As COVID-19 continues to alter our lives, both personally, as well as professionally, this fascinating article from McKinsey considers how life sciences work will be done in the next normal.
“COVID-19 has accelerated new ways of working in the life sciences industry that have been talked about for years—chief among them a shift to patient and customer centricity, digital interactions, and workforce agility. Almost overnight, R&D teams reprioritized new research, plant and network experts rallied to ensure clinical supply continuity, and go-to-market leaders shifted to enable at-home medical field force. According to data from Netskope—a provider of cloud security services—by the third week of March, around 60 percent of employees started working remotely, up from around 25 percent in the months prior to the COVID-19 outbreak.1 Even now, after some suspended clinical trials have resumed, more than half of the interactions between the lead physician and patients are done virtually, compared with 8 percent pre-crisis.
While much uncertainty remains, the forced experiments that life sciences companies have been conducting in response to COVID-19 have paved the way for reimagining how they might operate after the crisis subsides. Manufacturers, regulators, and other healthcare stakeholders have made substantial changes to how they conduct clinical trials, manufacturing, patient engagement, and other undertakings. Looking ahead, they should consider which changes to keep and which ones to roll back…”
