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Salesforce’s AI-Powered Life Sciences Cloud Transforms How Pharma and MedTech Companies Engage with Patients and Healthcare Professionals

  • Participant Recruitment and Enrollment will help accelerate identification, recruitment, and onboarding of eligible clinical trial candidates while boosting trial retention
  • Unified Data Platform underpins Life Sciences Cloud’s AI capabilities, connecting and harmonizing data into unified profiles that enrich customer engagement
  • Customers like Tactile Medical are using Salesforce to help streamline their healthcare engagement and improve patient outcomes 

Salesforce today announced the general availability of Life Sciences Cloud, a platform for pharmaceutical (pharma) and medical technology (medtech) organizations to help personalize patient and healthcare professional (HCP) engagement and streamline clinical operations with data, automation, and trusted AI.

Why it matters: Recruiting candidates is one of the most time-consuming parts of clinical trials, taking up to one-third of each study’s length. Additionally, 80% of trials fail to onboard the required number of patients and have to extend their timelines as a result. After a drug becomes available, keeping patients on therapy is also difficult – one study found that nearly 40% of patients stopped their medication within the first year. AI can help pharma and medtech companies improve efficiency and better support patients and HCPs, whether it’s during clinical trials or staying connected with them. In fact, 86% of leaders in healthcare and life sciences believe leveraging data and AI will be key to their success in the next five years.

Innovation in action: Life Sciences Cloud leverages the Einstein 1 Platform to help provide an AI-powered, end-to-end solution that connects teams across every area of patient and HCP engagement to assist with improving patient enrollment and recruitment processes, trial onboarding, and communication:

  • Participant Recruitment and Enrollment enables contract research organizations (CROs), sites, and sponsors to identify qualified, diverse candidates and recruit them to appropriate clinical trials. Using generative AI, clinical research coordinators and site personnel will be able to review and match patients to trials based on prescreening and eligibility criteria, thereby reducing manual screening and assessment time. Sites and sponsors can publish patient portals to improve trial discovery by making it easy for eligible patients to search for and indicate interest in being contacted for trials. Coordinators can also customize e-consent and assessment forms to streamline enrollment processes. For example, clinical sites can use Einstein Copilot, Salesforce’s conversational AI assistant, to assist them with generating a segment of patients that live within five miles of a trial site using insights from data sources like spreadsheets, electronic health records (EHRs), and medical networks. Copilot can then be used by coordinators to connect with qualified patients who might be a good fit for a specific trial. 
Unify clinical and non-clinical information from electronic health records (EHRs), claims databases, and social platforms to create holistic profiles to better understand candidates and patients. With a unified profile, life sciences organizations can generate segments of target populations for specific therapies or clinical trials.  
  • Patient Benefits Verification helps life sciences organizations quickly determine out-of-pocket costs and financial assistance eligibility for pharmaceuticals or medical diagnostics. This feature equips them with coverage analyses, service level agreement (SLA) expirations, and proactive alerts and recommendations related to a patient’s coverage – all on a single dashboard. In addition, patient service agents can use Einstein Copilot to help generate benefits summaries and perform re-verifications in bulk. For example, if a diabetes patient’s insurance requires a new prior authorization every six months, Patients Benefits Verification can be used to alert agents to re-verify a patient’s insulin and glucometer copays to help ensure continuity in their treatments. 
Quickly determine out-of-pocket costs and financial assistance eligibility for pharmaceuticals and diagnostics – streamlining and automating verification of benefits, which helps improve patient adherence to medications.
  • Patient Program Outcome Management will help patient service teams and coordinators capture and automate the impact of their education and support programs, mapping patient milestones to program outcomes through assessments and event reporting. For example, patient services teams can create a tailored engagement strategy that reminds patients to take their medications. And while the campaign is still running, they can analyze which engagement tactics worked best and see if adherence increased to help lower treatment drop-off rates. 
  • Life Sciences Cloud for Customer Engagement* streamlines interactions to provide a full view of HCPs across different pharma and medtech teams — including marketing, sales, and medical science liaisons — to avoid redundant outreach and maintain audit trails for compliance. Building on offline, mobile, e-detailing, and content capabilities, teams will now have access to real-time insights, analytics, and past HCP interactions directly in their workflows. For example, an onsite sales rep can present to a HCP directly from their mobile device or iPad, without worrying about access to Wi-Fi. They can share dynamic, relevant content like brochures or videos and track engagement, such as how much time sales reps spend on specific sections of presentations.
  • Unified Data Platform for Life Sciences uses Salesforce Data Cloud and MuleSoft for Life Sciences to help create a complete, harmonized view of each patient and HCP. Data from structured and unstructured sources like emails, meeting notes, call transcripts, scientific publications, and product documentation is ingested and connected into a common data model and then used to build unified patient profiles, personalize interactions, and connect HCP and patient engagement. And with Salesforce’s open ecosystem, life sciences organizations can easily connect third-party data like claims, prescriptions, and procedures to Life Sciences Cloud, helping personalize and target content for HCPs. For example, a commercial sales rep can get a real-time alert when a HCP in their territory enrolls a patient in their support program, allowing them to engage with them beyond the initial prescription. 
Easily access relevant content on the go or offline, from any mobile device or tablet. Use Einstein Copilot to tailor conversations and build compliant presentations with HCPs based on browsing data to accommodate specialties, interests, feedback, and preferences.

Salesforce perspective: “With a backdrop of rising drug costs, frustrated doctors, confused patients, and regulatory scrutiny, life sciences organizations must find ways to do more with less. AI opens the door for pharma and medtech organizations to reimagine their operations while promoting a focus on patients. With these new innovations from Salesforce, life sciences organizations can access the power of predictive and generative AI to make the best use of their data quickly, while helping to automate administrative tasks and identify potential risks in real time.” – Frank Defesche, Senior Vice President and General Manager for Life Sciences

With these new innovations from Salesforce, life sciences organizations can access the power of predictive and generative AI to make the best use of their data quickly, while helping to automate administrative tasks and identify potential risks in real time.

Frank Defesche, Senior Vice President and General Manager for Life Sciences

Customer perspective: 

  • “Tactile Medical is rapidly adapting to the disruption in healthcare by using the power of Salesforce’s platform to build out a unified, end-to-end system of engagement for our patients, HCPs and employees. Salesforce is at the epicenter of our intelligent health initiatives which include the provider and patient experience, business agility, revenue cycle management and cost-to-serve.” – David Kaercher, Chief Information Officer at Tactile Medical 

Availability:

  • Participant Recruitment and Enrollment capabilities with screening, e-consent, and simple randomization are generally available now. AI enhancements, including matching for patient recruitment, are expected to be available in late 2024.
  • Pharmacy Benefits Verification is generally available as a part of Life Sciences Cloud.
  • Patient Program Outcome Management is in pilot today and will be generally available in October 2024.
  • Life Sciences Cloud for Customer Engagement will be generally available in September 2025. 
  • Unified Data Platform for Life Sciences, including Data Cloud and MuleSoft for Life Sciences, is generally available today.

Learn more:

  • Learn more about Life Sciences Cloud and try it for free here
  • Tune in to see how Salesforce embeds AI into clinical trials
  • Stream the presentation from World Tour Boston
  • Read an HBR report on AI opportunities in Life Sciences
  • Hear from Salesforce experts on the top trends in life sciences, including the changes and shifts happening in the clinical, medical, and commercial space here
  • Learn about Salesforce’s expanded partnership with IQVIA, which works to accelerate the development of Life Sciences Cloud commercial applications
  • Learn about our strategic partnerships with Accenture, Deloitte, and PwC, which will bring their implementation support and deep global industry expertise to help Salesforce accelerate Life Sciences Cloud
  • Explore Salesforce SI and ISV partner offerings, including ComplianceQuest, Honeywell Sparta, Cognizant, Slalom, and KPMG.

Any unreleased services or features referenced here are not currently available and may not be delivered on time or at all. Customers should make their purchase decisions based upon features that are currently available.

*Life Sciences Cloud’s sales automation functions for pharma/biotech customers will not be available for sale by Salesforce until after September 2, 2025. Until then, there are other Force.com based solutions that are available to meet the sales automation needs of pharma/biotech companies, such as IQVIA OCE, offered by Salesforce preferred partner IQVIA, or Veeva CRM, offered by the preferred / recommended Force.com provider in this market. Veeva is ending its partnership with SFDC in 2025.

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