Bits of Pharmaceutical Data: Why Pharma Can Fail at Tech Integration
By: Brad Yale
Tags: Marketing, Cloud Computing, Digital Marketing, Tech, Pharmaceutical

The basic tenant of the Cloud — bits of data stored in a remote server accessible 24/7/365 via the Internet — is so deeply embedded in the current infrastructure of the Internet that most consumers have no idea what or how consumer facing solutions utilize it.

The problem of understanding is one of ubiquity.

With Cloud Computing infrastructure so highly ingrained in the tech culture, any real discussion of it for the public becomes white noise — a constant taken for granted with the expectation of universal understanding.

Again, this serves wholly to undermine public knowledge and pharma advertising/marketing efforts.

Why?

If the underpinnings of the tech we all utilize are masked in advertising lingo, understanding data integration flow between devices can prove tricky. With HIPAA governing how medically sensitive data can be transferred between technologies and platforms, large consequences can ensue if said data isn’t stored, transferred, regulated, and protected in a very specific manner.

Due to the lack of understanding of tech matched to a subset of pharmaceutical marketers and medical professionals not understanding true HIPAA Compliance Regulations, data mistake can, and often do, occur.

This is a major issue given a growing sector of pharmaceutical providers are building engagement ecosystems on the bedrock of multiple devices powered by a variety of complex integration and DB concerns.

3. Physicality Matters

If you are reading this, you have a physical monitor in front of you.

Maybe that monitor is a cell phone or a tablet or a laptop. Whatever the monitor, you are reading this via a physical interface. The physical world makes sense precisely because it is tangible. Outside of the physical devices used to access Cloud based information, there is nothing about Cloud Computing — from the consumer side — that can be considered physically tangible.

At its root, the Cloud is information.

Data.

Bits.

Stored, transferred, utilized and built upon.

In and of itself, the Cloud is wholly virtual. Outside of back-end servers, routers, nodes, power/cooling equipment etc. and the devices information is digested through, the Cloud is wholly virtual.

The reason users and pharmaceutical/medical professionals connect with a USB device or an external hard drive is because they can attach a physical understanding to virtual bits.

The physical makes the virtual feel real. The physical makes the virtual tangible.

The Cloud has none of this and thus, it remains an elusive concept which the majority of the public can only vaguely guess at causing, as noted, many complex issues to come to a head.

Amorphous At Best

And then, when it was made simple, distilled, counted in bits, information was found to be everywhere. — James Gleick, The Information

So, I ask again: how amorphous is the Cloud?

Due to fuzzy advertising capitalizing on buzzwords as opposed to tangible concepts, due to ubiquity of infrastructure and application and due to a lack of physical tangible devices, the Cloud is everything and nothing to the marketplace. At best, Cloud Computing is and will remain an amorphous concept. At worst, it will remain a founding principle of Internet infrastructure upon which the next generation of tech — Web 4.0 — is built which a vast majority of the public doesn’t understand.

This said, if you want to learn about virtualization and Cloud Computing and move beyond simple buzzwords, check out WIRED, PCMag, or any variety of publications who work in the tech space.

To move beyond the bits — to understand how the Cloud works — I recommend checking it out.