Six
big pharma companies are joining forces to create a one-step login for doctors
and healthcare providers to get drug information. The newly formed Align
Biopharma group includes Allergan, AstraZeneca, Biogen, GlaxoSmithKline,
Novartis and Pfizer, along with life sciences software solutions company Veeva
Systems.
They’re
banding together to address the problem doctors have in digitally accessing
information from pharma companies. While use of digital information among
doctors has grown—as visits by pharma sales reps continue to decline—so has the
difficulty in managing a wide array of sources.
The
goal of the group is to create two industry standards—one for identification
and the other for consent and preferences, with work on the identification standard
already begun. With one standard, physicians and healthcare providers would be
able to use a single login to access an array of different pharma sites.