for primary use of patent data.

MDM solutions is all about drafting a consistent and rational version of the truth, data and information that can be shared across the firms and organizations and used for both strategic usages as well as tactical or operational purposes. In healthcare, linking the data purposefully to patient care will undoubtedly help to perform analysis and determination and improvise patient safety and outcomes. In all, master data management solutions in pharmaceutical domain could be used for providing companies and organizations worldwide operational support and performance for conducting clinical trials more efficiently and effectively. And once you got a well defined plan, you can move further with a unifying plan for your data and could draft a roadmap for growth and success that will involve operational processes, data stewards and governance for effective implementation of master data management program.

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