EU data rules to impact pharma interaction with doctors

New EU rules will change the way life sciences companies interact with doctors from 2018, requiring better data management to allow sales staff to target potential customers.

The Global Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) comes into effect in May 2018 – and will place much greater emphasis on potential medical clients consenting to receive marketing data.

Guillaume Roussel, director of strategy at Veeva OpenData, says that under the new regulation, life sciences companies must have clear consent from doctors before they contact them with information about medicines.

At a press briefing at Veeva’s European Commercial Summit, Roussel said: “You will see much less mass promotion; it will lead to more one-to-one contact.”

The Veeva 2016 European Customer Data Survey captured responses from decision makers across European life sciences companies.  The survey, showed that 77% of companies want to use client data to increase efficiency of sales and marketing teams.

Of those surveyed, 76% want to improve marketing analysis and decision-making, and 73% need a complete and real-time customer view.

But 87% of those questioned reported challenges in improving data quality – although most (78%) are taking action, with initiatives in place or planned within the next two years.

It takes the average life sciences company around 10 days for changes to their customer data to be processed.  However, most want updates within three days (79%) and many (37%) within one business day.

Roussel said that regulatory legislative requirements, such as the need for transparency in interactions with doctors, is requiring life sciences companies to improve the quality of their customer data.