3 Data-Driven Strategies Consulting Firms Need for a Competitive Edge

We need a bigger word than disruption to describe what’s been happening in healthcare over the last 18 months. The industry has been forced to adapt to an evolving landscape at an unprecedented pace: a 4x increase in telehealth utilization, the proliferation of new healthtech solutions, increased attention to challenges like health equity, and a reconfiguration of treatment paradigms. The necessity for change has left countless healthcare and Life Sciences companies overwhelmed with questions and turning to consultants for answers. 

The healthcare consulting industry is estimated to be worth $50+ billion, and that’s likely an underestimate considering the flood of start-ups, incumbents, and legacy data vendors making strategic pivots into consulting. Against this backdrop of huge opportunity, firms also face endless challenges and stiff competition, which means they need to deliver unique insights and breakthrough ideas – often before contracts are even signed. In today’s rapid-fire, ultra-competitive marketplace, new clients are won and lost on a consultant’s ability to add value even before the first pitch meeting.

To truly differentiate and add real value to clients, consultants need to incorporate both the granular details as well as the 10,000 foot view. And to do that, they need real-world, real-time patient data.

During my time as a consultant (prior to Komodo), I saw the limitations of legacy datasets, which were outdated, incomplete, and biased. This constrained our ability to build the most innovative AI/ML models and added friction to project delivery, delaying timelines for project deployments, and driving up costs. As technological advancements began to catch up to the amount of real-world, real-time data available from patients and providers, it was clear that disruption was imminent. 

Three key elements can enable consultants to be true thought partners to clients in the digital age:

1. An on-demand view of the market to rapidly test and vet hypotheses
   Feasibility assessments are a critical component to a breadth of consulting engagements, but conducting data feasibility or contracting with multiple incomplete data sources is inefficient and labor intensive. Consultants need a single source of truth based on dynamic, real-time industry data – including provider behavior, treatment trends, and formulary data – to quickly assess and test market hypotheses and generate differentiated insights. Faster feasibility assessments drive faster proposal development, project setup, and project execution. Ultimately, this strategic data advantage reduces sales cycles, expands opportunities for partnership, and delivers high ROI for both the consulting firm we partner with and their end clients. 
2.  A scalable, reliable data source to reduce onboarding time 

   Vetting data sources requires considerable time and effort to ensure the quality of the source is fit-for-purpose. Yet despite all efforts, most data sources remain often incomplete, biased, and require deep domain expertise to leverage. When they find no single data source that meets all their needs, consultancies often onboard several, which requires significant data engineering and curation while adding delays to delivery times and increasing costs.
3. A complete view of the patient journey to deliver unprecedented insights 

   Many data sources project patient counts based only on prescription fill rates, diminishing the value of the insights due to the lack of transparency, precision, and accuracy. Without a complete view of the healthcare ecosystem, including near real-time patient-level data, healthcare and Life Sciences organizations are missing the most valuable pieces of the healthcare puzzle: the insights that enable identification of unmet patient needs to devise strategies to improve health outcomes.

To address these needs, Komodo Health built technology to provide the most complete view into the U.S. healthcare system. Komodo’s suite of solutions enables consultants to apply advanced analytics to efficiently identify patterns of patient behavior, the specific drugs, procedures and providers that patients have encountered, gaps in care, and commercial opportunities that are often hiding in plain sight.  

This is the level of information that’s needed to compete in the current marketplace. More importantly, it’s the information that’s needed to develop the kinds of disruptive ideas and groundbreaking insights that will help clients navigate today’s turbulent ecosystem and influence the future of healthcare.

Explore how real-world patient data can arm commercial teams with detailed information on provider populations to fine-tune their engagement strategies.