Pharma industry consensus: fix data strategy before pushing artificial intelligence and machine learning applications

'Data is the new oil', but only analytics-ready data is a real business asset and everyone knows this. However, absence of a cohesive strategy to incorporate cloud platform and data lakes, integrating and consolidating data warehouses, data hubs and databases as a single source of data, can easily send organisations into a tailspin. A huge volume of data is currently being generated from transaction applications, social media and operational devices and processes. Heterogeneous data sources and diversity of data management technology can further make it a management nightmare. Top executives managing global digital and marketing operations from the pharma industry agree that advanced data quality and analytics governance on data practices is the stepping stone for current and futuristic use cases of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) applications. According to John McCarthy, Principal Consultant, DT Associates, and former VP Global Digital, AstraZeneca, "as medicines become more expensive, clinical utilisation will be more and more dependent on diagnostic testing or even generic testing.