Serving the Life-Sciences Sector: PharmLogic International Combines Cutting-Edge Cloud-Based Technology and Solutions Expertise to Manage Industry’s Complex Data and Analytics Landscape

“Key to our success has been PROLOGIC’s ability to give our clients the option to deploy an end-to-end SaaS solution or select certain modules to fill particular needs in commercial data and business process operations.”

Working in the life sciences industry presents us with several underlying challenges. Whether it’s maintaining regulatory compliance or adapting to a rapidly changing technological landscape, we are always looking for new tools to improve the way we do things. Historically, implementing electronic tools to automate business processes or manage compliance has meant lengthy implementation times and large investments. However, with the introduction of cloud computing, this is no longer the case. As with any new technology offering, business and delivery models emerge in response to the industry’s needs, and the cloud is no different. When we look at the cloud, Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) acts as the main delivery model. The rapid adoption of SaaS technology in the life sciences has largely been driven by changing data landscape.

PharmLogic International is one such big data SaaS services firm dedicated to providing solutions to the life science industry by combining best-in-class cloud-based technology with a global services support model. The firm also offers a services organization comprised of a highly skilled team of professionals who provide a deep understanding of the industry’s complex data sets. The PharmLogic services team has a track record of success in multiple areas of commercial operations. Its global delivery model offers efficient 24/7 operations designed to support enterprise solutions and scaling.

In Conversation with Jose Vidal, Founding Partner of PharmLogic International

Q. What motivated you to evolve from a services firm into a SaaS organization?

We originally launched to leverage our extensive pharmaceutical knowledge and experience and provide pharma clients project-based services. Over time, we developed tools to help us perform our tasks across many clients. A few years ago, we decided to formalize our tools into a proper module based SaaS platform called PROLOGIC that manages various commercial operations processes. The SaaS-based offering has allowed us to scale and efficiently manage our offering across clients in a secure, automated, and auditable manner; hence providing a much better offering than providing ad-hoc manual support.

Q. Delineate a short overview of the services your company offers?

We provide a SaaS-based offering for life sciences (pharma, biotech, med device, etc.) that manages various functions within data management and commercial operations. We provide expertise across markets, with a special focus on specialty and rare disease markets. We leverage clients’ data and the firm’s industry experience to deliver actionable analytical results with meaningful insights. Our team leverages a proven approach for data management, data stewardship, reporting, deployment, incentive compensation, and advanced analytics.

Q. How can we eliminate complexity in data-related functions using your services?

Our platform automates the inbound and outbound data processing of life sciences complex data sets by providing flexibility in how feeds can be submitted, by automating validations, by providing user interfaces to perform data stewardship, and by integrating with other platforms as required. It automates workflows to reduce the manual/email back and forth across stakeholders and provides robust business process automation. The platform also serves as an interface between our clients and their customers so that data can be transferred, validated, and processed efficiently.

In addition, our platform manages all processes in an auditable manner, so all changes are date-stamped, and tracked by the user or business rule. The platform’s end goal is to prepare, organize, and transform the data and processes for our clients to extract maximum insights. We then deliver the data in dashboards and analytics that clients need to make better-informed decisions and drive their business.

Q. What can you tell us about your PROLOGIC Platform?

PROLOGIC is a big data SaaS solution specifically developed for commercial operations. The platform is designed into modules that can be easily combined into a customized solution. As a hosted cloud-based solution, PROLOGIC provides enough computing power to efficiently process the life-sciences industry’s largest and most complex data sets. The purpose of the application is to streamline data management and business processing and deliver actionable insights. Our motivation for developing the platform was the fact that the industry commonly underutilizes its data assets to due complexities in data processing. Our goal was to simply the process.

Q. The healthcare industry is one of the most challenging to transform because of the huge number of legacy systems. How do your solutions address this concern?

Pharma/biotech space has evolved immensely over the last decade or so and continues to evolve. Historically, data sets were pretty large but standard, and once a client set up their software infrastructure, they could run data processing and report in a pretty straight forward manner. As therapies became more complex, distribution models, reimbursement, and patient management also became more complex. Hence, this gave rise to many new data sets that were not commonly used previously. Although these data sets provide valuable insights, they do come with their challenges, including: They are sometimes incomplete, Sometimes they do not have a common key with the rest of the data universe, Data is sometimes duplicative of other data sets.

To overcome these challenges, PROLOGIC was explicitly developed to manage these data sets and has gained enthusiastic acceptance by our clients once they have faced the challenges of today’s life science commercial data landscape.

Q. What does the future hold for PharmLogic and its customers? Are exciting things on the way?

Yes. One of the more recent PROLOGIC modules is starting to gain traction—the customer relationship management (CRM) platform. This was the last remaining piece we needed for our commercial operations platform suite. Secondly, more clients are opting to implement the full PROLOGIC suite, so it has been exciting to see the end-to-end platform providing our clients valuable insights to run their business. Ultimately, we believe that the key to our success so far has been PROLOGIC’s flexibility – its ability to give our clients the option to deploy an end-to-end SaaS solution or select certain modules to fill particular needs in commercial data and business process operations.

The Ardent Visionary Behind the Success of PharmLogic International

Jose Vidal is a Founding Partner of PharmLogic International. He is one of the two PharmLogic cofounders. He has over 23 years of life sciences industry experience in contracting, data management, sales operations, and analytics. Mr. Vidal has held several director and senior director level positions in the pharmaceutical industry. He has also successfully managed large project implementation and business process outsourcing engagements in the life sciences industry. Mr. Jose holds a bachelor’s degree in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics from the University of Pennsylvania.

“Our mission is to provide our clients with a strategic advantage through the better use of commercial data and analytics.”